All Prime Ministers have a grand vision for the nation, though they seldom express it clearly. We must intuit their megalomanic mission from the fever-dream of the policies they inflict upon us.

Margaret Thatcher longed to recreate the 1950s, when thrifty Brits were a quiet and obedient lot, and she could balance the books like her grocer dad doing the weekly accounts at the kitchen table as he listened to the Home Service. Everyone knew their place, because Margaret put them there.

John Major harked back even further, to some imagined Edwardian idyll. When he slept, Major dreamed of rolling English downs, cricket and warm beer. A century separated him from the reality of the British people.

Tony Blair was the ultimate boomer. He had no vision for Britain, because all that mattered to Blair was Blair. The phoney glister of "cool" was paramount. Only polls and appearance had value. The great meritocrat would ditch any principle so long as the spin worked for him. Indeed, Blair began the emptying out of Britain when it came to political vision.

Gordon Brown clung on to ideology, though it was strongly flavoured with Calvinist utilitarianism. His vision was grey, serious, dour, and therefore short-lived. He was the enlightened Scottish mill-owner who would do right by his staff. But the staff weren’t interested in listening.

David Cameron perfected Blair’s PR nothingness. Theresa May tried desperately to be head girl of Mallory Towers. Boris Johnson wanted to be king, Liz Truss wanted to turn us into MAGA island, and Rishi Sunak just wanted to go home and spend his money.

But what of Keir Starmer? He was deliberately vague during the election,........

© Herald Scotland