Peter Rhodes on postal votes, premature adulation and who'll be the new John Prescott?
I would like to put on record that throughout the 2024 General Election campaign, this column was in no way influenced by Artificial Intelligence. Or, indeed, by any other sort of intelligence.
Now it begins. Behold, the slow morphing of the English language as a new crew takes over in Westminster and a puzzled population begins to discover that a simple statement such as “We are not going to increase taxes” can mean something entirely different.
My abiding memory of the 2024 General Election was a lady in our local shop singing the praises of the postal vote which enabled her to cast a ballot days before she was off on holiday. But in the fast-moving world of modern elections, with new stories breaking every hour and allegations sprouting every day, what of the time-lag?