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AI could have written that board paper, but it could not have noticed the silence after the presentation because that gap, between producing an intelligent-looking answer and knowing what actually matters, is where narrative authority lives. It is the ability to turn what you have seen, survived and learned into judgement that other people can understand, trust and act on. As AI makes polish easy, it may be one of the most valuable things a leader has.

AI can describe redundancy, but it has never carried the responsibility for a decision that changed somebody's livelihood. It can explain discrimination without having experienced the subtle shift in a room when a difficult subject is raised. It can summarise entrepreneurship without having faced the uncertainty of making payroll, just as it can construct a leadership case study without carrying the organisational memory of what happened after the decision was made.

Before we critique Badenoch’s performance, it’s worth setting out what effective PR actually is. Good PR is not simply about getting your name in the press. Anyone can do that, usually by saying something provocative or headline-grabbing. But effective PR goes deeper.