Because Angela Rayner is a refreshingly human politician with blood in her veins, she might have been expected to have committed a gaffe or two in this election. In fact, the closest she has so far come to making news was because she was too disciplined.

Asked in a multi-party ITV debate last week if Labour would “ever” push for Britain to rejoin the EU or even the single market, she just said “No.”

She might have used a forgivable evasion. Something like: “Well, ‘ever’ is a big word but not in any future I can see. Who knows what will happen down the line when you and I are over the hill?”

In politician-speak that would have basically kept Labour’s options open from the parliament after next. That she didn’t showed she was sticking to the letter of Labour’s all pervasive approach to Brexit: if it comes up, shut it down.

Indeed, anyone who raises Brexit in this election is quickly made to feel like Basil Fawlty, pathologically unable to take his own advice not to “mention the war” when German guests arrive in his hotel. It is just not a topic to be spoken of in polite society.

The Tories keep off it because it has so patently not been the stunning success confidently predicted during the 2016 referendum. (Challenged over this in Thursday night’s Question Time interrogation of party’s leaders, Rishi Sunak was obliged to fall back on the Teeside Freeport, though it isn’t even clear that, beside being dogged by allegations of sharp business practice, it needed Britain to be out of the EU to be created.)

And for Labour it can’t be discussed because of a fact that remains stubbornly unmentionable, namely that Keir Starmer had not only opposed Brexit but actually suggested........

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