The US and Britain are stuck with Good Time Charlies when we need genuine Bulldogs

When David Cameron finally squeezed through a crack in the door at No 10 by the simple expedient of betraying his party’s traditional supporters and hooking up with a bunch of left-wing dickheads, the scenario his band of modernisers had been planning for had simply evaporated. They’d started off assuming that they’d inherit an okay economy and that they’d mainly be spending their time trying to entrench themselves on the middle ground which Tony Blair had made home by persuading voters that Tories were no longer nasty.

What Cameron faced in reality was an economic disaster requiring a right-wing politician with enormous testicular fortitude willing to implement horribly unpleasant policies to put things right. Posh Boy and his chums talked like real men to start with and Cameron had a bit of luck (i.e. Ed Miliband) – but as soon as the going got tough, he and Osborne crumbled like the privileged sixth-formers they were. The cuts have turned out to be a series of minor adjustments – everything else is pretty much where it was, and our leaders evidently can’t muster the strength to do what needs to be done.

Problem is, Cameron turned up at No 10 with a toy Meccano set, looking forward to tweaking a bolt here and a nut there when what he needed was a Rambo-style array of heavy artillery to blast his way through Britain’s myriad problems. Instead of taking this on board and growing in office he’s retreated from the field of battle to spend his energies vaguely talking about huge assaults which must be launched against, for instance, public spending – but not in this parliament. For instance, he wants us all to have a jolly good chin-wag about how to cut the welfare bill – but he won’t actually be doing anything about it until after 2015. When he won’t be PM any longer.

Get immigration under control? No – not interested. Too difficult – too “nasty”. Better to tweak the law to allow gay marriages. Give the British people the European referendum you promised them? No way. Easier to destroy Britain’s armed forces and the House of Lords – because only right-wingers care about those things. Tell Van Rompuy and his crew of unelected continent-wreckers to examine their own prostate glands from the inside? Nah – that would need guts. Easier to pretend we’ve got oddles of money to spend and distract everyone with fantasy projects like the Birmingham-London high-speed rail link.

American readers will recognise the same traits in Barack Obama. Not only hasn’t Barry done a damned thing to sort out the US economy, he’s driven it further into the ground while letting the national debt rocket. Gay marriage and preventing states from protecting themselves against waves of illegal immigrants – that’s the kind of stuff he dreamed of doing when he first thought of running for the top job. And, because all that economy stuff’s kinda sucky, he's decided to just ignore it and get on with the social engineering projects. They’re fun!

Like Francois Hollande, Cameron and Obama aren’t designed for hard times or tough decisions – and, while it would be childish to expect politicians of the stature of Thatcher or Reagan to suddenly emerge to lead us out of this Slough of Despond, it would be a relief to have leaders who – like them – were fitted, by character, temperament, instinct or brains, to fight the battles that need to be fought to halt our inexorable slide into Third Worldom.

The only leader of a major country who strikes me as even vaguely fitted for tough times is Angela Merkel. I admire the way she doesn’t mind annoying the rest of the world to do what she thinks is right for Germany – no matter how mistaken her strategy is.