The First Lady Jill Biden’s email to supporters acknowledged her husband’s age. “Joe is 81, that’s true, but he’s 81 doing more in an hour than most people do in a day. Joe has wisdom, empathy, and vision. He’s learned a lot in those 81 years. His age, with his experience and expertise, is an incredible asset and he proves it every day.”

The speech covered Biden’s accomplishments as instrumental to lowering costs and revitalising the economy.

Some 56% of the world’s 8 billion people now say that social media is their main source of knowledge across the world, according to a new survey by Ipsos. Only 11% suggest newspapers or radio. This, say experts, is placing their knowledge in the hands of a largely unregulated market.

Social media is increasingly using deepfake videos, generated using artificial intelligence, which could provide the “perfect storm” for the UK’s adversaries to influence the upcoming general election, the UK home secretary has warned. James Cleverley MP said ahead of a meeting with technology firms in Silicon Valley that the era of deepfake videos disrupting elections across the globe was ‘already in play’. Earlier this month tech giants including Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, and 17 others agreed to work together to prevent deceptive AI content, but this pact did not commit to banning deepfake videos.

Another popular form of social media, and seemingly a vital news resource, is Instagram where Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican. The BBC’s Panorama programme discovered dozens of ‘deepfakes’ portraying black people as supporting the former president. There is no evidence directly linking these images to Trump’s campaign.

Conventional political wisdom suggests that Jeremy Hunt announced crowd-pleasing NI cuts because of public demand and it seems unlikely to do the Conservatives election campaign any harm. But is it what the public really wants?

New data from Delta polling this week shows that more than four in 10 respondents (41%) believed that taxes and public spending should be kept at the level they are now. A further third (34%) said they would like to see taxes increased with greater spending on public services, while one in seven (14%) believed that taxes and public spending should be reduced. Among Conservative voters, that figure rose only marginally to one in six (17%).

This isn’t the kind of analysis the prime minister Rishi Sunak wants to hear. When he was chancellor himself he chose to hang a picture of Nigel Lawson above his desk, hailing the chancellor from 1983-1989 as ‘transformational’.

Hunt and the prime minister have spent the past few weeks locked away looking for ways to offer a tax cut on the scale of that announced last year to boost the Conservatives’ flagging poll ratings in their final budget before an election. Labour is leading national polling by some 20%.

The chancellor’s budget statement revealed key election campaign themes saying: “We’ve worked so hard to get through the really challenging period that we’ve come through. Don’t throw it away.” And ”Stick to the plan.”

Labour’s shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has estimated that even with a 2p cut in NI, the average household will be £1,040 a year worse off than they would have been if the thresholds had risen with inflation. “Fixing the nation’s roof when the sun was shining? The Tories have broken the windows, kicked the door in and now are burning the house down.”

Claire Coutinho

Claire Coutinho has one of the toughest jobs in government as energy secretary, charged with making sure the UK hits net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. As if this were not tough enough, the smart money is on Coutinho being Jeremy Hunt’s replacement as chancellor. With several members of the cabinet, including Hunt, expecting to lose their seat in Parliament, a further sign of Coutinho being ‘on manoeuvres’ is that she is planning to make a ‘vision speech’ in the coming months.