If George Clooney’s reputation as Democratic kingmaker is to be believed, a new party leader could be crowned soon.

The veteran actor said Wes Moore, the governor of Maryland, was “levitating” above the rest of the field and had a “spectacular” track record in the army, raising huge funds while running a charity that helps the poor and tackling the Baltimore bridge disaster last year.

Clooney plunged a dagger into President Biden’s re-election campaign with a scathing article last July, declaring the 82-year-old was “not going to win”. Biden withdrew from the presidential race later that month.

Moore, a former Rhodes scholar who studied at Wolfson College, Oxford, hopes to unite and reinvigorate the Democrats who are struggling to reconnect with voters after last year’s