With just under a week until polling day, it’s surely too late for Rishi Sunak to save the Conservatives from complete humiliation.
After calling the general election at a point when his party’s popularity was on the slide, the prime minister has campaigned with an ineptitude that makes Theresa May look like Bill Clinton.
Add to Sunak’s incompetence, the behaviour of some of his colleagues – the betting scandal really is one for the ages, isn’t it? – and it’s little wonder the Tories will need a miracle to avoid defeat next week.
Sir Keir Starmer is days away from becoming prime minister, with – if polls are even in the neighbourhood of accuracy – a sizeable majority of Labour MPs behind him.
Inevitably, since they are they only two viable candidates to become PM, Sunak and Starmer are the political leaders who have received the closest scrutiny.
Neither the prime minister nor the leader of the opposition is what you might call a natural performer. (We’ve not forgotten Boris Johnson yet, so we know where picking a performer can end up). This, I think, has allowed us to see something of the real men.
Starmer is slightly awkward but serious enough for the times, while Sunak is slightly awkward but so utterly useless and unsuited to the position he clings to that he didn’t realise he should’ve hung around until the end of the D-Day commemorations in Normandy.
But other political leaders are available, of course. They might not be in the running, but they’ve been in the thick of the debate.
Nigel Farage, returned as leader of Reform UK (the rebranded Brexit Party, with rotten luck when it comes to accidentally selecting bigots and cranks as candidates) looks less of a threat to the Tories than he did before his suggestion that expansion of the EU and Nato was behind Russia’s murderous invasion of Ukraine.
The stout Home Counties Eurosceptic who ain’t having Brussels dictate what we can’t put in our sausages and agrees with Farage on cutting immigration may struggle with him explaining Vladimir Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine in the terms he did.
First Minister John Swinney – dragged back from the brink of retirement, like an ageing wise-guy just about to board that Greyhound bus to Florida, to replace Humza Yousaf as SNP leader two months ago – has had a woeful campaign.
The timing of the election could hardly have been worse for Swinney. On succeeding Yousaf as first minister, he made much of his intention to govern for all, regardless of their position on the constitution. There was something in this. Swinney – still capable of occasional flashes of pragmatism – recognised that endless talk of another referendum was starting to turn off the voters he needed to win over.
With a second referendum off the table and a police investigation centred on the use of donations to the SNP ongoing, it would have suited Swinney perfectly well to have tried to get through a few months at least playing the great statesman, and hope he could get the support of opponents to push at least some of his legislative agenda through.
Instead, John Swinney – spooked by the way in which support for the SNP has haemorrhaged since Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation last year – has been forced into maximum Nat mode, promising to his supporters negotiations on independence with the UK Government that he cannot provide.
I wish Swinney luck, after this messy campaign, rebuilding bridges with his opponents at Holyrood.
Most impressive leader won’t be PM
Which brings me to Sir Ed Davey of the Liberal Democrats – the leader who has most impressed me over recent weeks.
Of course, Davey has done all of the stunts his party’s low budget makes necessary if he’s to grab attention. (Though, whether we should judge if someone has a flair for government by how well they can pratfall off a windsurfer, I’m not so sure.)
But his real triumph is a party election broadcast in which he talks about his family – about caring for his disabled son, about the loss of his father while he was just a child and the impact that had on his mother, in a profoundly moving way.
Davey’s story of lower-middle-class stoicism will chime with many Scots. Those who admired the politics of the late Charlie Kennedy MP will have heard much of which to approve from the current Lib Dem leader.
Ed Davey may not be on course to become prime minister, but he has helped maintain my faith that politicians – many of them, anyway – are in it for the right reasons.
Euan McColm is a regular columnist for various Scottish newspapers
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