Why is William Hague not standing as Tory leader rather than mere chancellor of Oxford? He is hale and hearty at 63. Is David Cameron also over the hill at 57? Come to that, where was Tony Blair, then 66, when the Labour party chose Keir Starmer as leader? Yes they had all “failed” in some respect during their own tenure in government, but they know the ropes and have the wisdom of experience. We don’t sack a manager for losing a game. Are past leaders by definition useless, given today’s available talent?
The saying goes that every political career ends in failure. But this is a recent phenomenon. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were leaders under cruel circumstance, in the form of Covid and its aftermath. Neither succeeded, but both, one hopes, will be wiser as well as older after the experience – and that wisdom is of value to the nation. We did not evict William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson for losing an election. All of them went on to win their parties a return to power.
Most prime ministers after leaving office – like many holders of top jobs – speak of the same thing. It is: if only they could have their time again, they would do things differently. What they got wrong was almost always due to inexperience. Leaders should have no right to a second term, but denying them one denies the country the choice of experience over novelty.
As it is, Britain has recently been governed by four virtual apprentices: Johnson, Liz Truss, Sunak, Starmer. Each has been forced to learn on the job, to rule by trial and error. They have lacked wise advisers and become slaves to media pressure. It is hard to imagine a corporation run by a board whose members have so little experience of what they are supposedly producing. Just three members of today’s cabinet – and its leader is not among them – have held ministerial office before.
Britain’s democracy is parliamentary rather than presidential. This is a guard against a populist hijacking of Downing Street, as is possible in France and the US. But this drastically limits the choice offered to the electorate, restricting who can vote to decide on the leader to party members. It is grim to think that the four candidates on offer as next Tory leader are really the best British politics can supply.
We might not wish for a return to the days of Blair or Cameron, Gordon Brown or George Osborne, John Major or Hague. But that is to assume they will have learned nothing from their experience, and therefore have nothing to offer. It is noticeable that few have parked themselves in the purgatory of the House of Lords. It is as if they are awaiting some higher call.
So if they agree, and are happy to renounce their place in the Lords, why not put, say, Cameron and Hague on the leadership ballot? I might not vote for them myself, but it would offer a reasonable choice. I wonder what the polls would say.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
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• This article was amended on 2 October 2024 to make it clear that any member of the House of Lords would have to renounce their seat if they became leader of the party.
