The fact is, jake, that few politicians (of any persuasion) are particularly adept at handling any sort of crisis. All the work is done by the humble functionaries in the Civil Service. They come up with the ideas and their political masters choose the one that best suits their dogma, sign the papers and then go on telly to tell everybody how wonderful they all are and how they�ve saved the world.
One only has to look at the way cabinet reshuffles move so called experts from their particular field to become, within days, experts in a completely different field. Hence we see a former postman �running� the health service and a junior defence minister, six weeks into the job, telling the head of the Army that his idea that morale was low in the Army was wrong.
They are all the equivalent of professional journeymen who move about the political business as their mood, ambition (and the taxpayers� money) take them.