October 10, 2025

All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

Enoch Powell (1912–1998), British Conservative politician, scholar and poet, Joseph Chamberlain (1977); epilogue, Jay p.297

Have you overstayed your welcome? Is one last hurrah worth the possibility of defeat?

It might be called the political equivalent of the Peter Principle. Like the people in a hierarchy who tend to rise to their “level of incompetence”, many politicians go too far, and run in one too many elections, suffering defeat when the tide was already running against them. Don’t push the envelope. Read the signs that retirement or a career change is in order.