George Osborne's speech to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce yesterday may receive limited attention, but for me it marks a thrilling return from a cul-de-sac in modern British politics. The barren delusion called “managerialism” may soon be defunct. It has reached its dead end. Gordon Brown, its most dogged practitioner, has reached his wits' end. Politicians must turn from the belief that they are elected to run the shop. They are elected to build the shop.

Of Mr Osborne's speech more later, for it points to the future and will one day be seen as a signpost. But first the present: the politician-as-manager. Since the end of the last century a fashion has prevailed to remark (with something of a smirk) that in modern government the big ideological questions have all been settled, the business of government is broadly agreed and democratic politics is all about who runs the business best.

Politics has been discussed as though it were a supermarket. The principles of the enterprise have been established; the purpose is to sell groceries; the democratic contest is between rivals in the quest to discover what the customer wants and how best to hone (and to market) your competence to deliver it.

If politicians were mainly there as managers then no more devoted follower of the blinkered cult has arisen than our present Prime Minister. But Mr Brown and the whole politics of “triangulation” (an idea at first fashionable among the new Tories too) are finished. In times like these, somebody has to take a view. We are looking for a leadership dominated by a human mind, a unifying set of ideas, and the beat of a human heart.

Scientists, reported this week to be examining the Universe for Earth-like planets in case intelligent life should exist there, might more urgently direct their attention to a riddle within our own galaxy. From 10 Downing Street signals are being emitted that bear too few of the marks of a sentient human consciousness. I am having increasing difficulty in believing that Gordon Brown is a person. Is he not, rather, a flawed prototype for a primitive form of artificial intelligence?

Take problem-solving, for instance. It is now possible to build computer programs for trouble-shooting. The program responds to our description of the difficulty by identifying key-words; then - relying on pre-programmed linkages, binary methods of computation, and pre-set responses - it proposes solutions.

Much the same may be said of the problem-solving programme known as Mr Brown. Focus-grouping tells him voters are angry that top British bankers have been paying themselves fat salaries and bonuses. Key words in these reports trigger links in the Brown brain to key remedies: thus “angry about British banker's bonus” triggers “stop British banker's bonus”. “Salaries too high” triggers “curb salaries”. A cross-linking response is assembled: “control remuneration of British bankers”. But the word “British” then triggers a logic filter; and on to the Brown screen pings a warning pop-up: “Incompatibility with frequent assertion that causes of crisis not British. Try ‘international system for curbing remuneration'.” Brown tries that, and hits Return.

The screen says “That's it. Done. Finished. Your policy transaction has been successful. Add to basket? Create another policy?” But the computer program has overlooked the fact that, internationally, Mr Brown is not in charge. Nor has it the wit to ask such elementary questions as “where does this take us as a general principle? If bankers, why not all company directors?” - let alone the deeper question: “what's the root cause of the public anxiety? Is it really bankers' bonuses?”

When the PM taps into his computer a problem like “house prices falling”, it proposes “act to shore up house prices”. “Voter concern about knife crime” elicits “release misleading statistics about fall in knife crime”. “You're too Scottish” is met by “launch initiatives on Britishness”. This is the politics of the mop and bucket, wiping up spillages in the supermarket aisles; the politics of the clipboard, piling prominent shelves with market-tested goodies for the impulse-purchaser.

Politicians are feeble managers and the art of politics must go beyond management whenever it really matters. It really matters now, now we can see that copycat politics is a busted flush. As world leaders and Western chancellors rush around like herds of swine, fast and furious yet somehow focusing only on the ground immediately before them, there is an aching need for perspective. They print money; they cut the already cut, boost the already boosted, prime the already primed, and wave insurance schemes, credit guarantees, bail-outs and nationalisations: tipping money into a hole as one might tip roadstone into a bog, never standing back to observe that the bog is a bog. “There are no blueprints!” they wail, as though government were about nimble responses to some kind of celestial sat-nav.

Did Gladstone, did Churchill, did Attlee, did Thatcher follow blueprints for their problems? Did they moan that the course was uncharted? When the challenge is unfamiliar, that's when you need politics; that's when you need philosophy, ideology, faith, hunch and the talent to link particular snarl-ups to a general view not only of how to manage traffic, but what cars are for. And you need the moral and intellectual confidence to follow your compass. Instead we are sailing into the unknown led by cadres of glorified shop managers, whimpering for want of a business plan. Poor Gordon Brown, the very definition of everything that inspired leadership is not.

I had not, when I wrote most of the above, read Mr Osborne's speech yesterday to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. But the speech, happening to go with the grain of everything I think, fills me with enthusiasm for politics again.

I'm a Tory, of course. But I'd have found the speech thrilling even if I disagreed with every word. The Shadow Chancellor had stepped back, asked what at root he and David Cameron believed in, what at root they thought was wrong, followed this through to its consequences for policy, taken a deep breath - and said it in plain language. In a nutshell, that the banking bubble was part cause but also part symptom of our having lived beyond our means; that payback time is coming; and that in future we must cease rigging personal, business and national finances in favour of borrowing.

Right or wrong in its particulars, wise or ill-considered in its general sweep, Mr Osborne's speech stands as an example of what politics should be for: taking a view, a view of the whole, a view of your own; finding your explanation of the world; and navigating by that star. Deciding. And leaving managers to manage. That's what politics is for.

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