People know that the politicians they are now being presented with, most especially by Labour and the Tories, are, by and large, useless, without an iota of talent for the tasks they take on in the absence of anyone with a scrap of ability to do them. So why is that? Why do we have such poor-quality politicians now?
My thesis is simple: these parties, dedicated as they are to hopeless ideologies that are so obviously contradictory to the best interests of people in this country, have no hope of recruiting anyone of talent to promote them, let alone implement them in practice.
For example, Brexit drained the Tories of talent. It is almost impossible now to believe that any intelligent, thoughtful person could still claim that leaving the EU was a good idea. To do so requires an act of denial so complete that it should automatically disqualify anyone from serious public office.
But the problem of political decay goes far beyond the Conservatives. Labour, too, is suffering a similar collapse. They, too, suffer the Brexit problem because they will not distance themselves from it, but in their case, the problem arises from attachment to other ideas that are equally indefensible. The difference is that where the Tories have clung to a fantasy about sovereignty, Labour has betrayed the values it once held.
If the Conservatives' problem is delusion, Labour's is denial.
The Conservative delusion
The Tory Party has built its post-Brexit identity on the basis of the falsehood that Britain can “take back control” and prosper by isolating itself. What it took back instead was responsibility for its own decline.
Brexit revealed what had been true for years: that the party's purpose had shrunk from stewardship of the nation to protection of property and privilege. There are no longer any bright young people who can believe that Britain's problems will be solved by tax cuts, deregulation, or trade deals written in desperation. The marketisation of everything has failed. Those who stay in the Conservative Party now do so because they cannot imagine another world — and that is the surest sign of mediocrity.
The Labour denial
Labour's failure is different. It has not been deluded so much as ashamed because it is in denial of all that it once knew to be true.
To believe in public purpose, collective provision, and a caring state was once to be Labour. Yet its current leadership has decided that the route to power lies in pretending those convictions were youthful mistakes. So it clings to the language of fiscal rules, sound money, and market discipline as if moral authority flows from deference to the Treasury.
But intelligent people know this makes no sense. They know that governments spend before they tax. They know that austerity shrinks economies, that privatisation fails, and that the planet cannot bear another century of growth-at-any-cost. To demand that party members deny such realities is to drain Labour of precisely the people it needs most, which are those who think, question, and care.
Repelling talent
The result is that both major parties now repel talent. The Tories exclude intelligence by insisting on belief in the impossible. Labour excludes integrity by requiring disbelief in the obvious.
One asks for loyalty to fantasy; the other demands silence about truth. Neither can nurture the kind of people who might renew public life. Both reward obedience over curiosity, conformity over courage.
In both cases, and right across Westminster, certain dogmas still define the limits of what might be called serious politics, as these parties define it:
- That government must balance its books like a household.
- That markets are efficient and state intervention is wasteful.
- That growth is always good, however destructive.
- That private ownership is superior to public provision.
- That fiscal rules are a measure of virtue.
These ideas repel bright people for the same reason that Brexit repels them: they require disbelief in reality. They deny what any honest observer can see, which is that our infrastructure is broken, our economy unbalanced, and our planet is on the edge of collapse.
Managing on autopilot
In the absence of real conviction, both parties now run on managerial autopilot. Labour's rhetoric about “growth” and “stability” sounds different from Tory talk of “discipline” and “responsibility,” but the substance is the same and is that the government must act as a caretaker, and not as a creator, and for bright people, there is no reward in that.
There is no vision for what an economy is for, only a determination not to frighten the markets. And the people who might offer such a vision, wherever they might be found, are treated as heretics.
The result is a slow but visible exodus. The most capable, imaginative and compassionate people no longer see politics as a home. They are building movements outside the parties because that is where ideas still matter and reality still counts.
They have not abandoned politics. Politics has abandoned them.
What next?
In that case, if talent is to return, then belief must return first. What is required is a belief in truth, care, and possibility. Politics will only renew itself when it once again admits that government creates the conditions for prosperity, that markets need boundaries, that people matter more than balance sheets, and that the purpose of the economy is to sustain life, and not exploit it.
Until then, the Tories will keep their fantasists and Labour will keep its deniers, and Britain will remain a country led by people who no longer believe in anything that is true.
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I will be 70 next year and shake my head when people tell me that ‘caring’ politics is ‘student politics’.
Even the Tories, pre-Thatcher, recognised that they had a duty of care to the people of this country.
That has now also gone from the Labour front bench, although it still exists on the Labour back benches, where good people like Clive Lewis, Nadia Whittome and others are to be found.
The Green Party care, too – I’m not sure about the Lib Dems, and Reform definitely don’t!
One way of looking at the political talent decline is to see that we live in the age of “cuckoo government” where the rich have pursued the tactic of “brood parasitism” sponsoring politicians to preference their interests against those of the many. Many voters through lack of an education in critical thinking are fooled into accepting “cuckoo politicians” just like other birds foster the off-spring of cuckoos. In nature such tactics allow cuckoos to not only breed more cuckoos but importantly spend more time seeking food to stay alive. A classic negentropic tactic if you like! Which begs the following questions and statement. Are the rich more scared of dying? Was childhood neglect a factor in this? Is Neoliberalism a form of cuckolding? Are you being cuckolded by politicians? Shame on you for allowing this to happen it makes your life more stressful and reduces your survival capacity!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brood_parasitism
“The most capable, imaginative and compassionate people no longer see politics as a home. They are building movements outside the parties because that is where ideas still matter and reality still counts.”
The thrust of this article is true but there are plenty of good, thoughtful people in the Green Party (GPEW) whose membership may now number 100,000. There may be others in Plaid and other parties too. I suggest that ideas still matter and reality still counts in these parties too.
The task in the Green Party is to rid it of its naive policies and fashion a coherent program of exclusively practical progressive policies.
Just how progressive the Green party may be – the extent to which it has rejected neoliberalism – is as yet an open question. But the big majority of voters who elected Zack Paolanski as leader suggests that there may be a majority of activists who are in favour of the progressive alternative to neoliberalism and are capable of articulating it in authentic engagement with the electorate.
That authentic engagement with the electorate is absolutely necessary if the progressive alternative to neoliberalism is ever to form the basis of a UK government, or perhaps of separate and independent governments in the British Isles. Progressive political parties do exist, and their active members are essential to their vitality and eventual electoral success.
Noted
This is why you/we must keep the profile of ‘politics of caring’ as high as possible – that is the only answer to these issues, especially in that politics is now essentially just another thing the rich own outright.
If the pitch forks do come, we have enough evidence to justify taxing the rich as a mode of social, political and democratic hygiene.
We have to take their money off them because already having given them through Neo-liberalism the benefit of the doubt, essentially capital has betrayed that trust and turned its back on us and shrugged.
And thus are drawn the battle lines for the future.
Completely agree with your assessment. Conscientious people are also often reluctant leaders who would seldom confidently claim something is so black and white (except things that are plainly true, such as spending before taxing ). I left the Labour party when they abandoned their 20 billion pledge to help Britain transition. As an ND person (neurodivergent) I love rules, but oddly stupid rules like Rachel’s fiscal rules deeply offend me!
Much to agree with
Is it because they professionalised politics 30 years and every politician has done the same PPE degree so none of them have the political imaginary to think anything new?
I wonder if an additional factor is an aging society and many MPs being younger – coming in from university as SPADs or the like then gaining a seat maybe in their 30s? As their political life is not then likely to be their “rest of working life” life (ie no longer career, politics, retirement), they look to their future post politics working life and aspire to achieve the riches politics doesn’t (apparently) pay them. This means they cannot do anything that might cause the wealthy and powerful to lose anything because those they offend will directly or indirectly prevent them having the post politics life they wish for. And this definitely crosses all parties I believe.
Both factions of the Single Transferable Party are guilty of creating groupthink in their upper echelons in recent years. For the blue faction, the death clown purged anyone deemed insufficiently loyal to Brexit and to him personally. Meanwhile, the red faction parachuted favoured candidates into constituencies, overriding CLPs, and eased out as many dissenting thinkers as possible. As a result, neither faction can see past the very narrow tracks they’ve built for themselves.
In my view, the Green Party need to address this specific point and develop a team with expertise who could lead a government.
Invest time, money and training into building a finance team, a “Home Office” team, a “Foreign affairs” team etc, from people who also are working intensively in a constituency to get elected in 2029.
Use the current Green MPs to take the messages into Parliament.
Get as good as Reform at getting their people onto BBC, ITV, Sky and learn from GB News about how to amplify Zack Polanski’s Bold Politics podcast into other channels.
There is time to put together a team of competent, inspired people who could totally change how the UK is governed.
Exactly – career politicians, for many of whom the parties are interchangeable.
There’s a story I heard about Tony Blair (its supposed to be in one of the biographies, but life’s too short to ever want to read them …) that at university Blair told an aquaintence that he was thinking of a career in politics.
“Which party ? ” he was asked.
“I haven’t decided yet,” said Blair.
If its not true, it ought to be. Because for me it sums up the mindset of many career politicians. Which party provides the quickest route to power ?
If the Greens were to become a viable alternative, they’d find themselves swamped by similar individuals too.
Hi Richard, I haven’t commented for a while as I haven’t had anything productive to say, but as the name suggests, I have still kept my eyes on your blog daily.
Another fantastic post and right on the money as usual. Aurelien’s latest post ‘The Cult of Can’t’ is very similar in theme to this post (worth a read if you haven’t), and discusses your point that it is a major western political problem – which makes sense considering the western politicians all follow managerialism/neoliberalism/denialism (aka as centralism currently – excluding ‘Merica who have gone fascist).
Aurelien believes we eventually will get the politicians we need, out of practically no other choice after probably catastrophic failure from the current crop of politicians/policies – I think the worry is though, how bad will this be? We will manage to survive the decline?
Personally, I think people have to make a serious choice in the west soon and either choose politics of hope (I.e., true left wingism – e.g., greens or your party in the UK) or the choice of hate and further decline (e.g., far rightism – e.g., Reform in the UK). I think centralism is dead, or at least the mainstream neoliberal parties. Although, Reform are just turning into the new Tories (the STP seems to continue) – maybe this is worth the (true) left highlighting aggressively?
Personally, I will likely go for Greens – they seem the most promising. I don’t agree with all of their policies but, they at least seem to believe in MMT and taxing the super wealthy (assets) as well genuinely caring about reducing inequality.
Who knows, maybe you could be their chancellor Richard ;-)?
Cheers
I am not looking for any political role. I would advise though.
I would suggest that an additional factor is the passing on of the wartime generation. The post-war creation of the Welfare State, the UN, the EU, and NATO, and of course the Council of Europe, aimed at creating a better country and preventing any repetition of the horrors that had just been seen across Europe. Many of our politicians had served, or experienced the effects at home. This made the bringing about of good, social governance and international cooperation a clear and present need in the post-war period.
The ‘folk memory’ has gone, and all of these institutions are under attack because of that.
And now we have climate change to add to the mix.
YUK!
All true Richard. But it isn’t just false ideological gods – its who is paying for them to be like this.
It now seems possible for vested interests like U.S. private healthcare, fossil fuel, big pharma, Israel lobbyists , to buy up leading politicians and even a whole party as in the book Fraud by Paul Holden who tracks the probably illegal hundreds of thousands used to capture the Labour Party by McSweeney and Starmer.
We need a Commission on the Constitution to outlaw all the dirty money in politics, 2nd jobs, bribery for honours and insider contracts, and to set down minimum democratic procedures for political parties. We need a fair voting system.
But as in ‘Parliament Ltd’ by Martin Williams, there seems no appetite for a clean up in either of the main parties. There are too many snouts in the trough.
It requires popular resistance – but the powers that be with their media monopoly wont allow it. It will need a crisis – but ……..
It’s not just UK politics – this problem afflicts almost every ‘western’ democracy. The real problem does not lie is the specific histories of UK Labour and Tories, but in the political centre itself. Centrism is the ideology of the status quo; its credo is ‘things are not too bad, radical change is risky, best avoid it’. This is sometimes ok, if things really aren’t too bad, but faced with the current ‘polycrisis’, the failure of the status-quo, there are no answers in the political centre. People can see this – and significant groups of voters are moving to political extremes – both left and right. In the US the Republicans have moved to the extreme right, and if they don’t move left the Democrats will become increasingly irrelevant. In France, the old centre-left-and-right duopoly has already shrunk to a fraction of the size of more extreme left and right parties. This is the immediate future for democracies.
I’m optimistic that this crisis will lead to a new left/green consensus, and the necessary changes to our lifestyles and economies – but at the same time I’m pessimistic that the UK and other countries will first have to go through the purgatory we see in the US.
Fascist Starmer shows political talent by putting the boot in on sustainability professor! Who’s more Mini-Trump Farage or Starmer? Your guess is as good as mine!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/oct/14/sustainability-professors-talk-at-uk-party-conferences-cancelled
Bizarre.
So much for free speech.