Whither leadership?

Our political class needs to get a day job; decide what constitutes hate crime; and follow the lead of budget airlines

Its origins date back to the Bible and it has been used by nearly every sports commentator worth their sheepskin coat, clipboard and headphones, so in politics has there ever been a more appropriate time to recall that famous expression, “Cometh the hour, cometh the man”? For the hour has well and truly “cometh”, but the right person has not.

The Brexit negotiations, which have sucked the life out of this administration, have floundered as badly as a salmon that’s jumped the wrong way downriver and landed smack on the bank. Every a deal has seemed at hand, or a peaceful accord appeared to be reached, the response has been precisely what you get when you take your new love for a weekend in the South of France; are met with a menu written entirely in French; you nervously ask the imperious waiter if he speaks English, and he replies “Non!”, even though he’s bilingual and lives with a girl called Louise from Hastings.

To reference cricket, if ever there was a time for a batsman to stride to the crease, stare down the bowling, soak up some deliveries that thud into their body, wear out the fielders, control the strike, steady the innings and chalk up a damned good knock, it’s now. But not only is no one on the team, no one’s in the pavilion!

The paucity of talent among our current political classes is marked. Admittedly you’d need the rosiest of tinted spectacles to look back through the last century of British Prime Ministers and declare each one a success. For every Churchill there was an Eden; for every Atlee a Callaghan, but it’s undeniable that they were more often than not surrounded by extremely bright, well-rounded colleagues with vision and verve.

For many readers, the last PM who was a leader in the true sense of the word was Margaret Thatcher. Notice I didn’t say “best”, rather “leader”, for she knew what she wanted and where she was going. I once interviewed someone who worked extremely closely with the Baroness towards the end of her reign and after her unceremonious defenestration, and they shared a fascinating insight. “Margaret regularly bemoaned the state of modern politics,” they said. “She told me, ‘In my day, when something unfortunate happened, we would ask, ‘What will we do?’ Now, it’s ‘What will we say?’” She was on to something.

With a few notable and often close-to bonkers exceptions, our politicians today are lightweights. Few have worked outside politics and most started as bag carriers or members of the entourage of more senior politicians. Their only experience of the real world comes during a general election, when they find themselves being chased down the garden path after stuffing leaflets through angry constituent’s doors. Then there’s the forensic focus of 24-hour media. Rightly or not, if you put your head above the parapet for a job in public life, you’re now fair game. Whether you paid a fine for the late return of a library book, or once wore a Stetson to a college party, get ready to be treated as the love-child of Josef Goebbels and Myra Hindley.

But if you’re the person who is reading this and can fix it all, here’s a plea: Please strap on your pads. Your country needs you.

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Can someone help me define hate crime? It appears we can build a giant effigy of Boris Johnson, burn it to the ground with everyone roaring their approval, and nobody turns a hair. Another politician, Lib Dem’s Sir Vince Cable, says of Brexiteers: “Too many were driven by nostalgia, of a time when passports were blue, faces were white and the map was coloured imperial pink,” and it is suggested that this is hate speech and therefore a hate crime. Sir Vince really is one of the last people on the planet of whom you could make such an accusation.

Meanwhile, Northamptonshire police are obliged to study an episode of Basil Brush that features a gipsy fortune-teller. “Community leaders” claimed it was “offensive” to the Traveller community. No it’s not. It’s a children’s show about a fox puppet with a funny voice. This puts into some perspective the report that there were 94,000 “hate crimes” last year. The only thing to hate here, is the absurd waste of valuable police time.

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Words I never thought I’d write: Well done, Ryanair! It’s hard to applaud a carrier that treats its passengers with the same courtesy as a pack of dingos, but its decision to limit the size of carry-on bags is spot-on. I often use budget airlines for European flights and am amazed that people feel entitled to bring a bag that is often half their bodyweight, and then shove everyone’s else bag around so they can squeeze theirs in. Oh, to be cabin crew for a day!