Britain must not keep changing prime ministers, Sir John Major has warned in a broadside at those who treat politics as a "game show" while leaving big problems to the next generation.
The former Conservative prime minister accused today's focus-group obsessed politicians of thinking their job was to "provide fodder for the media and project your own career" while delaying action on complex issues like healthcare, pensions and climate change.
In an interview for BBC Radio 5 Live and Newsnight, he said: "The best aphrodisiac in politics is hope. If people can see a change, there's a change in atmosphere."
He said he felt "very strongly" that the reluctance to make difficult arguments on big issues "demeans politics".
Without a new generation of young people who value public service being willing to enter politics, "we are in deep doodah", he added.
Sir John was Conservative prime minister from 1990-97, winning the 1992 election with the most votes ever recorded for a British political party.
Three years later he faced down internal party division, challenging his rivals to "put up or shut up" He defeated Tory MP John Redwood in a ballot of his MPs.
Some have suggested Sir Keir Starmer, rumoured to be under pressure from rivals like Angela Rayner and Wes Streeting, might do the same.
Sir John said: "The fate of individual politicians doesn't really matter as much as the development of the right policy.
"I mean, it isn't a good idea to keep changing prime ministers. I think it is an idea to have a limited number of years. I think the Americans who have two terms of a president and then stop. I think that is sensible."
He said he was not going to make the "mistake" of giving advice to a Labour prime minister in public, but warned the job of being PM is "undoubtedly getting harder", in part as a result of social media.
"Most of the big problems we have in this country at the moment are long-term problems," Sir John said, warning that leaders were avoiding action on an ageing population, the costs of healthcare, and pensions.
"All they are doing is saying to my children and your children and their grandchildren 'tough luck chaps, we're not only leaving you a difficult economy with too many old people that you can't afford to care for, we are going to leave you with climate change that we should have put right for you and didn't'.
"The first role of any government, in my view, is to leave something better for the next generation than your generation inherited. And this is not done now.
"The youngsters of today are inheriting a more difficult world and the less favourable world for them than my generation."
He warned that governments "have lost the capacity to say no" to voters who demand ever more public spending".
"They say you can't do that, you'll lose votes. Really? When you're setting out a policy that will... ease the lives of their children and their grandchildren? Are we so self-centred that we can't take in that message? I don't believe it.
"It's not a game show, you are not there just to provide fodder for the media and project your own career. You're there to deal with problems that the ordinary people elect you to do."
Sir John also criticised the growing number of professional politicians in all parties.
He said Labour MPs used to be "people without money, without privilege, working class people who really knew their constituents" but now "they're much younger, much better educated, and in my judgement, much less close to their constituents than their predecessors were".
"And you can see on the Conservative side, where are the businessmen? Where are the soldiers?
"Where are the people who would have been a staple part of the party in the 1950s, 60s and 70s? They're very sparse now on the Conservative benches."
Sir John, the last prime minister not to go to university, was inspired to enter politics after a chance meeting at the age of 13 with his local MP, Marcus Lipton, who arranged a visit to the Commons.
He hopes others will still be willing to follow.
"Well, I would say to young people, we need you in politics. If all the talent in this country concentrates on how can I earn more money, how can I avoid public service like the plague because I don't like the idea of it, then we are in deep doodah."
Matt Chorley is on BBC Radio 5 Live weekdays from 2pm and BBC Newsnight on Fridays from 10.30pm.
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