The famous adage 'all political careers end in failure' isn't actually true. All politicians are, by definition, successful.
Each one has fought their way ruthlessly up the slippery slope to power. Party chairmen have been charmed. Activists flattered. Hundreds of babies kissed. Thousands of leaflets delivered.
Skulduggery. Sycophancy. Duplicity. Tenacity. All adroitly deployed in pursuit of the rather peculiar childhood fantasy that set them apart from their peers. Grasping a heavyish red box and hearing those enticing words, 'Morning, Minister'.
In the past 300 years, only 55 men and three women have been anointed Prime Minister. Fifty-eight chosen in a nation of 70 million. Theirs represents the ultimate triumph of will.
But let's be honest. Many of them have proven utterly useless.
On being elevated to the highest offices, they quickly demonstrated they weren't fit to run a whelk-stall. And, had they tried, it would quickly have gone bankrupt, been nationalised or ended up sanctioned by the new regulator they'd recently established, 'Ofwhelk'.
Here then, in no particular order, is my list of the Ten Worst Modern British Politicians.
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Ed Miliband
With David Cameron trapped by the self-imposed vice of austerity and mocked for his claim that 'we're all in this together', Labour's new leader was enjoying double-digit opinion poll leads and on course for power.
But then he lost a public tussle with a bacon sandwich, forgot to mention the deficit in his conference speech, taunted Vladimir Putin to come and have a go if he was hard enough and almost fell off the stage in the penultimate leader's debate.
Unable to shake 'the weirdness factor' Miliband gifted Cameron a shock majority and opened the door to Jeremy Corbyn.
Paradoxically, in office he has proven to be one of Keir Starmer's most energetic ministers, driving through his 'net-zero' agenda with myopic abandon.
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Theresa May
A classic example of the right politician in the right place at the wrong time. If she'd taken office in 1816, not 2016, her stiff, patrician statecraft would have been perfect for the age.
Handed the opportunity to challenge the Luddites, oversee the Great Coinage Act or prosecute the Third Anglo-Maratha War, she would have had no equal.
But, catapulted into office in an era of social media-driven populism, May imploded. Entering the 2017 election campaign with a predicted majority of 178, May shrunk under national scrutiny, and was reduced to stammering ‘Nothing has changed!!!’.
Her tortuous minority premiership saw her defenestrated by her rebellious Tory party, culminating in the ‘Conference from Hell’ at which she lost her voice and was accosted by a demonstrator as the stage slowly collapsed around her.
It was a relief to everyone - not least Mrs May herself - when after three agonising years she stood down to spend more time with her fields of wheat.
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Peter Mandelson
One of the most brilliant and feared political apparatchiks. And one of the most consistently hopeless front-rank politicians.
Having masterfully guided New Labour to power, he then appeared to undergo a political lobotomy. Appointed Trade Secretary, he was gone in six months after 'forgetting' to declare a £300,000 loan from a colleague.
A year later, Mandelson was rehabilitated and handed the vital role of Northern Ireland secretary. At which point it happened all over again.
Facing allegations he had improperly influenced a passport application for an Indian business mogul, he was forced to resign a second time. Even though an independent inquiry subsequently concluded he'd done nothing wrong.
'I'm not a quitter!' he famously roared after saving his seat in the 2001 election.
Then a couple of years later, he quit parliament for good, returning to the political shadows where he's currently flourishing as Keir Starmer's Washington 'Trump Whisperer'.
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Neil Parish
The most obscure politician on the list. And if he'd had the slightest bit of political nous, the former member for Tiverton would still be lounging in blissful obscurity. Re-elected in 2019 to the granite-safe Tory seat with an unassailable majority of 24,000, he had a job for life.
But the ex-farmer had other ideas. In April 2022, he was accused by female colleagues who had witnessed him watching pornography in the Commons chamber.
A more cynical - some might say accomplished - political operator would have denied the charge.
Not Neil Parish.
Looking for images of a combine-harvester called 'The Dominator', he had, he said 'reached another website with a very similar name', whereupon he 'watched for a bit'.
Parish resigned and, in the by-election that followed, the Lib Dems snatched the seat with the biggest swing in parliamentary history.
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Suella Braverman
For one brief, shining moment, she was hailed as the darling of the British Right. Brave. Uncompromising. 'The new Thatcher' according to some. And then she blew it.
Forced to resign as Home Secretary under Liz Truss for a security breach - an impressive feat given the blink-and-you'll-miss-it tenure of that benighted administration - Braverman returned to office after striking a Faustian pact with new leader Rishi Sunak.
Reappointed Home Secretary, she spent the next year looking for excuses to resign again - part of the most transparent and cack-handed coup attempt in British political history.
Sunak beat Braverman to the punch and sacked her, by which point she'd already been usurped by her own junior minister, Robert Jenrick, as the standard bearer of the Right.
In a desperate attempt to rehabilitate herself, Braverman penned an article two days before polling day, which began with the helpful observation that 'it's over and we need to prepare for the reality and frustration of opposition'.
She pulled out of the subsequent Conservative leadership election before the first ballot after conceding that her colleagues now viewed her as 'mad, bad and dangerous'. Which was actually something of an understatement.
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Nick Clegg
It may seem fantastical to those not there, but 'Cleggmania' was a real thing.
In a peculiar early portent of the populism destined to sweep western politics, the 2010 general election saw the voters turning away from the two established parties.
Boosted by the first ever televised leadership debates, 'I agree with Nick' became a national catchphrase. And with a fortnight to polling day, the Lib Dems actually led in the polls.
But then Clegg snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.
First, a lacklustre run-in to polling saw his party emerge from the election with three fewer seats than when he started.
Then, after being thrown the lifeline of a hung parliament, he took the decision that would consign himself and his party to political oblivion.
He had built his entire campaign around a pledge not to raise tuition fees. But with David Cameron at his mercy - and obliged to accept any policy demand as the price for constructing a new coalition government - Clegg inexplicably agreed to back a hike in those fees.
'I'm sorry,' he said as the 2015 election approached. And he truly was - as 49 of his party's 57 seats were then lost, officially making him the worst Liberal leader since Jeremy Thorpe was charged with attempted murder.
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Liz Truss
On one level Truss could also grace a list of Britain's most successful politicians. The longest serving cabinet minister, she leveraged her eye for a good photo-op and indefatigable work ethic into an unlikely ascent to Downing Street.
Even her 49 omnishambolic days in power can partly be attributed to the misfortune of inheriting a fracturing Tory party, a post-pandemic financial crisis and the passing of the nation's longest serving and most-beloved monarch.
But what truly cements her place on this list is her conduct since leaving office. What was required was a period of reflection and contrition. Instead, Truss has opted to blame the failure of her premiership on everyone but herself.
In a recent article she responded to criticism by Kemi Badenoch - herself not exactly setting the political world alight - by blaming Rishi Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, the Bank of England, George Osborne, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the Human Rights Act, Michael Gove, Dominic Cummings. And, of course, Tony Blair.
'The guns were trained on me,' she complained. One of which was in her own hand and pointed at her own foot.
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Sue Gray
Not strictly a politician. But not through lack of trying.
After years of operating as an obscure Whitehall panjandrum, Gray first entered the limelight after overseeing the Partygate investigation. And quickly discovered a taste for it.
Controversially appointed Keir Starmer's chief of staff, it was said she would be the most important woman in his government. And she might well have been if she hadn't come close to destroying it within days of entering office.
Advisers. Ministers. MPs. Officials. No sooner had she entered Downing Street than the entire fledgling administration was in open revolt - as the person hired to smooth Starmer's path into power created mayhem and resentment.
Less than four months later, she was gone, packed off to the Lords.
'Sue wasn't the right person for this job,' Starmer later admitted, with characteristic perceptiveness.'
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Boris Johnson
Another entrant who could easily also top a list of Britain's most adroit politicians.
Blessed with a mercurial ability to reach the electorate in ways his allies and rivals could only dream of, Boris had it all. A seemingly impregnable majority. A shattered and divided opposition. A nation willing to embrace a genuine political realignment.
And then he threw it all away. Hubris. Duplicity. An absence of political morality. All the vices long associated with the enfant terrible of Westminster conspired to drag the Tory leader down.
Or rather, he conspired to drag himself down. It wasn't just a slice of cake. The great Shakespearean orator placed himself at the heart of a tragicomedy the Bard himself would have been happy to pen. Then hauled down the curtain on his own premiership.
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Keir Starmer
The easiest entry on the list. Because to recognise the Prime Minister's political ineptness, you need only listen to the words of the man himself.
'You know, I don't get politics. I don't understand it. And I don't really like it,' he confided in a friend during the Labour leadership contest.
Effectively handed power by the Tory's self-immolation, Starmer entered office with a majority of 174. A decade in power seemed a formality. But within a year he has managed to get that majority overturned.
His MPs are openly rebelling against him. His Cabinet Ministers are discreetly, and not so discreetly, conspiring against him.
Starmer has admitted he doesn't read his own speeches. He has conceded he doesn't focus on his own policies. He has even been forced to fess up to not even buying his own suits. And all that after just 12 months.
One Labour veteran told me, 'I keep hearing about the Ming Vase strategy', a reference to Starmer's pre-election tactic of doing and saying nothing to scare the electorate. 'But the thing about a Ming Vase strategy is you do actually have to have a vase.'
Our current Prime Minister has proven to be little more than an empty vessel. But in that, as we have seen, he is sadly not alone.