This gives him more space to speak frankly, as his allies see it — and, he hopes, to rehabilitate his legacy beyond his failure to keep Britain in the EU after calling the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Upstaging the PM

Peter Ricketts, a crossbench peer who served as Cameron’s national security adviser between 2010 and 2012, told POLITICO: “He knows he’s got a limited time to make a difference. And he’s really going for it.”

The Foreign Office official quoted earlier agreed. “[Cameron] gives the impression of being a man in a hurry — he knows he only has four or five months left and wants to make it count.”

A second official, like the first granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said of Cameron: “He’s highly exercised about actually getting things done and making tangible progress. Having no domestic political skin in the game, I think makes him less constrained and operate with a greater risk appetite.”

With his experience on the world stage and relaxed demeanor, some observers believe Cameron has begun to upstage Sunak, with at least one Conservative MP having accidentally addressed the foreign secretary as “prime minister” since his return to the political fray.

George Osborne, Cameron’s chancellor back when he did actually hold the title, has described his former boss as “acting like the British prime minister.”