After recent events, one has to wonder whether Mr Josh Hawley - for all of his prep school polish and Ivy League degrees - was fully cognisant of what he was doing.

The Republican senator from Missouri apparently assumed he could have it all: Hitch his star to President Donald Trump's, attempt to overturn November's presidential election, and prove his down-home bona fides by giving the mob that later invaded the Capitol a raised-fist salute - while also presenting himself as a Very Serious Thinker who had written a book about the wisdom of president Theodore Roosevelt and was about to publish another titled The Tyranny Of Big Tech.