My formative years were spent at one of the universities where a lot of these incompetents went, and I am not surprised. If you want to know what is wrong with UK political culture, here's my take.

The student politics at Oxford were a playground for these people. I never came across anyone who said anything sincere when it came to politics:

- At JCR election time, you could see the political kids from a mile away. They'd approach me in the way politicians approach their voters: acting as if they knew you, despite never talking to you otherwise. You could just tell these guys were thinking "right, what would this nerd here want me to say?" and then some BS about how they'd help you out in particular.

- Backstabbing was part soap, part sport. There's even special Oxford vocab for "working for someone who turns on you". It was just disgusting to get told random rumours about one candidate or another.

- Sincerity is weeded out from the population. Some kids start off okay: they make realistic promises and are measured in assessing their chances of being able to press through changes. Before long, they are replaced by that guy who knows how to manipulate the crowd with rhetoric.

- Their belief in their own ability is inexplicably high. Particularly people who study PPE (Philosophy, Politics, and Economics) think their opinions matter more than everyone else's. In fact someone started a motion that only PPEists should be allowed on the council. Part of the problem here is they don't seem to understand what their education actually is. And so they make the comparison to doctors, who actually ARE specially qualified to practice medicine.

- Politics is treated like a game. You saw this with Brexit, Boris Johnson wrote a column supporting remain just before reversing. (https://news.sky.com/story/boris-johnsons-secret-remain-arti...) Is this because the facts changed? No, of course not. He thought it would be fun to challenge his old pal David Cameron. You saw it with the Gove knifing incident, that's something that happens all the time at uni. These guys treat politics like a board game, an entertainment in which you are supposed to shock people with your moves.

- Virtue signalling. Since you never know what thay're actually doing, there's a lot of posturing. They want you to think they are this or that archetype. When I was there there was a huge amount of talk about opposing the Iraq War. I opposed it too, but there's no reason a student organisation needs to have an opinion of the war. We don't all have to go on a college demo in London, people can figure out how to do that themselves.

- Skin in the wrong game. Once you're a senior politician, your life is far removed from ordinary people. Your incentives are to stay elected, rather than to do what's right.

Years later I actually went to visit an MP in Parliament. I had an issue to bring up about kids in deprived neighbourhoods. Anyway, the guy I knew had taken a different course in life. He'd actually worked in industry for a long time before going into politics. But he was a back bencher. The people who joined as kids have sewn up all the nice jobs in government. They know each other, and they keep things within the club.