You’ve probably seen the videos. Kemi Badenoch delivering her Budget response in the form of a rap to a sobbing Rachel Reeves. Keir Starmer as a McDonald’s drive-thru worker. David Lammy as a Spice Girl in a tight dress. Reeves (again) as the Grand High Witch from The Witches. Behind the videos is one man. He runs the Crewkerne Gazette, an online publisher of viral political videos made with artificial intelligence.

The ‘Crewkerne Man’ would not give me his name when we met for lunch in Somerset last week. What I can say is that the most important political satirist of the moment is a large guy in his mid-thirties with a ginger beard and glasses; that when he entered the Crooked Swan pub he scanned the room shiftily; and that throughout our two-hour conversation he wore a red cap bearing the logo of the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company, an American seafood restaurant chain inspired by Forrest Gump. He wishes to remain anonymous. ‘One never knows when it will be their final day posting,’ he says. ‘Twenty armed officers with guns pointed at you in bed is a high price to pay for shitposting on the internet.’

‘Twenty armed officers with guns pointed at you in bed is a high price to pay for posting on the internet’

The Gazette first came to public attention in September, when it emerged that Angela Rayner had underpaid tax on a flat in Hove, and the Crewkerne Man wrote and produced a song called ‘How many homes can Rayner buy?’ A grime/garage beat accompanied a video of an AI-created Rayner dancing in big hoop earrings, fat gold chains and an Adidas........

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