It's amazing how often our political future hinges on a binary choice.
And it's worrying how often that choice is between two poor options.
2022: Prime Minister - Sunak v Truss
Here's a poor choice of options and no mistake. An extremely wealthy free-marketeer who was fined for Partygate versus a stilted Thatcherite with craven ambition. And yet come September one of them will be our Prime Minister, possibly ineptly, probably for two years before the wider population gets to have its say. It's undoubtedly a good thing that the process of picking a new Conservative Party leader starts with a broad range of candidates and whittles away the chaff but it still ends up presenting a suboptimal shortlist of two to the membership and saying 'Pick one'. Best hope they pick the least worst option on behalf of the nation, but what a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
2019: General Election - Corbyn v Johnson
Here's a poor choice of options and no mistake. A blinkered socialist with unresolved antisemitic issues versus an untrustworthy egotist with no sense of personal responsibility. And yet the nation was expected to vote one of them into 10 Downing Street, there being no practical alternative, despite this being one of the most flawed electoral shortlists of all time. And although most of us gravitated towards one of the pair because when repulsed by one option you pick the other, the gulf between the two sides was the widest it's been in a generation, and what a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
2019: Prime Minister - Hunt v Johnson
Here's a poor choice of options and no mistake. A grinning fool responsible for dismantling the National Health Service versus a mendacious clown who'd say and do anything for personal gain. And yet this was the shortlist the Conservative membership faced when trying to pick a new Prime Minister, and obviously they picked the charismatic one who'd keep the party in power because he's a laugh isn't he and what harm could he do. History suggests that maybe we'd have been better off with the dull one during the trials and tribulations that followed, but what a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
2017: General Election - Corbyn v May
Here's a poor choice of options and no mistake. A diehard revolutionary with dubious foreign supporters versus a robotic ice maiden with no workable plan for Brexit. And yet the nation was expected to vote one of them into 10 Downing Street, there being no practical alternative, despite neither having any hope of uniting the country at a uniquely fractious time. It turned out to be the contest nobody needed and neutered Theresa's government whilst simultaneously making Jeremy overconfident about his electability and ultimately led directly to Boris, and what a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
2016: US Election - Clinton v Trump
Here's a poor choice of options and no mistake. A policy geek hamstrung by her disgraced husband versus the most corrupt narcissist ever to stand for the Presidency. And yet America was expected to vote one of them into the White House, the only alternatives being micro-candidates who shaved just enough off the national vote to let Trump win, and the resultant moral cataclysm is essentially the fault of an enforced choice between a woman Middle America wasn't ready for and the snakeoil charms of a former TV star. Donald should never have got near any shortlist, let alone the Oval Office, and what a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
2016: Prime Minister - Leadsom v May
Here's a poor choice of options and no mistake. A gaffe prone former financier with all the charisma of a cushion versus a stern disciplinarian with all the charisma of an iceberg. And yet this was the shortlist the Conservative Party membership faced when trying to pick a new Prime Minister, mainly because neither of them were Gove or Johnson, indeed nobody would have plumped for this pair of leadership candidates otherwise. But in this case it turned out one of the candidates had such ghastly unfiltered views that she was forced to withdraw from the contest and the final vote never happened, because it really had been a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
2016: Brexit - Leave v Remain
Here's a poor choice of options and no mistake. A vote for the status quo and all its inadequacies or a vote for 'change' and 'better times ahead' without anyone ever specifying quite what leaving the European Union might mean. And yet the nation was expected to vote one way or the other in the referendum, the only alternative being spoiling your paper, in full knowledge that whichever way the result fell it'd divide the nation for a generation. In retrospect it might have been better never to have opened up the question to the public in the first place but instead we forced a choice between two damagingly polarised alternatives, and what a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
2015: General Election - Cameron v Miliband
This probably looked like a bad choice at the time, but viewed with hindsight it now looks almost reasonable. A centre right politician versus a centre left politician, or at least far closer in views than any choice the nation's been offered since, the two Britains they offered were very different and yet still reassuringly mainstream compared to where we've ended up. Brexit has flushed the Conservative Party of most of its One Nation wing, and Jeremy's rehung the socialist label around the Labour Party's neck, and things were so much easier when argumentative politics wasn't at the top of the news night after night after night.
2010: General Election - Brown v Cameron v Clegg
And then there was that time when Britain suddenly had three viable choices. We're not used to that, and we certainly weren't used to entering hung parliament territory and stumbling into coalitions either. In the end it meant a moderated Conservative-led government but with Liberal Democrat principles compromised, and median voters never forgave them and they've been essentially dead in the water ever since. The breakdown of the centre has served only to widen the gap between the remaining options, in some sort of race for the bottom between 'woke' and 'fascism', and what a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
probably 2024: General Election - probably Starmer v either Sunak or Truss
This may be a poor choice of options or it may be absolutely obvious which way to jump, given the success or otherwise of our next Prime Minister. But once again it's hard to look at this list and see the optimal choice of national leader, just politicians who've managed to machinate their way into the top job because the alternatives were too repugnant, and that's why all too often we end up with a rotten choice of two to be stuck with.
