“Spot on time,” Sir Bernard Jenkin told Rishi Sunak happily at the start of Parliament’s Liaison Committee, where senior MPs get to question the prime minister. Last week, Jenkin was questioning Boris Johnson, who had arrived late, of course, and proceeded to deliver bluster and bluff. 

Johnson’s approach to Liaison Committee was generally that of an undergraduate who hasn’t done the reading but isn’t afraid to bluff. Sunak, on the other hand, is the tutorial swot on course for a starred first: on time, well turned out, polite, essay immaculately researched. And this was very much the shape of his first 40 minutes or so in front of the committee. He seemed supremely relaxed, across all the details. Half an hour in, discussing HS2, he was so laid back that he’d absent-mindedly clipped his pen to the end of his finger, waggling it about as he explained his brilliant insights into world affairs. 

“These things don’t come easy,” he said of his economic plans. “You have to work for them.” But we were left with the sense that they come a little easier to Sunak than they do to the rest of us. He was just trying to make the committee feel better that none of them had become the youngest prime minister in 200 years. They were probably jolly good at whatever it was they were doing. 

Behind Sunak an official with a thick binder flicked through his notes as the questions moved from one area to another. Occasionally he would slide a piece of paper in front of the prime minister, but Captain Competent needed no help. Did you want to know how much had been spent on that bit of the project? Or the names of the officials dealing with it? You didn’t? Well, he was going to tell you anyway.

If anything, he was rather overdoing things. In politics, as in university finals, the trick is to answer the question you wish you’d been asked. When he was dealing with admiring Tories, they were happy to let him get away with this. Things got a little harder when the questioning moved to subjects where he was less comfortable. On childcare issues he replied, for the first time, that he would have to write back with an answer. Being caught out like this seemed to make him a touch snippy. 

Then Caroline Nokes began pushing him on questions about refugees, starting with the capacity for housing them. “I don’t have a specific number,” Sunak said, cagily. Neither, clearly, did the man behind him. 

What about the Afghan pilot who was revealed this week to be facing deportation to Rwanda? “I can’t really comment on individual cases,” Sunak replied. “If you send it to me, I’ll make sure the Home Office have a look.” Suddenly Dr Details was vague, and about a story that has had quite a lot of coverage. 

Nokes moved on to the question of female Afghan judges and MPs, who have no safe route to the UK. Sunak didn’t seem to have quite heard her. There are lots of other countries they could go to, he explained. Clearly there was nothing in his binder to explain why they might feel Britain had a duty to look after them. Perhaps his background reading hasn’t yet got up to 2021.

Sarah Champion asked why aid was being cut to programmes inside Afghanistan. “In the interests of being brief…” Sunak began to reply. “Oh, take your time,” Champion told him. Sunak reminded her that Jenkin hadn’t wanted him to waste the committee’s time with long answers, and then repeated the answer he’d just given.

Dame Diana Johnson wanted to know about the promised plans to send refugees to Rwanda by the summer. “No one has promised flights by the summer,” Sunak corrected her. “Well, the Home Secretary…” Johnson replied, before he cut her off: “No, that’s not what she said.”

Few journalists have access to Suella Braverman, so it’s hard to falsify this, but members of the media support bubble who flew to Rwanda with her earlier in the month certainly came away with the impression flights are imminent. Sunak’s face was very cheerful through all this, but he had a slightly forced air. By the time Johnson had got to Braverman’s language around refugees, the smile was gone. 

Sunak rose, status safe as the tutor’s pet

Rescue came, as it does in tutorials, from someone asking a question that sent the session down a rabbit hole. Angus Brendan MacNeil, theoretically there to talk about international trade, demanded to know how the prime minister would respond to the people of Scotland voting for independence at a general election. Sunak was at first polite and then, as MacNeil conjured images of London telling the SNP what it could put in its manifesto and refusing to recognise independence even as the rest of Europe celebrated it, amused. Behind him, his aide put his hand to his mouth to try to conceal a smirk. Jenkin was forced to intervene before MacNeil could conjure images of tanks rolling up the A1. 

“For the most part, everyone has been extremely well-behaved,” Jenkin said, winding up. “Prime minister, you’ve been extremely helpful.” Sunak rose, status safe as the tutor’s pet.