Like all good UK tours, the Tory leadership contest culminated with a night at Wembley.
But unlike, say, Queen’s 1986 Magic Tour, the audience at last night’s final hustings are unlikely to have felt they were witnessing a moment in cultural history that will be talked about for decades to come.
And the swathes of empty seats in the venue - the OVO Wembley Arena, about a fifth of the size of the main Stadium - makes one think the choice of venue might have been somewhat optimistic.
Still, at least Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak played the hits - in as much as they said more or less exactly the same things as they have every other night for the last two months.
The stage set up for these hustings is odd. They’re “in the round” - much like Metallica’s 2010 Death Magnetic tour - with the audience on all sides.
But where the legends of thrash metal put Lars Ulrich on a revolving drum kit to ensure the whole crowd got a good look at his gurning mug, the Tories pointed everything on the stage one way, so the contenders were only talking to about a quarter of the audience.
You can insert your own metaphor for Tory Prime Ministers being selected by a fraction of a fraction of the electorate here if you like.
Michael Gove, there to introduce Sunak - who trails Truss by a squillion points in the polls at this point - bounded onto the stage with an enormous grin and shouted “HELLO WEMBLEY!”, as if he’d been waiting his whole life to say those two words.
Sunak’s walk-on video, in which a Ray Winstone soundalike gruffly urges those present to “beware of the underdog” because he has “nothing to lose”, while pictures of the mild-mannered, five foot-and-change former Chancellor picks up a BAZOOKA, really should be preserved in a museum somewhere.
Both candidates proceeded to amble through their greatest hits to an appreciative crowd, hepped up on £6 Big Gulp sugary drinks from the concession stands.
Cutting taxes immediately is either essential or disastrous.
Truss promised to combat violent crime by getting rid of Sadiq Khan and getting the Police off Twitter.
Sunak promised to combat violent crime by getting rid of Sadiq Khan and re-introducing stop-and-search, a policy research has shown to be both racist and ineffective.
Neither had a good answer on energy bills, because let’s face it why would they?
In fact, the only unexpected part of the show was when Liz Truss tried out some new material - always a risk at an arena concert - and committed to “looking into” abolishing the speed limit.
Still, the risk to human life by such a bonkers idea will probably be mitigated by petrol costing a hundred grand a gallon.
Still, if last night does prove to be Sunak’s farewell show, at least he had a good crowd.
Slightly belying his ‘underdog’ status, the section of the arena that would be ‘premium standing’ for a rock show were very much in his corner, and treated him to loud applause and repeated ovations.
This could be a London thing. It could also be a “you had a nice run” thing. We’ll see.
The cheap seats, on the other hand, were firmly team Truss - and they walked away from Wembley singing We Are The Champions.
