Writing comment columns isn’t as easy as it looks. The mechanics aren’t too tricky but, as the election made abundantly clear, having an opinion doesn’t mean you know what you are talking about.

And I note that many of the small band of commentators who went against national media-received opinion and called the election right (think Dan Hodges, Phil Collins and Danny Finkelstein) have one thing in common – they have directly relevant personal experience, having lived and breathed political campaigns. Knowledge trumped intuition.

I have always tried to write by this rule; only commenting assertively on subjects in which I have direct personal experience. I’ve worked in government departments, I’ve worked for a political party (including doing election campaigns), and I’ve created, developed and costed policies which have come to fruition.

So there a number of things I can talk about with authority. What I haven’t done is work in local government, so I have striven to never tell council leaders and chief executives what they should do.