Only one man has spoken for the nation in this joyless election campaign

It’s set to become 2024’s version of Brenda from Bristol’s infamous “Not another one !”

Robert Blackstock spoke for the nation when, at last night’s BBC’s leader’s debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, he asked: “Are you two really the best that we’ve got?”

Perhaps he was thinking of generations past when cabinets were crammed with political giants rather than ambitious third sector employees and hedge fund managers.

You could almost hear the entire country nodding their heads in doleful agreement. If the polls are correct, we’re heading for a Labour super-majority next Thursday, and yet public enthusiasm for either of the main parties is virtually non-existent. There has always been a healthy cynicism about politics and politicians in the British psyche, but it’s hard to remember such an intense feeling of “A plague on both your houses” as we have seen in the current contest.

And most of the responsibility must be placed on the two men who took centre stage in last night’s debate in Nottingham.

True, global circumstances necessarily curtail both Labour’s and the Conservatives’ room for manœuvre; with the after-effects of the Covid pandemic still haunting the Treasury, and Putin performing his Adolf Hitler tribute act in Ukraine, the prospects of a peaceful, prosperous future have rarely looked bleaker. But neither Starmer nor Sunak can escape their responsibility for the depressingly poor level of debate and engagement that this year’s election has engendered.

Rishi Sunak is the accidental prime minister, rejected by his own grassroots in favour of Liz Truss (think about that for a moment), before being foisted on the country by Tory MPs fearful of allowing party members another chance to choose a prime minister. The fact that he was even in a position to become a candidate for No 10 after Boris Johnson’s premiership exploded is down to sheer luck: Sunak just happened to be chief secretary to the Treasury – the most junior post in the Cabinet – when Johnson sacked his chancellor, Sajid Javid, and needed a replacement double quick. Then Covid happened and Sunak was able to take credit (if that’s the word) for both the furlough scheme and the “Eat out to help out” scheme.

Starmer’s own rise to the top has been just as unlikely. Elected to the Commons in 2015 (at the same time as Sunak), he was immediately talked of as a possible candidate for leader, largely thanks to his national reputation as Director of Public Prosecutions. Note that he was not known for his oratorial or even his political skills: they were an unknown quantity at the time when he was being urged, just weeks after the 2015 election, to throw his hat in the ring against Jeremy Corbyn.

His tenure as shadow Brexit secretary placed him in the cross-hairs of critics who lamented Labour’s appalling self-inflicted and self-contradictory agonies over leaving the EU. But a clever, if dishonest pitch to the 2018 Labour conference, promising that the next Labour government would give voters a chance to overturn the result of the 2016 EU referendum, all but guaranteed his position as heir apparent when Labour lost the next election.

That Starmer subsequently succeeded in routing the hard-Left and forcing the party back onto the centre ground justified the faith of those who promoted his leadership in the first place, but that was more a happy accident than thoughtful political strategy.

While Sunak has struggled to perform an impression of a statesman at this election – his early departure from the D-Day commemoration for no good reason put paid to any aspiration to be Churchill’s heir – Starmer has failed to generate even a modicum of interest, let alone excitement, among those not already fully signed up to the Labour project.

Where Tony Blair attracted attention, and opposition, for his various political stances, such as his embrace of working class aspiration – something that Starmer hasn’t dared even mention so far – the Labour leader has spent the last five weeks looking like someone who wants to be left alone and ignored, as if waiting for the polls to close so that he can jump up from behind the door of No 10 shouting “Surprise !”

Perhaps the electorate gets the leaders they deserve. We are a nation of unapologetic opportunists, demanding that politicians solve all our problems while spending none of our money (or at least only spending other people’s money) to do so. We claim to respect those few courageous politicians who tell us the truth; we just don’t vote for such incautious fools.

So the answer to Mr Blackstock’s question is yes; yes, this is the best that we’ve got. For now, at least. No one knows how this particular gentleman will vote, or if he votes at all. But we can be reasonably sure that if Labour breaks all political records with its majority next week, it will do so with one of the lowest turnouts on record. Another record.