Tory MPs warmly welcome the Lord Cameron comeback act - but how long will it last?
Jon Craig
There will be tougher times ahead for "Call me Lord Dave" from right-wing and Brexiteer Tory MPs  - so the former PM should bask in the warm glow while it lasts.
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Sky News
It was just like old times. For those of us who covered dozens of Lord David Cameron's appearances at the 1922 Committee when he was prime minister, it was as if he had never been away.

And like most reunions, it was a love-in. The Boothroyd Room in parliament's Portcullis House was packed and Tory MPs banged their desks so hard their hands must have hurt.

"Vintage!" said one veteran MP after the meeting. "Classic!" said a current minister. "He's a class act!" gushed a minister who served in the coalition government. "He's a great man!" eulogised another MP.

When he was prime minister, Mr Cameron - as he then was - used to say to journalists as he waited in the corridor: "It's exercise book down the seat of the trousers time."

Obviously something he used to do at Eton.

This time, at his comeback appearance, the newly ennobled Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton - where else? - told reporters in the corridor: "It's like going back to school."

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As he peered inside the room through the open door while he waited to go inside, he told me: "There are a few faces in there I don't recognise."

It had been a different story earlier when he took his seat in the House of Lords. Plenty of familiar faces there as cheers rang out from the Tory benches.

He admitted to me that many of those on the government side of the Lords chamber and sitting on the steps to the throne were either people who'd served in his cabinet or been sent to the Lords by him, though he claimed Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair created more peers than he did.

While he waited to go inside the Boothroyd Room, several Conservative MPs, with faces beaming as they greeted an old friend, either shook his hand or slapped him on the back.

With one exception, that is. Theresa May arrived and avoided eye contact or exchanging any pleasantries with her predecessor as prime minister.

Icy!

But "Call me Lord Dave" was too busy greeting old friends to notice. Or he pretended he didn't.

In between the ceremony in the Lords, presided over by a gentleman with the grand title of Garter Principal King of Arms and a costume to match that made him look like a Gilbert & Sullivan character, Lord Cameron dashed off to speak at a government food summit.

There he gave a six-and-a-half-minute speech about the importance of aid and development in foreign policy, which included a bizarre quip about his wife Samantha at the beginning.

"I've had an extraordinary day going to the House of Lords and doing all the right things and nodding and saying the oath and all the rest of it," he said.

"So I can go home and tell Mrs Cameron she's now Lady Cameron. She's absolutely furious about that!"

What did he mean by that, I asked while we were talking in the corridor before the '22. "She hates titles," he replied. Really? That's surprising, since Samantha Cameron is, of course, the daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th Baronet.

Inside the '22, although it was a love-in there were some tricky moments. Asked about Rwanda and what to do about the European Court of Human Rights, he gave a long answer in which "he swerved around the answer", according to one veteran Euro-sceptic.

And on China, which his critics claim he's too cosy with, ominously for him Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the most hawkish of all the China hawks, raised his hand to ask a question.

But Lord Cameron, who was a lucky politician until his luck ran out with the Brexit referendum in 2016, was lucky again this time. The division bell rang for a vote and Mr Duncan Smith never got to his question.

More serious and much tougher questions will follow in the weeks and months ahead. He is going to face a regular monthly 40-minute question time in the House of Lords, he told me.

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And among Tory MPs, Brexiteers and red wallers are fuming about his return.

But he's putting the band back together. He's already signed up Liz Sugg, a Downing Street fixer when he was prime minister who became a peer in his resignation honours and then a junior aid minister.

And Alan Sendorek - "Senders", - as the former primer minister calls him - who worked for him as a special adviser in Number 10, is joining his team too.

The next gig for the Lord Cameron comeback act is his maiden speech in the House of Lords when he speaks in a debate on an international trade bill. He will surely get another good reception then.

But while it was largely his fan club that turned up at the '22, there will be tougher times ahead for "Call me Lord Dave" from right-wing and Brexiteer Tory MPs.

So he should enjoy the warm reception for his return and the back-slapping while it lasts.