Democrats are searching for a saviour as President Biden flounders. The veteran strategist James Carville urges them to look past “wokeness” and overcome the party’s image as “urban, coastal, arrogant”.

One name increasingly being mentioned is that of JB Pritzker, the 57-year-old governor of Illinois. There are signs that Pritzker is OK with that, having recently given a speech 1,000 miles from home in New Hampshire, which also happens to be an early primary state where all presidential hopefuls must pay their dues.

Until now the Democratic governor making the early running to step into Biden’s orthopaedic shoes was Gavin Newsom of California but the party was set abuzz by Pritzker’s passionate response to the mass shooting in Highland Park in Illinois, in stark contrast