IT has been a bad week for both of the leaders of our main political parties, with Keir Starmer performing the mother of all U-turns over Labour’s £28bn green investment policy and Rishi Sunak looking mean-minded over his trans-joke and his £1,000 Rwanda bet.

Well, it’s all three of our main political parties if you include Ed Davey, the LibDem leader, who is unable to escape from the shadows cast by his handling of the Post Office scandal when he was postal minister.

However, look across the pond and rejoice at the calibre of our candidates who are going to be parading their wares all year before the election. Mr Sunak, 43, is energetic with such a sharp mind for detail that he made an absolute fortune as a hedge manager and stabilised a Tory party that was taking the country down with it after the trauma of Liz Truss.

Mr Starmer, 61, rose to the top of his profession as a lawyer, won a knighthood for his work as Director of Public Prosecutions and his analytical mind has enabled him to seamlessly transfer to a second career as a politician where, after the car crash of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour is now favourite to win the election.

Then look to America, where the best candidates that are going to go before their 161.4m voters are a 77-year-old over-tanned, self-deluding narcissist and an 81-year-old who looks as if he has forgotten why he has turned up at the Oval Office.

This week’s report by the Department of Justice’s special counsel into Joe Biden’s storage of classified documents was politically motivated and rather cruel, but it is undeniable that the US president is beginning to look his age, as he confirmed by confusing Mitterand with Macron and Egypt with Mexico.

The Americans have an unenviable choice over who they are going to make the next leader of the free world. We should be thankful for our small mercies…