PROPORTIONAL representation - as in next year’s Senedd elections - has made electioneering redundant. After all, where’s the appeal in getting enthusiastic about a political party stripped of its human element?

Electioneering is a democratic relic. Let it go.

Instead, vote for us. For who? For us, the party. We are many, and we’ll decide who precisely gets your vote. That’s good news. It’s saving you so much time and trouble. That whole tedious business of picking candidates, putting them through the constituency mangle, rummaging around in their pasts. All gone by the board. Wonderful.

Instead, we, the party, have compiled a list. A whole array of candidates. They’re all marvellous, we wouldn’t have chosen them otherwise.

But someone has to top the list, and be runner-up, and that’s where the party comes in. We want the best for you, the voter, but clearly we’re best positioned to rank the candidates because we know them better than you do, so we’ll see to it that the best is at number one.

And don’t you worry about those mischief-makers who’ll try to tell you we’re hovering on the edge of an abnegation of democracy, that establishing PR for the Senedd is a victory for Labour wheedlers intent on imposing managerial supremacy. Don’t believe a word of it. Fifth-columnists ain’t nowhere in sight.

Some politicians, though, haven’t kept up. Such as Labour’s Eluned Morgan, the first minister, who says she intends standing for election in the newly-formed Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire constituency.

Perhaps feeling nostalgic for first-past-the-post, she is seen to be sticking to old-style persuasion, as if the New hadn’t arrived.

Give her credit for innovation, though, because she’s the first Senedd candidate I know of to engage artificial intelligence to further her electoral ambition. I can only imagine the time and trouble it’s taken to get it organised.

And what (drum-roll) has Eluned’s biological mimic come up with on her behalf? What follows is an extract from the promotional output her robotic agent has composed for Ms Morgan, the candidate. See what you think.

It runs: “In what will be a time of certain change, Wales will need politicians who are serious about the best interests of our people, our communities and our public services. I will continue to use my experience of representing this unique and special part of Wales to stand up for our rural, coastal communities with a passion and determination that shows politics can make a lasting and positive difference.”

I have to say I’m not sure. To me, that sounds very much like the sort of yawn-inducing quote the first minister, or one of her staff, might have come up with. Goodness knows what this excursion into AI has cost her but, if I were Eluned, I’d try getting my money back.

THE TITLE of John le Carré’s cold-war spy-thriller comes to mind - The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Only now it’s Russia, and Putin and, utterly extraordinarily, they’re in the cordial embrace of the president of the United States.

Russia no longer an international pariah, Russia in from the cold, Russia now America’s partner in seeking an end to the Ukraine war.

Trump announces there will be a negotiated peace settlement. The talks begin with never a Ukrainian, nor a European, in sight. His defence secretary says it’s unrealistic to think that Ukraine could join Nato, or that it could go back to pre-2014 borders. There’s an assurance that America would not be part of any peacekeeping force, a warning that America can no longer be relied on to guarantee the security of Europe.

Seismic is about right if you’re looking for a one-word description for what all this suggests in terms of a potential realignment of the world order. It has been, so far, music to Moscow’s ears.

Russia has long been declared the leading threat to America and the West in general. In Trump’s book, that’s apparently ancient history, no longer needing a mention. Unbelievably, he takes an airbrush to Russia’s blood-filled invasion, telling Ukraine: “You should have never started it, you could have made a deal.”

Among many things, one stands out. That’s the many thousands of soldiers - mainly young, Ukrainian and Russian - slaughtered over the three years-plus of this war.

They have been no less cannon-fodder than the dead of the First World War. In their name, and remembering those still being butchered, any move that might end the bloodshed has to be welcome. The caveat: there can be no just peace without Ukrainian involvement.

But amidst the inevitable cynicism, let’s leave room for a chink of positivity, for the makings of a happy dream. Given all the world’s dangers, anything approaching harmony between America and Russia would be worth having. If - and please note the if - such could be fashioned to save lives, fight poverty, reduce international tension, free up resources, we’d be fools not to grasp it.