Was Republican Party chairman Haley Barbour's four-line press release equivalent to then Democratic Party head Ron Brown's flying the flag at half staff over party headquarters and attending services when his counterpart, Lee Atwater, died young of a brain tumor?
After just one year, new MPs from the 2010 intake - a third of the total, remember - are more likely to have defied their partyline than those of the 1997 intake were after four years in the Commons.