If you are a right-wing MP or ambitious wonk on the Truss campaign ‘pivot’ is such a useful word. Far better to say ‘we need to pivot from campaign mode to governing mode,’ than to blurt out that ‘now we have their votes we can forget the lies we told to win over Conservative members’. Far better for Truss herself to say, ‘I am pivoting from my previous position on tax cuts’ to ‘I admit that I was wrong’.

Pivoting calls to mind the elegance of a ballerina turning on her points. Not the cynicism of a politician breaking promises she made only a few days before.