Why political leaders hang on -Oct 8, 2004


By Jonathan Bartley

"Your get the leaders you deserve." This political platitude is harsh on the majority of the population, who trudge faithfully to the polling station (or post box) to express a preference for representation, come election time.

Most of us don’t actually have a hand in selecting the Prime Minister. It is the few hundred thousand party members who determine their leader, and so the individual who will put together the next government. Even this is a relatively new development. Less than ten years ago, I was involved in helping Conservative backbenchers choose the Prime Minister. As part of John Major’s campaign team in the 1995 leadership election, we set out to persuade the MPs — who at that time had sole responsibility for such decisions — that John Major was preferable to John Redwood.

I am not a Conservative, nor a party man. But the experience of working in Parliament and for a political party gave a glimpse into the political psyche, and what makes the political class aspire to leadership.

My conclusion was that party people are a little odd. I mean no offence to local activists, but most of those who have been involved in politics in some form will understand what I mean. Sincere and committed they may be. But people you’d want to have around for dinner, or go on holiday with? Not really.

A kind of religious zeal surrounds many political figures. Deep down, they feel that they are special. Chosen. Called to a higher purpose. The logical consequence is that they are born to lead. It is evident in the rounds of media interviews that they undertake. It is also apparent in the cross-over between Westminster and other areas of minor celebrity: Edwina Currie, Martin Bell, Glenda Jackson, Sebastian Coe, Austin Mitchell, Kate Hoey — on goes the list of those who have moved happily between public profiles.

Robert Kilroy-Silk MEP is one of the best known additions to this list, having jumped from being a Labour MP to being a chat-show host and now to sitting in the European Parliament. Like so many others, Mr Kilroy-Silk apparently now wants to make a bid for the top position. UKIP, however, finds itself without a mechanism for a leadership challenge (something that doesn’t bode well for a party whose raison d’être is combating "unaccountable" European politicians); so he’ll have to bide his time.

The old cliché is that the pursuit of power is the great motivator. It is. But so is the conviction that the use of it can really make the world a better place. That is almost a pre-requisite, at least at the start of a political career, if only to maintain political stamina.

BEING an MP can be a thankless task. There are some perks: endless receptions; recognition in the community; a feeling of importance. But a regular postbag of several hundred letters; constituents and lobby-groups with a seemingly unlimited list of demands; 14-hour days; and only two or three staff to help in your work — this isn’t most people’s idea of a dream job.

Nor, unless you really work at it, is there a great deal you can achieve as a humble backbencher, beyond glorified social work, the occasional campaign, or getting stuck into committees. It is only when you start to climb the ministerial ladder that you begin to feel as if you have the necessary clout to fulfil your mission.

As we have seen with Tony Blair, if you have climbed your way to the top of the pole, it is hard to slide back down voluntarily. With two historic landslide election victories for his party, after its 18 years in the political wilderness, as Britain’s youngest PM for 200 years, and now the Labour premier with the longest continuous service, he must feel that his work is yet to be finished, despite his troubles.

Memoirs might one day reveal whether there was a deal struck between Mr Blair and Mr Brown at the Granita restaurant in Islington in May 1994 over the succession to John Smith. But even a friendship such as John Lennon’s and Paul McCartney’s (to which the singer Bono likened the Blair-Brown partnership at the party conference last week) would be sorely tested in such circumstances. High office and achievement, underpinned by the conviction that you are the right person, in the right place, at the right time, is not readily relinquished.

ATTENDING a press conference in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I heard one member of a delegation from the US, who had just met Mr Blair to plead restraint, explain why George Bush had refused them a similar audience. "I guess if you have a messianic complex, you don’t like religious people saying you are wrong," he said.

Mr Blair may not have the same complex as President Bush, but messianic tendencies are evident in most statesmen. As a general rule, the longer a leader is in the job, the more convinced he or she becomes of being the chosen one, and the harder it is to remove him or her. Conversely, if you fail to demonstrate quickly that you are a party’s saviour, your position is unlikely to be held for long — as the Conservatives have shown all too clearly.

The irony, perhaps, is that the real Messiah realised when it was right for his ministry to end. Tony Blair, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy would do well to learn from the politics of Jesus.

This article appeared in the Church Times