Jose Mujica, President of 3.6m Urugyans, retires today at the age of 79. He is unusual. As a former member of the Tupermaro guerrilla group, he has eschewed a life of luxury and opulence so many leaders enjoy as spoils of war. He leaves instead a different legacy: poverty levels falling, 30% of his country powered by renewable energy and even more unusual, an approval rating of 70%. Above all else, he seems to believe in virtue, the consistent habits of character built around integrity – the will to live out what you believe and remain untarnished by the temptations of high office, which even in the UK, seem to ensnare so many.

There was no Checkers retreat for Jose (the UK PM’s country pile), not even a 10 Downing Street. Instead the Estevez Palace was turned into a national museum, and Jose remained in his one bedroom apartment with his wife and three-legged dog. There was no bullet proof Jaguar, just a 1987 blue VW Beetle, by all accounts perpetually grubby and dusty. His hobby was growing chrysanthemums. What habits shaped this remarkable man?

It seems, like Nelson Mandela and other moral leaders, his life has been shaped by long years in prison. Under the military junta which left in 1985, he endured over seven of 13 years in solitary confinement, two of them living in a old horse trough. He was not allowed books or luxuries of any kind. So it seems, he realised that wealth is not the clue to happiness and that freedom is an experience of the spirit. “Living light is no sacrifice to me. I had to find an inner strength”, he says, and like the Greeks he learned that perseverance (fortitude) is a key virtue – the virtuous man needs staying power.

He has gained some notoriety by legalising marijuana, arguing that prohibited drugs simply breed crime and violence and act against the interests of the addict. He doesn’t like abortion, but legalised that too. Rather than posturing towards interest groups and hysteria generated by the national media, he seems to govern by an idea of the common good: low energy footprint, much lower poverty, low crime and rising national incomes attended by rising equality. Like Peter Singer he gave a way a proportion of his salary – but it was a rather large proportion – at 90%.

One of his beliefs is that ‘the only good addiction is love’. In 2013 he told the UN that international relations should be governed by love and friendship rather than self-interest and threats. It’s hard to imagine Jose Mujica forming policy around Urugyan national interest alone, as we often find our politicians doing for ‘British interests’ (an interesting philosophical idea in a very interdependent world). Is love such a crazy virtue? Is unconditional concern for the common good something nobody would vote for? I don’t think so – and clearly neither do the Urugyan people.

As we approach a May General Election politicians are already working on the electoral mathematics – how many policies they need to generate to gain votes form a particular sub-group. 26% of young people haven’t even registered and, I expect, about that proportion won’t bother to vote. I can’t say I would particularly blame them: we can all see that our own politicians still seem to think that limousines, generous salaries, multimillion pound consultancies, oh yes, and a country house at taxpayers’ expense are their’s by right. David Cameron once said he would travel everywhere by Tube, but soon ditched that idea as impractical. Our most popular politician, Boris Johnson, goes everywhere by bike. I wonder if our leaders went for integrity and the virtues of Mujica, whether it might just help them win an election outright.

At least it might end the cynicism which cause many of us to recoil at the idea of another few months of an election campaign. And why not use Jose Mujica as an example in your essay on virtue ethics – because examiners love examples, especially those they have maybe never thought that much about.