Afghanistan isn’t Boris Johnson’s first international crisis.
It’s not even the first one that’s dramatically unravelled while he’s been on holiday.
Last year the Prime Minister was enjoying his now notorious private island getaway when Donald Trump dropped a drone strike on a senior Iranian general.
But at least this time he wasn’t alone in getting called back from his hols early.
It was hard to tell whether Dominic Raab’s beetroot-red face was from his cruelly curtailed holiday, or a result of Keir Starmer reminding the nation that the Foreign Secretary had been on a Greek beach when Kabul fell.
The PM probably hoped to project an air of grave seriousness in yesterday’s emergency debate, delivering a sombre rundown of how awful everything is and what his ministers plan to do about it.
Once they’re done fighting with each other, of course.
But with Commons Covid rules finally scrapped, Boris’s boisterous backbench brigade, who he’s missed dreadfully at PMQs, were back in full voice - and repeatedly interrupted him.
So frequent were the desperate interventions from Tory MPs aching for the limelight that the PM’s speech appeared frantic and hastily delivered.
By comparison, Starmer, who spoke to a largely silent House, sounded calm, measured and in control.
Only comedy pantomime villain Desmond Swayne broke Starmer’s concentration - piping up to demand Afghans mount a brave resistance to the Taliban regime rather than “queuing up at the airport” to escape.
You may remember Mr Swayne spent much of the last year having hissy fits about the brutal oppression of having to wear a mask in the supermarket.
The Labour Leader was careful to reassure current and former members of the armed forces that their “sacrifice” in Afghanistan over the last two decades had “not been in vain” - a point bafflingly absent from Johnson’s speech.
And he accused the PM of a "staggering complacency" over the Taliban threat - not least illustrated by his decision to pop off to the West Country while the Afghan capital was under seige.
But he also reminded the PM that he'd said last year that the Taliban were "not capable" of mounting such a resurgence - something backed up by the group not being mentioned in the Government's defence review at all.
And the Labour leader couldn't resist bringing up the fact that Johnson's last visit to the country, while he was Foreign Secretary, was in an heroic bid to avoid a vote on Heathrow Airport expansion.
But it eventually came down to little-known backbencher Theresa May to send Johnson away shame-faced.
She reminded the PM he’d had 18 months since Trump’s dodgy deal with the Taliban to prepare for Joe Biden’s withdrawal.
“The politicians sent them there,” she said, as Johnson her old Foreign Secretary stared at his shoes like a schoolboy who has forgotten his PE kit.
“The politicians decided to withdraw, the politicians must be responsible for the consequences.”
“Huh,” many viewers may have thought.
“She’d probably make quite a good Prime Minister.”
