Each to his own: you don’t go to Sir Alan Sugar for advice on diplomacy or plead with me to teach you breakdancing. And you wouldn’t, on the whole, go to Bernie Ecclestone for philosophical insight and mature historical reflection. Deafened by the vroom-vrooming of his horrid sport, wreathed in petrol fumes for 60 years and blinded by his billions, that strange, wizened little figure has generally stuck to what he knows: motors and money. Sure, he dazzled Tony Blair with his millions, but who didn’t?

So it was a piece of journalistic luck, in that fascinating Saturday Times interview by Rachel Sylvester and Alice Thomson, that the aged petrolhead began to range more widely and hilariously. Defending his mate Max Mosley against the word “dictator”, our Bernie observed with the happy insouciance of the insanely rich: “If you have a look at democracy, it hasn’t done a lot of good for many countries — including this one. I like people who make up their minds. If you have to keep referring to your grandmother before you do anything I think that’s dumb.”

Gently pressed to illustrate this theory, he expressed admiration of Baroness Thatcher (though, heaven knows, she was more of a democrat, more of a respecter of Parliament and Cabinet, than either Blair or Brown have been), and then went on to muse more widely on dictators. He felt Saddam Hussein was “the only one who could control that country”, and blithely moved on to Hitler. Despite his crunchy management style, Mr Ecclestone feels Hitler fell short in the dictatorship stakes when he got “taken away and persuaded to do things that I have no idea whether he wanted to do or not”.

Cue general outrage at this blithe explanation of Hitler’s role in the Holocaust, accompanied by lesser outrage at the idea of Saddam as a strong, wise ruler rather than a murderous, hostage-taking, neighbour-invading chemical-weapon freak. Whatever you think of our Iraq war — I was against it — the idea of Saddam as a model leader is as breathtaking as casting Hitler as a patsy, too easily led. And if your eye strayed down to the “quickfire” questions in the Ecclestone profile, you may have noticed flaws in the old chap’s historical perspective. Asked “Napoleon or Stalin?” he replies: “I didn’t know either of those guys, to be honest.”

Well, enough. Let Barmy Ecclestone keep his poor old head down under the bonnet and get on with his day job of making big flat cars go in circles and sucking up millions of the licence fee. However, amid the outrage was an interesting line from Denis MacShane, MP, who referred to these ramblings as part of a growing anti-democracy movement, a “fashionable contempt for the right of people to elect their own leaders”.

Given the hysterical euphoria over Barack Obama and the daily news of agonising struggles for democracy from Burma to Iran, this sounds odd at first. But you know what Mr MacShane means. Quite apart from public rage and disgust at the misuse of parliamentary expenses (and it is only fair, given that I am quoting Mr MacShane, to murmur “eight laptops in three years . . .”), there may indeed be a sense of weariness at what Ecclestone calls “referring to your grandmother”. Or, at least, schmoozing her. In his paean to Lady Thatcher’s decision-making, he says: “All these guys, Gordon and Tony, are trying to please everybody all the time . . . Politicans are too worried about elections.”

And yes, OK, that rings a bell. The curse of modern politics — fuelled by us rapacious, jeering media, but not properly resisted by any leader since Thatcher herself — is a wheedling, dishonest populism. Ministers whirl round, chucking out showy initiatives that die like sparks from Catherine wheels; they act macho (think of Jack Straw on Ronnie Biggs) or strive to seem ever more caring and cuddly. They shrink from telling us hard truths — Mr Brown, we are not babies, we know there have to be cuts in public spending, stop wittering about “investment” — and leap on every popular bandwagon. There was a lovely Marcus Brigstocke line in The Now Show on Radio 4 about Mr Brown’s response to Michael Jackson’s death — a response about which the electorate has no need to give a damn. When a spokesman said: “The Prime Minister’s thoughts are with his family at this time,” Brigstocke howled: “Well, they’d bloody better not be! He’s supposed to be busy!”

An even more ridiculous example was the slanging match over the Gay Pride march. Ben Bradshaw started it for Labour by saying there is a “deep strain of homophobia” in the Tory party; Alan Duncan riposted furiously and said that Labour is the nasty party now; the Lib Dems weighed in saying that only they have a flawless history of being pro-gay.

A shrill argument with Angela Eagle, the Pensions Secretary, arose on the Today programme, punctuated by weary comments from ordinary gay people who didn’t want a fight. And who, frankly, are perfectly well aware that there are homophobes on both sides, that there are nasty old Tories who concur with Peter Hitchens that liberal views on same-sex love are a self-indulgent threat to the “stable married family”, and that, equally, there are nasty old Labourites who “can’t abide pansies”.

It is good that on each side the leaders have endorsed civil partnership and condemned discrimination and bullying, though they may reasonably disagree on how far to take Harriet Harman’s mania for formulaic equality legislation. It is good that no politician dare line up with Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali in demanding that homosexuals “repent” of their nature and their love. But it is infuriating and time-wasting that, just because for one day the streets of London are full of parading wigs and falsies, ministers and Shadows should waste their time and attention on gayer-than-thou arguments. There’s work to be done: a recession and a war. If democracy deteriorates to the point when it is all about grieving for a weird pop star and trading insults about secret homophobia, you can begin to see what gets up Mr Ecclestone’s nose.

Democracy is precious. It is not about “referring to your grandmother” all the time; once fairly elected, leaders should lead bravely, explain their acts concisely, and if defeated take it on the chin. Democracy need not involve this posing, preening populism. Apart from anything else, it no longer impresses even the most naive of grannies. Get on with it! We’ll vote on results.

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