David Cameron is making great strides. No, he really is, you can watch them on video | Catherine Bennett

Considering the immediate UK response when Cameron was promoted despite his calamitous political record and recent support for the Chinese belt and road initiative, it might be desirable to keep important foreign contacts in ignorance for as long as possible about his legacy, reputation and habits.

These bring together a couple of old Cameron tricks – speaking without notes and, as he tried in WebCameron, supposedly artless glimpses of the real him – with a hectic walk and talk style borrowed from The West Wing.

Confirming that no lasting lessons were learned from Cameron’s earliest appearances, when the no-notes delivery he picked up at Eton was widely mistaken for evidence of political ability, his recent stunts were promptly taken, including by reviewers previously considered discerning, to be tokens of diplomatic talent.

To judge by the reviews, these carefully choreographed performances promise, along with awed reports of a tireless schedule, to overwrite the reputation for chillaxing vividly confirmed in Sasha Swire’s diaries.

Recently, reform-minded experts argued (from a medieval Oxford college) that the ministry is elitist, inappropriately grand and too liable to become a personal fiefdom: Cameron used the pretext of his “first 100 days” to swank down its marble staircase on his way to “my first debate in the House of Lords”.

Yet again by dint of acting the part, Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton finds he can rekindle, including in alleged meritocrats, a primitive fondness for patrician representation.