When you are the prime minister and addressing your party conference there are things you can do that mere cabinet mortals could never get away with. It is difficult, for example, to imagine Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary, dancing his way to the podium with Knowing Me, Knowing You or Philip Hammond to the strains of Money, Money, Money.

Prime ministers can also, as Theresa May did, steal their colleagues’ best announcements — the chancellor had been saving the ninth successive freeze on fuel duty for his October 29 budget — and bump them into a change of policy. By proclaiming that the austerity forced upon the 2010 David Cameron government by the financial crisis “is over”, Mrs May gave her Downing Street neighbour a