𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Britain once produced titans that bestrode the world, the great names, Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher and Salisbury still echo through history. Leaders with iron conviction and perhaps the occasional glint of mischief.

Today we seem governed by a lanyard class of PowerPoint pushers, some more at home in a wetsuit than a three-piece suit. From mayors to ministers, our modern political class has turned the art of statesmanship into something closer to pantomime.

So in the spirit of public service (and mild catharsis), here are eight politicians who made Britain wince, groan and reach for the remote.

8 Ed Davey

The Liberal Democrat optimist-in-chief, and the patron saint of stunts, and a man who could take a tumble into the Thames and call it a swimming lesson. His campaign style comes with a hi-vis jacket, forced smiles and painful dad jokes, as though he’s auditioning to lead the next Blue Peter presentation team.

Davey once promised to rebuild his party after the coalition years. Some years on it’s hard to tell whether he’s rebuilding or just rebranding failure For someone who leads the party of protests, his bumbling style of stuntery is fast showing him to look alarmingly content with irrelevance.

7 Angela Rayner

Labour’s former deputy leader, perhaps now better known for her attempts to add Brighton to the monopoly board, describes herself as “authentic”, which usually means unfiltered and occasionally just plain rude. Her common appearances are half reality show, half stand-up routine, topped off with the odd heckle and kinder, gentler punchline about the opposite bench being “scum”.

She’s quick to outrage and slow with detail, with every speech feeling like a rally in search of a revolution. Rayner’s crowning achievement? Convincing Fleet Street she speaks for the working class, from the comfort of a chauffeur-driven car that once shuttled her between her two (or was it three?) homes.

6 Matt Hancock

The poor man’s Romeo, Hancock locked down a nation then broke his own rules for love, or at least an office romance. Matt’s pandemic performances were something of a shared test of national endurance: the pained earnestness, the 100% real tears on the breakfast TV sofa, and the rather awkward interactions with NHS heroes.

His appearance on I’m a Celeb, whilst entertaining for many, confirmed what many of us suspected. His addition was not the allure of power but the temptation of the television camera.

5 Ed Milliband

A man so awkward he once got outfoxed by a bacon sandwich, Milliband was supposed to be the fresh face of Labour after Brown. Instead he became a walking metaphor for indecision. His 2015 campaign saw him come down from the mountain with a marble Ed Stone of swiftly-broken pledges and the haunted look of a man who’d lost his car keys in the polling booth.

These days he bangs on about green energy with the zeal of a geography teacher on a field trip. Now he’s pummelling our heating bills and peddling the move to electric cars like a second hand dealer who’s swallowed a solar panel.

4 Sir Keir Starmer

Our current PM talks like law students textbook reads, precise, technical and devoid of life. Starmer confused authority with monotone, and his idea of passions seems to extend only to a stern glance at the autocue. In another age he’d have made a fantastic clerk, but as the leader of a nation he’s about as inspiring as a compliance seminar.

3 Nicola Sturgeon

For a decade she ruled Scotland like a headmistress with a wooden ruler looking for a hand to slap. Sturgeon seemed to have a knack for turning every press conference into a therapy session about the wickedness of Westminster.

Whenever she was on TV she must have done wonders for the ratings for whatever was on the other channels. Her legacy is one of a nationalism so joyless her own party got bored. The police enquiries didn’ t help, but regardless, Sturgeon showed you cannot build a nation on evidence alone.

2 Sadiq Khan

The Mayor of London seems to embody the mantra: ‘Not my problem guv’. Knife crime? Blame Westminster. Pollution? Expand ULEZ. Criticism? Must be “far-right trolls”. Khan has mastered the art of governing by slogan, lauding supposed achievements and attending glitzy events with the capital’s elite, whilst crime soars and the city becomes every more expensive.

His obsession with being the moral compass of the capital has turned London into his personal petri-dish of virtue signalling. Never has a man achieved so little while tweeting so much.

1 John Bercow

The little man with the big gavel, and an even bigger ego. As Speaker, he transformed the Commons from a chamber of democracy into his own one-man cabaret. His booming cry of “ORDER!” became less a call for decorum and more a desperate plea for attention.

He fancied himself a guardian of fairness, but we can only hope that history will remember him as a parody: pompous, partisan and permanently outraged. When he finally left Parliament, even the Mace seemed relieved. A small man with a long shadow, and the loudest voice ever to say absolutely nothing.

Our top brass these days seem ever more to be less villainous and more the players in a pantomime. They’re not all bad, too many are ready for the wings. Britain doesn’t completely lack talent, it just feels like it lacks adults in the room. Until then, I suppose the show goes on.