Barrow, like the shirtless Putin astride his white steed in Siberia, is displaying his political muscle for all to see; master, for the moment, of all he surveys.

With steely stoicism he absorbed these public adversities – and tragic private ones – without becoming embittered or cynical. The fires of his political education had forged a mettle to take the fall for the party if that was how it had to be.

It required an almost reckless leap of imagination to see this pious, enfeebled, simple man in the role of the uncompromising, inflexible firebrand he once was; “the soldier without a gun” as he referred to himself.

It is a moment of reckoning when the casual observations of a long dead economics professor made half a century ago during a one week visit to Belize still echo with resonance.