I think you’re completely on it there, Aethelric. The Tory Dirty Tricks Brigade were responsible to a very great extent for the disaster of the 2019 GE as far as Labour was concerned. The anti-semitism/terrorist’s friend BS absolutely did for Corbyn following his poor showing in the Andrew Neill TV interview where, instead of being frank and open, he came over as defensive and stone-walling.

I do believe we have a major problem here in the UK, as well as in the US, in that we are in thrall of ‘Personality Politics’, where voters seem to make their voting decisions, not on the policies of the Parties and how likely they are to benefit us as a nation, but on which of the leaders they ‘like best’.

There was a perfect example of this phenomenon on, I think, the Kuenssberg show last Sunday, where one of eight people who voted Labour in the 2024 GE said she would vote Reform UK next time because, having watched Farage on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here’, she ‘liked him’ and thought that he’s ‘on our side’, and that he’s ‘different to the Public-school-educated millionaires of the other parties’ (that, despite Farage himself being a Public-school-educated millionaire!).

I do believe that a root-and-branch overhaul of our press and media’s practices is well overdue if we are to ever get away from Personality Politics and back to a policy-driven political scene.