Can principled politicians ever change their mind (and, yes, that means you, too, Sir Keir)?

Have you been watching the various television debates and party leader interviews? Is it not remarkable how much time Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak spend having to talk about their immediate predecessors?

Despite all of their respective efforts to “move on”, Jeremy Corbyn and Liz Truss are haunting this election campaign – and there is nothing either of these candidate prime ministers can do to exorcise the malign spectral presence of their former leaders.

Of the pair, it is Starmer who is suffering the most from the suspicion that, even as he unveils his very own “Changed Labour” manifesto. Sunak can say, and did, that he warned his party about Truss when they fought the first 2022 leadership election, and has spent his premiership repairing the damage she inflicted in the party and the country, albeit with mixed results.