Voters will have learned several things about Rishi Sunak in recent days: that he thinks he can win the next election; that he and his wife have fallen 50-plus places on the annual Sunday Times Rich List, and that he can emerge from a punishing flight schedule – London to Hiroshima via Reykjavik and Tokyo – with little overt trace of jet-lag.

But there is something else, which may in time prove to be more significant: the UK’s youngest Prime Minister of modern times is increasingly being treated as an equal and congenial colleague by his counterparts abroad. This weekend marked his first appearance at what is still thought of – though who knows for how long – as the global top table. From his smiling descent from the plane, sheltering his wife under a Union flag umbrella, to his closing press conference at the Hiroshima G7, Rishi Sunak looked comfortable and assured without appearing showy or arrogant. He blended in, and above all, he did not mess up.

You may argue that this is a bare minimum for a Prime Minister abroad. But by no means all recent UK prime ministers, or ministers for that matter, have travelled well. And while there is time for mis-steps, Sunak’s seven months in office have been mercifully free of foreign gaffes.

Rishi Sunak combines the awareness of a world outside the UK with the confidence conferred by a privileged English education

He made sure to visit the hero of our age, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Ukraine early on, and has cultivated the relationship ever since, successfully burying the idea that Boris Johnson has exclusive rights to the Kyiv connection.

In February, he and the president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, emerged beaming after agreeing the ‘Windsor framework’ for Brexit and  Northern Ireland. There was good humour, mutual respect and simple good manners, components so often absent from UK-EU encounters in recent years;’the grown-ups’ appear to have finally returned.

Emmanuel Macron can be a tricky customer for visiting leaders – not just for those who find it hard to decide whether France is friend or foe. From that first trademark arm embrace from the French president, however, Sunak and Macron seemed to hit it off. Again, their joint press conference was good humoured and well-mannered.

Little touches have smoothed his way: a birthday present for a member of von der Leyen’s team in Windsor; the red baseball socks he sported when he met the prime minister of Japan, before decamping to the G7 at Hiroshima. And, of course, it is knowledgeable diplomats, not prime ministers, who make such things happen, but Sunak had the grace to carry it off.

So how come Sunak seems to be getting right what so many UK prime ministers have been getting wrong on the foreign stage? One reason might be that Sunak emerged less tainted than some by the bad atmosphere generated by Brexit – and especially by the uncooperative spirit in which the talks were often held, compounded, of course, by the political fights going on at Westminster. Maybe everyone wants to move on.

A second reason might be the difference in background and experience between Sunak and those who preceded him. There is a common perception abroad of the UK as parochial and insensitive to the outside world, with officials who display a mixture of  ignorance and arrogance, as expressed in a desire to ‘lead’ and ‘beat’ the world, which suddenly turns to obsequiousness when they land in Washington DC.

David Cameron, Theresa May and Liz Truss were all creatures of the shires who often seemed uncomfortable outside their native habitat. Cameron might have had all the gloss that an elite education bestows, but he simply didn’t ‘get’ abroad, which may explain how he failed to extract the concessions he had hoped for from Angela Merkel before the EU referendum.

Theresa May was hobbled by the Brexit issue and unlucky in that ‘her’ US president was Donald Trump, but her unseemly rush to the White House, the hand-holding and premature invitation for a state visit were demeaning. Liz Truss was so gaffe-prone that she was discounted by many foreign peers almost before she had begun. You can be rude to the Russians, but it only really works if you get your facts right first.

Boris Johnson, as ever, was a one-off. He could be both very good and very bad abroad. His cosmopolitan background equipped him to travel well: he speaks French better than he likes to let on, and foreign partners often liked him, despite themselves. But then came the selective memory, the trust issue and the general chaos of Johnson’s micro-world.

The British-born son of East African Asian parents, Rishi Sunak combines the awareness of a world outside the UK with the confidence conferred by a privileged English education. He has the practicality and drive of someone who has succeeded in the highly competitive ‘real world’ of fund-management. He is used to collaborating and mixing with high-flyers of many different backgrounds – and it shows. He is serious and he does his homework, which foreign leaders, often of a more technocratic bent than their UK counterparts, respect.

Sunak has yet to face perhaps his biggest foreign challenge. His first official visit to the United States will come only next month. But this is the third area where he may behave a bit differently from other recent prime ministers. Theresa May, as I have said, was unlucky. But the US has proved difficult territory even for such practised characters as Cameron, and before him, Blair. I never saw Cameron look more awkward than he did at a basketball game alongside Barack Obama (2012). And Tony Blair’s ill-judged denim ranch wear at Camp David (2003) somehow exemplified an over-eagerness to please that helped take the UK into the Iraq war. Let’s see how Sunak negotiates the pitfalls of the ‘special relationship’.

Generation, family background, and career may all help to explain why Rishi Sunak, with no foreign policy experience, seems to be doing a better job of diplomacy than his immediate predecessors. To which it might be added that money, in the sense of the security that goes with personal wealth, may also play a part.

It is not just Sunak, though, where a difference can be discerned. His two fellow globe-trotters – Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, and Defence Secretary, Ben Wallace – have been contributing to what seems a less arrogant, more collaborative, face of the UK abroad. Cleverly was recently in Washington, where he re-emphasised what might be called the more realistic approach to China that he set out in his recent Mansion House speech. He showed an ease with his American audience that UK officials can find hard to achieve. Wallace, for his part, is well regarded abroad as a straight-talker who knows what he is doing, in part thanks to his time in the military.

How far do these three represent a new approach to the world on the part of the UK post-Brexit? How far does their outlook reflect the more diverse character of the UK into the future? And is it mere coincidence that people of wider experience are in these particular jobs at this particular time? These are all questions that hinge on whether this change might outlast their individual tenures. But the smiles, handshakes and hugs that greeted Sunak at Hiroshima should be savoured as heralding the possibility, at least, that the UK’s time as an international laughing stock and byword for dysfunction might have come to an end.