It's the Leader, Stupid
Andrew Adonis believes that leaders are almost all that matters in politics. There are three core dichotomies that come up time and time again: majorities, initiative, and personalities.
There is hardly an academic who doesn’t attribute some importance to leadership in politics. But the argument of this book is different. It is that leaders are all that matter. That and more in today’s podcast on the New Books Network here.
I spoke to Andrew Adonis last week about his book It’s the Leader, Stupid: Changemakers in Modern Politics. Andrew knows how the British government works better than almost anyone else in the public sphere. He spent 12 years working under two British Prime Ministers: he was in charge of policy for Tony Blair at No. 10 before being made a government minister, and then served in the Cabinet under Gordon Brown.
And he argues that, when it comes to national, two-horse elections, the best leader wins. That’s it. Nothing else matters. For sure, we might think that there are other aspects that matter, beyond leadership. The ideas you have, the policies you propose, the party you represent, for example — but these are all subordinate to the leader. As for ideas, it’s often the case that people (voters in this case) don’t actually believe in the ideas themselves. Rather, they believe in people who believe in ideas, and it’s the same for policies, whilst political parties are definitely subordinate to their leader. In the UK, the Conservative Party has had three different leaders in the past six years, completely flipping on its head after every leadership election; Labour is scarcely any different.
For Andrew, leaders are subordinate to one thing only: the spirit of the time. This might feel like a cop-out, but how much of a cop-out is it really, to say “leaders matter, apart from this one nebulous thing that nobody can control”? (That said, my March blogpost will be about how leaders can communicate their ideas and thus shape the spirit of the time, but let’s leave that for now and you can subscribe to have that post sent straight to your inbox!)
The idea of this ‘spirit of the time’ aspect is that, to an extent, leaders have to reflect the contemporary zeitgeist. This actually foreshadows my first big theme, that leaders have to balance appearing to fit in with prevailing views, alongside shaping them, and it’s absolutely true. The classic example is Clement Attlee, potentially Labour’s most successful Prime Minister, who won a 1945 landslide on the back of an enormous, post-war ‘desire for change’ wave. More recently, the telegenic, youthful Tony Blair appeared a far better fit for Britain in 1997 than the tired and reactive John Major.
In our podcast, Andrew and I discussed several political leaders in his book, flitting across geographies and centuries, and we constantly kept returning to three core dichotomies that compose the art of political leadership, summed up by balancing means and ends.
Joining majorities versus shaping them
Seizing the initiative whilst managing it
Balancing realism with idealism
In each case, it is easy to get carried away by the first aspects, like joining majorities, and thus fail to effectively perform the second aspects. Joining majorities is simply your means to an end, whereas the second aspects, like shaping the majorities you have joined, are how leaders actually have an impact.
Joining majorities versus shaping them
It’s important to establish that successful political leaders view being a politician as a profession, not just a vocation. If you can’t navigate yourself to where you have the influence to make a difference, what are you working for? That’s why ‘joining majorities’ is just as important as shaping them. Aligning yourself with the majority can help you rise up the ladder.
Of Mitterrand, France’s longest-serving President (1981-95), Andrew writes that “his ideas constantly shifted to suit the times”. A frontline politician for forty years, he was at different times a nationalist and a nationaliser; a libertarian and a liberal; a conservative, then a socialist, then a centrist. Similarly, Blair’s rise began in the 1980s, when many aspiring Labour politicians like him chose to defect to the rival, centrist SDP, rather than remain with a Labour party that became increasingly left-wing under Michael Foot. Unlike them, Blair remained with the party and his “Left conformity” smoothed his quick ascent of the party’s leadership - it was only subsequently that he turned Labour into the more centrist New Labour, thus shaping the majority that he had previously joined.
If balanced properly, leaders can have a significant impact. Abraham Lincoln epitomised this during a Presidential tenure cut short by his assassination, in which he nonetheless won the US civil war and abolished slavery. Initially, Lincoln framed the civil war as a defence of the union, and only issued the Emancipation Proclamation halfway through, because he knew that many Americans considered the union worth fighting for, but far fewer would support a war against slavery. Mitterrand and Blair are similarly remembered for the dramatic impact they had on their societies.
At the same time, leaders have to be careful not to spend too much of their time bending to the ideas of others. Blair’s biggest mistake in government was a hasty rally to the star-spangled banner over Iraq, following 9/11. By immediately rallying to George W. Bush’s alliance against the ‘axis of evil’, Blair undermined his own ability to influence the American analysis of the situation in the Middle East, and followed the US into a misjudged war.
Seizing the initiative whilst managing it
What struck me whilst reading the book - and was confirmed during the discussion - was how much emphasis political leaders place on dominating the landscape. Doing so wins the leader momentum, turns them into a dynamic force, and is all-round an important tactic.
Some of these examples seem quite natural to us; we can understand why leaders did what they did to seize the initiative. Political rebrands, such as Blair’s New Labour, fall into this ‘easy-to-understand’ category, as does Narendra Modi’s strong prioritisation of his digital brand, epitomised by the Official Modi App. It’s from this angle that we understand Thatcher’s embrace of the Falklands War.
Other decisions are more incredulous. Fed up by Charles de Gaulle’s regular and frequent escape from assassination attempts, whose survival looked increasingly like it was mandated by God, Mitterrand faked an assassination attempt on himself to steal the limelight.
Lyndon B. Johnson’s masterly start to his presidency in the chaotic aftermath of JFK’s own assassination is instructive. Distrusted by his own party as the Vice-President was sworn in, Johnson could easily have become a lame, stop-gap President in 1963. Not if he was going to have a say on it. Just four days after taking office, Johnson found his tool to assert his authority in a very minor piece of legislation that would have banned the sale of US wheat to Russia. It was about to be passed in the Senate, but Johnson turned the bill, which would have curtailed presidential powers in foreign affairs, into an issue of confidence in him personally. Leveraging the need for constitutional order at this time of crisis, he cajoled US Senators into defeating the motion by a convincing 57 votes to 36.
Now everyone knew who was in charge, Martin Luther King included, who rallied strongly to the new President. Barely two months into his tenure, LBJ launched his “war on poverty” and set in motion his legislative agenda for the “great society”, including passing the Civil Rights Bill six months later. With an urgent, compelling programme, LBJ’s administration was secure and strong, and the President won a landslide to be re-elected later in 1964.
However, an instinctive desire to seize centre stage can easily overplay: leaders have to be just as mindful to manage the momentum that they create, to avoid being swept away by it. Eight years after Margaret Thatcher’s clambered atop a tank for her infamous Falklands photo-op, she forced through her divisive property tax reform and saw her polls tank all on their own; she was swiftly removed by her own party once they realised she had got irrevocably swept away by her neoliberal vision. Similarly, Johnson sought to show American strength around the world which led him to send half a million American soldiers to get bogged down in Vietnam. The art is to seize the initiative whilst managing it.
Balancing realism with idealism
Leadership is as much about what you think as about what you do, and how you choose to see the world plays a fundamental part in the personas of political leaders in any context. Of Roy Jenkins, who played a key role in the legalisation of homosexuality and abortion in 1967, later to become Chancellor, President of the European Commission, and co-founder of the SDP, Andrew writes that “his political genius grew out of his personality”.
It’s true that everyone is different, but the blend of realism and idealism crops up time and time again. Germany’s new Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is notoriously measured and realistic, but at the same time is a very effective social democratic reformer. Amongst his accomplishments as mayor of Hamburg (2011-18) include abolishing tuition fees, greatly expanding free healthcare, and deepening 116km of the river Elbe to maintain Hannover’s status as a world-leading port. Realism and idealism make such an important balance because you need your idealism to inspire and build momentum, as well as your realism to get your votes and get things done.
When we think about LBJ’s ‘Great Society’ and his hard-nosed tactics in Congress, it’s clear to see how both of these traits have a role. It also overlaps with a very similar balance, the one between being easy-going and driven. As well as making you appear cheery and likable, being easy-going can also make people underestimate you, so you take them by surprise when you show them you drive (à la Blair and Boris Johnson).
Political leadership is certainly an art, but we can still learn from dissecting it like a science. Learning precisely what those arts are and exploring the tactics and strategies that political leaders use can offer lessons which are applicable beyond the political spectrum. Quite how we go about doing that will have to be the subject of future podcasts and blogs.