America and Britain produce Nobel laureates, technological geniuses and some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. Yet when it comes to choosing political leaders, we somehow end up with a talent pool that wouldn't necessarily make the shortlist for managing a McDonald's.

Usually spectacular incompetence gets you fired. In politics, it can get you promoted. In America, politicians are harder to get rid of than Japanese knotweed, while in Britain we periodically throw the entire government out, only to discover that the replacements aren't much more inspiring. On both sides of the Atlantic, party machines reward loyalty over talent, money buys influence and capable people increasingly have better things to do than enter politics. Perhaps the real mystery isn't why politicians keep disappointing us, but why we keep expecting political excellence from a system that seems designed to reward everything but.

So who's really running the circus? The voters, the politicians or the people paying for the tent?

Twelve men at a restaurant in Sicily. Ten engrossed in their phones. Presumably the other two had forgotten their chargers. This week, Mark and I ask how a device designed to connect us became such a convenient way to ignore whoever's sitting opposite. From scrolling through strangers' lives to sending children off to do homework on the screens we've just told them to put away, have we confused being connected with having a connection?

Join us for 15 Minutes of In Search of Sanity. You can even listen together. Radical, we know. If you enjoy our content, follow our Substack!

Trump's shenanigans. Newsom's Democrats running California as a one-party State. Labour changing Prime Ministers without any votes cast. The left wants government to deliver equity. The right wants it to restore order. Both seem increasingly tempted to give it more power, provided their lot hold the keys.

Meanwhile, Singapore poses an awkward question: would you trade some political freedom for a government that actually delivers? Everybody imagines a benevolent dictator until they become the person he finds inconvenient.

This week, Mark and I take aim at both political tribes and look beyond America to ask whether voters are losing faith in freedom or simply patience with failure.

Join us for 15 minutes of In Search of Sanity. Before somebody decides we've had quite enough free speech.