America’s leaders shame their nation. Britain’s have failed to prove why they should lead

This week’s Trump vs Biden debate showed us two men with 159 years of human experience between them, but no wisdom or grace. One was brutal, the other decrepit. Both were dishonest. The brute gives new meaning to the phrase “having the courage of his convictions” (34 counts of fraud under campaign finance laws). He easily beat the dotard but, between them, the two shamed America.

The Americans’ terrible double act made me think a bit better of our most recent equivalent – Wednesday’s BBC Sunak vs Starmer show from Nottingham. It was not a glittering occasion, but at least the participants behaved in a professional way.

Here were able and reasonable politicians each trying to make his party’s case. As one questioner bluntly pointed out, neither is an inspiring leader. Both, however, are respectable.

In these trying times, that may be something to cling to. It is increasingly clear that Nigel Farage is not respectable. I have on my screen a recent email from him inviting me to “Be a part of history with me” at the NEC in Birmingham on Sunday, where he will hold “the largest rally of my political career”. It shows a photograph of the great leader, right-arm raised to an admiring throng.

This is back to front. What sort of political leader tries to rope in voters as extras for the biopic of his imagined walk with destiny? Why should we be part of the rabble Mr Farage wishes to rouse?

Earlier this week, I was waiting to meet someone at the barrier of a London Tube station. A ticket collector recognised me as your columnist. He wanted to discuss the election. He was usually a Conservative voter, he said, “This time, though, I was going for Nigel. But that was last week. Then he said that stuff supporting Putin. That’s it, as far as I’m concerned.”

I feel he is right. Mr Farage’s repeated defeatism in the face of Putin is sinister. Reform’s attempt to Trumpify our election should be resisted.

The problem for the many floating voters, however, is that a leader’s respectability, though highly desirable, is not sufficient. The floaters in this election are undecided because of the gap between the serious state of Britain and the world – in relation to war, money, culture, demography and the environment – on the one hand and the feebleness of the main parties’ proposed remedies on the other. It is genuinely hard to choose.

“Change” is the one-word slogan of the Labour Party. It captures what is so widely desired. But there is a reason why Labour confines itself to that word alone. It does not want to say, quite possibly does not know, what that change would be.

This column likes to advance the theory that, in British general elections, as opposed to by-elections, the overall result is always right.

That is to say, the winner deserved to win or, at the very least, the loser deserved to lose. Under this theory, the verdict is right both when the result is close – which reflects both sides’ failure to persuade – and when it is a large overall majority. The key landslide elections of modern history which brought about a dramatic change of government are 1945 (to Labour), 1979 (to Tory) and 1997 (to Labour). The election of 2019, though not a change of government, was also of front-rank importance because it was fought to “get Brexit done”.

In all these cases, the winner sought, deserved and received a mandate for stated aims. One can take this view regardless of one’s own politics. Each leader – Attlee, Thatcher, Blair, Johnson – had explained themselves well.

This time, polls suggest a massive Labour majority, but it is not at all clear what it would be a mandate for. In the debate in Nottingham, it was Sir Keir Starmer, the challenger, who behaved like the establishment candidate, disclosing little. It was Rishi Sunak, the sitting Prime Minister, who made himself the challenger.

Sir Keir invoked the wisdom he thinks he acquired as what he calls “chief prosecutor”. His title was Director of Public Prosecutions, but his chosen version of the job’s name well expresses his rather censorious character.

He had learnt, he said, how to deal with terrorists, people smugglers, “gangs” and – obscurely – “nine planes in the Atlantic ... with bombs”. He would take no lessons in tough crisis management from that whipper-snapper in No 10. Cheeky young Sunak (too young to have voted in any 20th-century general election) showed admirable persistence in the face of this pomposity. He wanted to know what Sir Keir would actually do about illegal immigrants.

To this, Sir Keir could give only, repeatedly, a classic lawyer’s answer: “They need to be processed.” On Labour’s tax rises, Sir Keir got so affronted that he shouted: “That’s a lie, and he’s been told not to repeat it, and he’s just done it.”

As this paper’s former editor, how well I recognised the tone of one of those overheated lawyers playing tough on behalf of a rich client we had annoyed in print.

Throughout Wednesday’s debate, Mr Sunak tended to dominate as the one seeking answers, raising points his opponent preferred to evade. In terms of the drama of the occasion and the pressure he put on his opponent, he won.

On the other hand, Mr Sunak could not overcome the basic objection that his lot have had 14 years to sort things out and have failed. He can hint that he himself is newer and doing everything differently and better than his Conservative predecessors. There is a degree of truth in this. But he cannot spell that out without causing party mayhem.

Worse, there are too many subjects, including illegal and legal immigration, which he just cannot boast about. Covid and the war in Ukraine are valid excuses for a lot of borrowing, spending and cost increases, but excuses do not win elections.

In the debate, Mr Sunak boldly drew a sharp distinction between Sir Keir’s devotion to “higher taxes and higher welfare” and his own devotion to the opposite, yet the evidence of most of his actions does not prove his point.

In these five weeks, Labour has added nothing of interest and the Tories have placed secret bets but not improved their own odds. Mr Farage has exploded upon the scene, more like a stink-bomb than a starburst. The Liberal Democrats, Greens and Galloways have all nibbled away at the main parties, without clear breakthroughs. What is the deserved result?

We are pretty much where we began, which is that the Conservatives deserve to lose but that Labour has nothing better to offer, except for fresh faces. It therefore does not deserve anything like the landslide the polls foreshadow.

As for the other parties, they deserve some benefit from the weakness of the main ones. But none remotely approaches the condition of government.

A detached view suggests the just result would be a Labour minority administration, which seems unlikely. This column’s law might not survive the fragmentation caused when votes split too many ways.

These are strange times, when the only moderate on the rise in the world seems to be a presidential candidate in Iran. “Wait a minute!”, someone may object, “Surely Sir Keir is a moderate?”

Possibly he is, but the truthful answer is that we just don’t know.