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One of the clearest attributes of a politician who can be presented as being consistently successful is the ability to absorb some sort of briefing - written, visual or verbal - well enough (for a short period of time) to appear to be knowledgable in interviews after some sort of activity lack a press conference or a factory visit or a ribbon-cutting for a new road in an area the visiting political representative did not know existed until their cavalcade pulled up and will instantly forget about within hours of their departure.
This is a requirement because, once on the "Ministerial" list, they are likely to change jobs frequently and take to the new office "seamlessly". Often working in areas of which they have no useful level of prior knowledge.
More dangerous might be "ministers" WITH detailed knowledge of certain areas of politics and diplomacy and an embedded opinion about how "correct" thier approach to resolving "problems" would be.
It is an imperfect system. Looking around the world I cannot think of anywhere that might offer the perfect system and have never read any books or article that suggests such a system exists.
So we have to live with the imperfections and try to mitigate, over time via elections, just how bad the situation becomes.
When Boris hit the top of the pile it was noticeable how many of his previous "senior" colleagues legged it as soon as they had a better-paid engagement to go to. Perhaps that was just the Boris factor. Or did they also have some inkling of the political and economic detritus and some potential pandemic risk on the horizon?
Even Alexander's own brother seemed less than impressed.
Then again, if we consider bauble's "Minder" observation, maybe a "collection of inadequate individuals" is what we might normally come to expect in both politics and, not infrequently, many businesses and organisations in general that occupy positions of influence over the mass of people collected together (loosely) and labelled as a "country".
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