One of the reasons why WW1 was such a disaster, continuing for years with no change at all save for the monotonic increase in body count, was that the British PM, David Lloyd George, was dead certain that Field Marshall Haig was brain damaged. He concluded this because Haig had an unfortunate speaking impediment, and became tongue-tied to the point of incoherence when speaking before other people. In Lloyd George's limited world, fancy public speaking was the most important job qualification. Repartee and elegant insults in the Commons were vital for political success - no other mental quality was particularly important. So perhaps Britain had more than its share of PMs who were fancy talkers, and little else. But Lloyd George couldn't get rid of Haig. So he did the next best thing - sabotaged him at every turn. To this end, all of Haig's planned assaults on the German trenches were starved of men and munitions. Lloyd George fancied that he was saving Britain the loss of resources, but of course men were still dying by the tens of thousands, and all in offensives which couldn't possibly succeed because of the inadequate forces allowed. Lloyd George preferred (undoubtedly unconsciously) a perpetual stalemate on the Western Front rather than a winning strategy, all because he had a grossly poor grasp of Haig's mental qualities.
Not that Haig was Britain's best general. That was probably Allenby, the guy portrayed - none too accurately - by Jack Hawkins in Lawrence of Arabia. And Haig might well have squandered Englishmen in record numbers. We'll never know. But with Lloyd George playing games, Britain couldn't possibly win. And all because a fancy talker was such a poor judge of leadership qualities in other men.