I’m actually feeling sorry for my Labour supporting friends (I know; there aren’t many!). After fourteen long years in opposition, Starmer and his Government have descended into total chaos in barely eighteen months. Did they really think governing would be easy? That just being “virtuous” socialists would be enough?

Starmer may be gone by the time this column is published. Even if he limps on, like a lame duck, the likelihood is that we will be on our seventh Prime Minister by the tenth anniversary of the 2016 Brexit Vote. It implies that our system of democratic government is broken, and that should worry all of us. What has gone wrong?

I remember hearing the expression “there’ll be Questions in the House”, as a child, staying with my Grandmother here in Ceredigion. Years later I grasped what it meant. If your MP was halfway decent, everyone with a reasonable concern was but one step away from holding the Government or Prime Minister to account. The ability of your MP to demand answers from the executive was a fundamental bedrock of our democracy.

It implied a clear line of responsibility. Linking decision makers to the individual citizen required accountability and integrity. Like all systems of democratic government it was imperfect, but it worked okay. Somewhere down the line we seem to have lost that.

Making big decisions and carrying the can when things go wrong is stressful; many of us like to shy away, and that includes career politicians. Enjoying the status and trappings of power without the stress and responsibility was too tempting. Keen to appear to be introducing progressive change, the hard work and hassle of governing could be delegated; downward to QUANGOs with statutory powers but no accountability, across to the devolved Parliaments/Assemblies, or upward to distant supra-national bodies like the EU or European Court of Human Rights.

Accountable politicians have always depended on Civil Servants (who must be politically neutral) and also advisers; these people are not accountable and should not be making decisions. The role of advisers has become dangerously blurred in recent decades. Alastair Campbell, Dominic Cummings and now Morgan McSweeney are the most egregious examples of those who have become far too big for their boots. The paradox is that people brought in to protect their masters, end up causing them a great deal of harm.

Just before the Mandelson scandal blew up, Keir Starmer was complaining that when he pulls the levers of power, nothing happens. They have been well and truly disconnected, and the irony is that it’s the class of politicians he now represents who have vandalised the connections.

In turn, that is making a political career very unattractive to those with real ability. So we are in a dangerous downward spiral. Starmer limps on because there is no one good enough to replace him. In the biggest democratic exercise this country has ever had, the people decided to leave the European Union. Regardless of whether you think that was right or wrong, the real issue has been the inability of our timid and inadequate politicians to respect and enact the people’s wishes.

Political parties now aspiring to govern (in Wales and the UK) need to be thinking hard as to how they really do wrest back control of the levers of power. To have the democratic mandate for this, detailed plans need to be in their manifestos. In Wales, they should be concentrating on using the powers they have to make devolution work and delivering pragmatic solutions for Welsh problems.

Good politicians from across the spectrum should learn to respect accountability once more. Those willing and able to give straightforward, honest answers to “Questions in the House” will gain the respect that leaders require. The rest will be discarded.