Comparing politics with business can be an interesting pastime.

In general, the comparison is a favourable one for business in terms of participants acting fairly and with openness and honesty - not always but mostly the politicians fall short.

At the moment we have two politicians, Jeremy Hunt and Boris Johnson, vying for leadership of the Conservative party and, with that position the job they really seek, Prime Minster of the United Kingdom. To achieve their aim they need not gain a majority of several tens of millions of the wider population but only a few tens of thousands of extremists. Allowing for non-voters 50,000 would probably do it.

You might argue that the members of the Conservative party are not extremists but they really are - extreme in the strength of conviction that Conservative polices are right and those of other parties are wrong. Labour, Lib Dem and SNP supporters are just the same - not nasty extremists but extreme in that they have a fierce loyalty to views which others feel less strongly about - it is their depth of feeling which is extreme and out of step with the country as a whole.

What the Conservative party members want is a highly predictable menu of policies - for starters it is tax cuts combined with welfare cuts for scroungers, for pudding it is more aircraft carriers and tanks. The main course though is the one which counts, Brexit, whatever the cost just look me in the eye and promise me you will do it by Halloween.

Hunt and Johnson have to play the game. They promise billions of extra spending we won’t have money for and tax cuts which we can’t afford. A ludicrous stream of policies which should never ever be attempted and in the case of Brexit simply cannot be delivered - the House of Commons as a whole will, luckily, not support a no deal departure from the EU. Threats to bypass Parliament are just silly schoolboy talk.

Where have we come across this type of thing before? My mind moves not to other talented politicians such as Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un but to some business figures. Neil Woodford perhaps. A star investment manager in his earlier incarnation but hopes of continued outstanding performance - so avidly lapped up by his supporters and endorsed by investment platform providers who perhaps were not as unbiased as they appeared to be - have proved entirely misplaced. Slack governance, lack of transparency and over-confidence have led to poor performance and ordinary savers being unable to access their own money.

Fred Goodwin is an even better example. Cheered on by shareholders, sycophantic politicians and media he took a bank which had proudly stood for centuries and drove it into the wall, where we, the taxpayers had to pick up the pieces and are still paying the price. Vaulting ambition, hubris, a culture of fear, a failure to understand the risks being taken and bad luck combined to bring RBS to its knees.

We need to learn. The Conservative party need to learn. If they will only elect somebody as leader who promises them what they desperately want to hear , tears will surely follow.

Like those of Woodford and Goodwin, the promises made by Hunt and Johnson which target what their unrepresentative electorate yearn for would bring pain and disappointment not just for those few but for the many. The political path we are on has uncomfortable parallels with the worst of business. We are going to need a new referendum or a General Election to sort this out.