Opinion | Asia needs leaders of the calibre of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew to navigate a messy world

You might well be starting to believe that the calibre of today’s political leadership isn’t what it used to be. Suddenly, the global field of play is cluttered with stunning individual wreckage. Political uncertainty rules, a war sparked by an invasion reveals our current degree of “uncivilisation”, and centrepieces of former grandeur crumble under pressure.

What could be a more glaring example than the decline and fall of the polity of the United Kingdom? From a 19th-century global power to a 21st-century circus, from a political culture that once produced the most formidable and articulate leaders to the farce of Prime Minister Boris Johnson exiting ignominiously.

So much for British political credibility, whether in rudely telling Hong Kong what it is doing wrong or rebuffing Europe. My personal anglophilia has gone into remission.

Then there’s the tumult in South Asia. With even less ceremony than we witnessed in London, the president of Sri Lanka, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, had to go into hiding as Sri Lankans, fed up with the inept governance that exacerbated the country’s economic collapse, stormed his residence and office.

Japan, the third-largest economy in the world and long known for the strength of its social fabric, was shocked last week when a man shot former prime minister Shinzo Abe with a home-made handgun at close range, taking the life of the country’s longest-serving head of government.