As we waited on Thursday for Jeremy Hunt to come and deliver the bad news, there was a small moment of the type of excitement that thrills parliament-watchers.

Theresa May, in a bright red power suit, had taken her traditional seat in the prime minister’s blind spot, two rows behind him, perfectly positioned to shoot him down. But who was this, shambling into the chamber? None other than author and journalist Boris Johnson! He plonked himself down at the end of the bench next to May’s. The pair were separated only by a stairway.

After a moment, May sneaked a glance to her right, confirmed who was there, and returned to focusing intently on the papers in her lap. A minute or so later, Johnson, manspreading like a giant toad, looked left briefly before staring ahead. Between them, the air seemed to shimmer with tension in a way that would feel familiar to a Korean border guard.

But of Liz Truss there was no sign

Andrew Stephenson, a Tory whip whose Wikipedia page reveals he was Conservative Party chairman during that weird bit of the summer when Johnson gave random jobs to anyone he met, moved to sit between the two former prime ministers, possibly on the instructions of the United Nations. He shared a matey joke with Johnson. Scientists define a “superhard” material as one exceeding 40 gigapascals in the Vickers hardness test. They’re going to need a new scale to measure May’s expression at this point.

Seeing the two former prime ministers prompted the thought that there’s a third ex-premier in the Commons. But of Liz Truss there was no sign, either in the chamber or, beyond one passing mention, in Hunt’s long statement. Truss is being written out of the historical record more surely than an out-of-favour member of Stalin’s politburo.

Neither was there much sign of her Cabinet. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer (September), declined to turn up to see his works repudiated. Therese Coffey, for six weeks the deputy prime minister, watched from the peers’ gallery.

Had they been asked to stay away? Is the Conservative Party hoping that we will all simply forget about the period between September and mid-October? It certainly felt like it. Hunt’s speech, delivered in the tone of a sympathetic solicitor explaining that your house is being repossessed, was full of references to “global headwinds” and “international crisis”, and very short on any mention of the impact that events closer to home might have had on all this.

Tories are helping at  least one person who lost their job this year

The result was that Hunt continued the recent tradition of government ministers reading out speeches that sound like they were written by a deeply sarcastic opponent. “Credibility cannot be taken for granted,” he tried to lecture the opposition benches, only to be greeted with mocking laughter. The recession – and we are in recession – was “shallower” than it would have been if.. if what? If the Conservatives were still in office? It all felt a bit like a lecture on fire safety from the people who had just burned your house down. “You cannot borrow your way to growth,” he said, sternly, and Tory MPs who really very recently cheered exactly such a strategy now cheered its repudiation.

Being foreign secretary, Hunt said, “showed me first hand the enormous respect in which this country is held”. Of course, he stopped doing the job in 2019. These days, international leaders greet British prime ministers with expressions of sympathetic concern.

There was a brief mention of the great Conservative project, making life harder for business, when Hunt told us that the government will set out how we can make the most of our “Brexit freedoms” by the end of next year. Six years after Britain voted to leave the European Union and more than two after we left, the benefits of Brexit remain tantalisingly out of reach.

Rachel Reeves, for Labour, gave what may be her best performance yet. In fairness, she’s had more practise responding to fiscal statements than most shadow chancellors get. “The mess we are in is the result of 12 weeks of Conservative chaos and 12 years of Conservative economic failure,” she began. “Growth dismal, investment down, wages squeezed and public services crumbling.”

The Tories, she said, were taking a “Bobby Ewing strategy, with Downing Street as Dallas. Old cast members return as if nothing has happened.” I thought it was a good joke, until a younger colleague leaned over to ask me who Bobby Ewing was. Later Reeves made quoted The Police’s Every Breath You Take, a hit from 1983. For some reason, all her cultural reference points date from the time when Neil Kinnock was Labour leader.

Good though she was, its not Reeves who will do for the Tories so much as people’s experience of the next couple of years. Even as she spoke, journalists were getting the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecasts, filled with bleak graphs and tales of coming hardship.

Not for everyone, though. When Reeves had finished, Johnson got up and plodded cheerfully out, hand, as ever, down the back of his trousers. He made £260,000 from one speech last month, while living in a £10,000-a-month home provided by a donor. It’s good to know that Tories are helping at  least one person who lost their job this year back onto his feet.