Not one potential 'leader' is prepared to put their country before their career

If there was an ounce of you that trusted politicians before this, it must be gone after this week’s leadership omnishambles.

The EU referendum was the mirror held up against the UK which revealed a broken society marred by inequality and conflict. The fallout from the vote exacerbated these issues, driving markets down and increasing hate crime.

At a time when we need strong leadership and unity to guide the country, our politicians have shown they’re more interested in their careers by attempting to capitalise from the current crisis.

We were misled throughout the campaign and now it’s as clear as day that these politicians will say and do anything to get the job they want, irrespective of the consequences.

From the start of the referendum campaign, Tory proponents of the Leave, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, defended themselves against accusations that they only chose to support the cause in order to further their careers. As evidenced by their utter shock the majority of voters opting to leave the European Union, it seems that both choose Leave as they wrongly predicted that it would lose and they could ride the wave of Brexiteer discontent all the way to Downing Street.

As the effects of Brexit on the markets became frighteningly clear, Boris immediately started backtracking on many of his pledges. Boris was quick to outline his idea of how Britain should operate with Europe and weirdly enough most of it sounded exactly like what Britain does now as a member of the EU. His words sounded so pro-EU that Nigel Farage said he deeply concerned about the direction Boris would take the country in. Boris sounds like a man who thinks Brexit might actually be disastrous, so to save his career, will opt out of the leadership race before he is blamed for the consequences.

Gove made it very clear that he had no desire to be leader and this was by no means an attempt to challenge David Cameron. Only last month when asked if he would stand to be PM he replied: “No, I’m not. There… I don’t want to do it and there are people who are far better equipped than me to do it.” Fast-forward a few weeks and Gove claimed, before his running mate opted out, that he has “reluctantly” came to the conclusion that Boris “cannot provide the leadership” needed during this time, so he has no choice but to run for leader. How noble of you Mr Gove and thank you for coming to the country’s rescue.

The Conservatives aren’t alone in this. The current mantra for the Labour party is: anything the Tories do, we can do better. The Tory party is in disarray and instead of providing effective opposition Labour has instead decided to attempt to one up their opponents and have precipitated their own leadership crisis.

Many of his MPs have been waiting for an opportunity to get rid of Corbyn since the moment he won and are riding on the opportunistic wave of this referendum result. This has been a long time coming and if it wasn’t the EU referendum, it would have been something else.

Corbyn’s performance throughout the EU referendum was below par, he was unenthusiastic but was not bad enough to warrant this attempted coup and even if he was, now is definitely not the time to do it. Where Labour MPs should be working together to provide an alternative blueprint for how the country should work with Europe, they’re chosen to put emphasis on the future of their careers and take on their leader.

If it wasn’t already, it has now become glaringly obvious that these politicians care of nothing but their own careers. At a time when we needed leadership and unity, we have instead seen bitter internal fighting, people backtracking on their promises and politicians wanting the best for themselves. We need leadership and quite frankly, we just don’t have it.