The quality of political leadership in Britain is puerile, ever since the Conservative Party voted David Cameron as its leader.

The Tories had been in the political wilderness during Tony Blair’s triple premiership.  They experimented with a few ineffectual leaders. William Hague was the first Tory leader who never became Prime Minister. Iain Duncan Smith “the quiet man” failed to make any breakthrough. Then Michael Howard experienced the same.

Eventually the Tory Party chose the fresh-faced David Cameron in a competition that resembled a beauty contest rather than a serious challenge, by-passing competent and educated Malcolm Rifkind.

Cameron showed how little he knew about world history when he said during his first visit to the United States: “We were the “junior partner” in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis”, whereas America had not even entered the war in 1940. This shows how ill-prepared he was for leadership. The same failure to understand world history led to his rapprochement along with George Osborne with the Chinese premier Xi Jinping. Three days before he was elected UK Prime Minister in May 2010 Cameron said that he had no plans to redefine marriage, but he changed his mind under the influence of his Lib Dem coalition partners. Marriage was redefined on his watch, which he now considers to be one of the greatest legacies of his administration.

He was succeeded by Theresa May who as Home Secretary made the solemn pledge to a Conservative Party Conference to “Watch my lips, I will say this only once”, that the immigration numbers would be brought down to the tens of thousands by the next Parliament. As Tory Prime Minister she announced a snap General Election and lost a 24-point lead in the Polls because she did not know how to campaign.

Opposite her was Jeremy Corbyn, sprung unexpectedly into the Labour leadership, supported by Momentum, a movement which gave him the largest political party in Europe. However, he could not convince the electorate that he had a programme for government, or that he was a safe pair of hands, and so he lost out in the next General Election to Boris Johnson, whose post-Brexit premiership was made possible by Nigel Farage’s skilful political sense, whom Johnson did not thank. This resulted in Labour losing 60 seats in its worst result since the 1935 General Election. The public appetite was swinging like a pendulum as it witnessed the puerile incompetence of political leadership.

Johnson was educated enough but he did not know how to run a political party far less the country.  He was hampered by the Covid pandemic, his own illness and the fierce anti-Brexit campaigning by poor losers among the Europhiles.

Tory in-fighting led to their going through a series of ineffectual Prime Ministers.   Liz Truss had ideas but no idea how to implement them. Rishi Sunak did not know what he was trying to do and he announced a snap General Election in the pouring rain outside 10 Downing Street, a parody of his washed-out Government. This time, Nigel Farage was not so accommodating to the Tories leading to another record collapse, not of Labour this time but of the Tories.

Amidst this chaotic political confusion, Labour benefitted. The public mood swung away from the Tories back to Labour – anything was better than the Tories. The old adage “be careful what you wish for” could not be more appropriate. Labour had ditched Jeremy Corbyn and elected Sir Keir Starmer as its leader, who now became Prime Minister. He had supported Jeremy Corbyn while Corbyn was leader, but then expelled him from the Labour Party for perceived antisemitism, a harbinger of his catastrophic leadership.

Keir Starmer proved so bad that he has become the most unpopular Prime Minister since records began. His international standing is disastrous and after many years to prepare in Opposition he became UK Prime minister with no idea how to govern, having broken many of his election pledges, appointed a Chancellor of the Exchequer who knows little about the economy and is trying to learn on the job. Starmer is in the process of selling-out Britain and today he is fighting for his political life for his inept appointment of Peter Mandelson as the British ambassador to the United States.

Public awareness of ineptitude

The public are now very aware of the UK’s ineffective political leadership. Starmer’s premiership has co-incided with the rapid rise in the Polls of Reform UK under Nigel Farage which has overtaken both the ‘governing’ Labour Party and the diminishing Tory Party.

The two-party dominance of British politics is now being seriously challenged for the first time in 100 years and political pundits speak openly of Nigel Farage as the next Prime Minister.

Governing political parties who had learned to deceive and manipulate a politically-illiterate public have been caught out by the reality of broken-Britain. The current generation of young people are discovering that they have been short-changed by their elders.  Many 20-year-olds are still living at home with their parents, with poorer prospects than their parents.  

The public is now aware that career politicians have failed the nation, as surely as the national churches have failed their nations.  These politicians have no idea how to run the economy nor to manage the unintended consequences of their policies.

Current politicians in positions of leadership are non-descript. We need quality in public life.  It is so bad that Rupert Lowe is looking for non-political candidates for his Restore Britain party, and when Nigel Farage announced Reform UK candidates at a recent Press Conference in Hull, his selling point was that “hardly any of these guys and girls have ever been involved in politics before“. This shows how broken British politics is.

What the country needs is not career politicians, nor non-political politicians, but Christian politicians. The country needs Christian Voices in the public square. There is a Christian Party. How about joining it or giving it your support?