Does ability matter in politics?
We talk endlessly about our leaders' characteristics, but we rarely seem to ask: can they actually do the job they want so badly?
Every time an opinion poll emerges in this country, showing the prime minister, Boris Johnson, leagues ahead of his opponent, Sir Keir Starmer, there is the usual incredulity—not just on the Left—that Johnson’s bumbling persona and apparent lack of executive skill or focus can be so richly rewarded by the public. He is not a man who ever staked his reputation on competence: after all, one of the defining images of his London mayoralty was him stuck half-way down a zip wire, suspended motionless and waving Union flags. It was a stunt gone wrong, yet it suited him. He grinned through adversity and made the mishap a triumph.
Starmer is a different matter. After Jeremy Corbyn’s turbulent reign as leader of the Opposition, many Labour Party members wanted a ‘safe pair of hands’, someone who would get the basic things right and avoid blunders like muttering “I don’t think this is a good idea” to an aide as photographers filed in to the room, or being found to associate with deeply unpleasant and sinister terror groups and dictators. Sir Keir would be that captain of a steady ship: he was a QC, had been director of public prosecutions—unusually in current British politics, he had done a ‘proper job’.
This has not proved a trend. Sadiq Khan has recently been re-elected mayor of London after a five-year term which has, even to the most generous observer, hardly demonstrated his sure administrative grip. In the cabinet, Gavin Williamson remains in office despite turning the examination system into an extended, slow-motion car crash; Brandon Lewis is still secretary of state for Northern Ireland after admitting openly that the government intended to break international law, and overseeing a dysfunctional executive in Belfast that is paralysed by sectarian hostility.
In America, the picture is perhaps more nuanced. Joe Biden was elected president in part because he was ‘dependable’, after two terms as Barack Obama’s vice-president; but that is only in comparison to the wildly erratic Donald Trump, and, in any case, Biden’s Beltway reputation was as a gaffe-prone klutz, dating back at least to the plagiarism which derailed his first run at the presidential nomination in 1988. He fulfilled a certain niche in US politics, the affable, approachable senator who maybe isn’t a first-rate intellectual but does his duty and reflects, in a way, the mediocrity which is such a feature of human society. But president of the United States?
Last summer I wrote a piece for Worth on the selection of a president of the United States. I argued that it was unthinkable that an executive search team would produce two candidates for a leading position in business like Trump and Biden. I knew it was fanciful but I tried to pick away at why, exactly, such a country as America, with its 330 million citizens, had come to such an unsatisfactory binary choice. Of course a recruitment agency is not the same as a political party, let alone an electorate, but it should, surely, be a Venn diagram rather than two distinct and separate circles.
In the UK, the choice is in some ways even more limited: when selecting a prime minister, it is a contest between two party leaders, each of whom has been chosen from a pool of around 300 Members of Parliament. So there are several stages of narrowing down the choice. Even the contest for leader of the Conservative Party in 2019, which was unusually fiercely fought, only featured ten people, with another handful joining the race in the early stages before dropping out. The final round was a run-off between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, and Hunt was largely a cipher for ‘anyone but Boris’. So the choice was a personal and ideological one. Competence was rarely discussed.
It is fair to ask how an electorate would gauge candidates’ competence and ability. Many senior politicians—David Cameron is perhaps the best example—have very little experience away from politics, and many party leaders (Blair, Cameron, Corbyn, Starmer) come to their role without having held any executive office. Johnson, of course, had been mayor of London (in which role he was a good ambassador for the capital but achieved little else) and foreign secretary (where he was adjudged one of the worst in living memory), but was elected because of his exuberant personality and stance on Brexit.
Still, it should not be impossible to make at least some assessment. Theresa May had served as home secretary for six years, an extraordinary stint in a punishing job often regarded as a career graveyard, but her record, which was weak, was rarely adduced. Gordon Brown had put in a decade as chancellor of the exchequer, with some notable successes, but was unchallenged for the leadership of the Labour Party, despite some feints by David Miliband. The electors simply didn’t seem very interested.
Perhaps it is a symptom of a desire on the part of politicians to distance themselves from painful executive decisions. In the UK, the 1980s and 1990s saw many functions of government spun off to arm’s-length agencies; not only was this done in the pursuit of efficiency, but politicians also discovered that they could not be blamed for poor decisions made by public servants and quangos. This, of course, led to some inevitable clashes, such as that between Tory home secretary Michael Howard and director-general of HM Prison Service, Derek Lewis, which was cruelly exposed in the media.
This may change. In the US, state governors always have an advantage in presidential races in that they have actually run a substantial organisation—think of Carter, Clinton or Bush Jr—and the mayoralty of a major city like New York, Chicago or Los Angeles could also be a springboard to greater office. We may start to see this reflected in the UK as metro mayors, elected by popular vote to govern their cities, prove their worth and build a series of achievements to which they can point. Andy Burnham, for example, has revived a career left moribund in 2015 by election as mayor of Greater Manchester. He is now seen as a leading candidate to succeed Sir Keir Starmer, as is Sadiq Khan. Equally, Ben Houchen, in the Tees Valley, and Andy Street (West Midlands) have elbowed their way to prominence in the Conservative Party by being demonstrably successful civic leaders.
We, the voters, must take our share of responsibility. We get the leaders we deserve, and we need to place a greater emphasis on competence insofar as it can be demonstrated. Can the man or woman putting themselves forward for office, especially the highest office, actually do the job? Have they achieved significant policy successes, changed their parts of the world for the better, implemented good ideas? The media, too, the instrument through which we scrutinise our leaders, must ask the right questions: what have you done? Why was x a success, why was y a failure? Why, in effect, should we believe you can fulfil any of the promises you make?
Plato, describing his ideal “philosopher-king” in The Republic, wanted a leader who was a “true pilot [who] must of necessity pay attention to the seasons, the heavens, the stars, the winds, and everything proper to the craft if he is really to rule a ship”, and we know what he meant. We are short of philosopher-kings these days, and our disdain for intellectuals does not help (Lord Salisbury’s dismissal of the brilliant Iain Macleod as “too clever by half” still has potency).
This is not a plea for technocrats, though Ben Judah’s profile of Mario Draghi in the May edition of The Critic is well worth reading. Of course ideology is still important, and we want a leader who is consonant with our world view, who ‘gets’ what we want and the kind of world we want to live in. The ongoing culture wars only throw that into sharper relief. But it is surely only the most committed loyalist in most major parties, Conservative or Labour, Democrat or Republican, CDU or Green, La République En Marche! or Socialist, who would negate the nagging question: surely we can do better than this?
§§§§
A short plug: if anyone is interested in keeping up-to-date with my thoughts and pronouncements on all subjects, they are helpfully collected on my Authory page. Do sign up and let me populate your inbox further.
§§§§
One more plug: I am one of the founding editors of CulturAll, a journal which examines arts and culture through the lens of public policy. If you haven’t already, please do have a look, and it too has a newsletter to which you can subscribe. It’s not all me!