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Hello and welcome back to the bunker, bringing you explainers on news, politics, current affairs, and everything else we can lay our hands on every weekday morning.

I'm Andrew Harrison.

Today, why are we presently cursed with such crappy political leaders? A leader, Napoleon Bonaparte said, is a dealer in hope. But if you

ask most of today's national leaders about that, they'd say supplies are low. Love them, hate them,

admire them or despise them, The big figures of past generations,

the Thatchers, Blurs, Churchill's, Regans, De Gauls and Obamers were able to inspire, energise and

excite people about their ideas. They conjured visions and they told stories. Today, on the other

hand, were offered either a parade of light entertainers and decreasingly

impressive apprentice candidates on the right, or Eat Your Greens technocracy on the centre-left,

personified by sound, solid, ever so slightly boring, Kirstama.

Meanwhile, the truly big figures in Washington and Moscow aren't traditionally inspiring

figures who bring people together at all.

They're monsters of aggression, division and self-pity.

Where have all the real leaders gone?

Or are they always an illusion, magiced up by their support systems in the media and mass parties?

To help me understand our current slump in the quality of leadership,

or maybe tell me I'm totally wrong

...