It’s grim to think the four candidates are the best Conservative politics can offer. Why can’t others be considered?

Why is William Hague not standing as Tory leader rather than mere chancellor of Oxford? He is hale and hearty at 63. Is David Cameron also over the hill at 57? Come to that, where was Tony Blair, then 66, when the Labour party chose Keir Starmer as leader? Yes they had all “failed” in some respect during their own tenure in government, but they know the ropes and have the wisdom of experience. We don’t sack a manager for losing a game. Are past leaders by definition useless, given today’s available talent?

The saying goes that every political career ends in failure. But this is a recent phenomenon. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak were leaders under cruel circumstance, in the form of Covid and its aftermath. Neither succeeded, but both, one hopes, will be wiser as well as older after the experience – and that wisdom is of value to the nation. We did not evict William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli, Ramsay MacDonald and Stanley Baldwin, Winston Churchill and Harold Wilson for losing an election. All of them went on to win their parties a return to power.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist