Post Office Horizon scandal: the real reason Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is now in a rush to finally deliver justice to victims

And in the case of the Post Office Horizon scandal, with momentum now at break-neck speed both in the corridors of power and in the public consciousness, it is more pragmatic than cynical to examine the timing in the case of ITV’s public service dramatisation of what is the biggest miscarriage of justice in British history.

Because in the wake of Mr Bates v the Post Office, an unrelenting four-hour articulation of how the Establishment razed to the ground the reputations of its sub-postmasters and postmistresses in a bid to cover up the frailties of Fujitsu’s IT software, one might pause to ponder the pace at which Rishi Sunak’s Government is now moving to right the hundreds of wrongs meted out to Horizon’s victims.

With the latest YouGov poll showing Labour 24 points ahead in the polls, and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surging ahead of the Liberal Democrats, with a General Election onrushing, this Conservative Government is being squeezed on all fronts.

So, then, certainly in political terms, it is far from cynical to suggest that thanks to the timing of this, it all plays into the hands of Mr Sunak, who will be desperate to leverage emotions emanating from the final chapter of this rotten saga, by attempting to show a Prime Minister – who once told a gathering in Tunbridge Wells that he had made it his business to stop funding being directed to poor urban areas and instead slosh towards affluent places like Tunbridge Wells – who is in touch with ordinary people? That will surely win votes. And, who better to stand alongside than the most community-minded of all people, egregiously maligned, in order to declare yourself their knight in shining armour?