Don’t bother taking me to your leader

It has become commonplace to suggest that political life is going through some kind of drawn-out crisis of confidence. We have little faith in the ability of leaders to deliver anything, particularly leadership. Not that this situation is new, leaders have always been a mixed bunch, but now we seem to expect more and leadership has not kept pace with those expectations.

Leadership itself seems to be one of those ideals we hold on to without quite accepting it for what it is. It is an ideal, a model aspiration rather than some reality we are likely to see in the messy complexities of real life. It is a somewhat simple ideal of course and simple ideals have the virtue of being democratic simply because they are accessible.

Unfortunately as with so many simple ideals the undoubted virtue of simplicity is outweighed by our inability to fit the ideal into our non-ideal world, the one we have to live in and understand if we are to live successfully. We are unable to find leaders to match the ideal and almost inevitably our confused attempts to find them tend to throw up candidates who may be willing but are always less than ideal.

Indeed they tend to fall so deplorably short of the ideal that we pretend to be shocked at their blatant incapacity. We expand on our fake shock by calling for something to be done without choosing to notice that our leadership ideal is hardly likely to exist in any reality, let alone ours with all its irreconcilable temptations, pitfalls and outright impossibilities.

Maybe leadership was fine and dandy as an ideal for less complex worlds where a few good leaders helped make up for a procession of also-rans mixed in with the inevitable bad apples, bunglers and maniacs. However we cannot start from there but are stuck with the here and now and things are not going well. We think, or rather we must pretend to think it is all the leader’s fault and another leader would make a better fist of things, particularly as those at the head of the queue are constantly assuring us of their ability to do the job. Subtly assuring us of course – as subtly as a poke in the eye but that is politics too.

We live complex lives in complex environments which are not becoming, nor are they likely to become appreciably simpler. Not within any realistic political time frame. Modern leaders are not even close to mastering a fraction of that complexity and even though they have hordes of advisers and bureaucrats to digest the complexity, it is still too complex for a single individual. Even an executive summary is no good if the executive does not even have the background to know what is being summarised and what may be missing from the summary. Dumbing down only takes us so far. The same goes for leaders. They are only human as we know too well, so why stick with an ideal which requires them to be far more than human?

Why stick with the ideal?

That’s easy – leaders have evolved into useful distractions, expendable political facades. Even the EU feels bound to offer up a pretend leader in the comically inadequate person of Jean-Claude Juncker, as if aiming to expunge the old ideal of leadership in favour of the facade. That is probably what we are now stuck with - hence May and Corbyn. Don’t expect anything better seems to be the message.

Suspect packages

No it doesn't refer to a brown trouser reaction by the assembled poseurs. Pity.

Depression over Derbyshire

At the moment I’m reading a book mentioned by erudite commenter Sam Vega - Tom Bower's book - Broken Vows: Tony Blair The Tragedy of Power.

When Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997, he was, at forty-three, the youngest to hold that office since 1812. With a landslide majority, his approval rating was 93 per cent and he went on to become Labour's longest-serving premier. So what went wrong?

With unprecedented access to more than 180 Whitehall officials, military officers and politicians, Tom Bower has uncovered the full story of Blair's decade in power. He has followed Blair's trail from his resignation, since which he has built a remarkable empire advising tycoons and tyrants. The result is the political thriller of the year, illuminating the mystery of an extraordinary politician who continues to fascinate to this day.

This post isn’t a book review because I haven’t finished it yet, but early impressions are depressing. The book itself is excellent and well worth reading unless you are a Blair fan, but neither of those is likely to read it anyway. However, as a reminder of the Blair years it raises neither the spirit nor my already decrepit faith in democracy.

Anyone over a certain age will remember the Blair years and so far Bower's book is a highly concentrated reminder of just how dire they were. The shallowness, the absurd expectations, the dishonesty and the manipulated narratives - it pours from the pages in an unrelenting torrent of ghastliness. 

What about the Blair lessons though? Don't elect a crazy prime minister is the obvious one but there are many others. For example we might conclude that democratic party politics is broken and Blair is all the evidence we need. Our expectations are far too high and we voters are not doing enough to raise political standards by electing people rather than parties. That is an obvious starter but one could still go on forever about lessons the Blair years should have taught us but probably haven't.

Yet maybe we should put the more obvious mess to one side and ask - how deliberate is political failure? Are we subtle enough to nudge situations towards failure when we benefit from it? Suppose we recast the question into another obvious one – does political failure tend to suit the establishment? Additionally, why do so many major political actors survive their obvious inadequacies and prosper for decades both inside and outside politics?

In a broad sense, government failures create more bureaucratic and political business because sooner or later damaging situations have to be corrected. We see it whenever governments have to rebuild confidence after yet another debacle. Each rebuild leads to more bureaucratic business and more roles for those political actors who survive - and many do survive the most abject debacles. The narrative moves on as it must - all actors know the show must go on.

Under the protective umbrella of government, those who fail often make new roles for themselves in spite of failing in the old role, especially if they exert significant control over mainstream narratives. This was characteristic of the Blair years where failed initiatives were pushed into the background by new initiatives and they in turn were supplanted by even newer initiatives.

Behind the headlines, government is mostly business as usual. Political initiatives tend to fail when they interfere with the machine because government bureaucracy has to make sure they fail in order to protect the machine. When we have hyperactive political actors intent on reform, then failures occur on a grander scale and it is up to the narrative spinners to make the best of it. Eventually it all becomes too obvious and even the spinners are overwhelmed. Such were the Blair years.

Depressing but possibly not the nadir of British politics. Corbyn will probably be worse.

A leading example speaks out

From the BBC

Labour MP Harriet Harman has told BBC News that the string of allegations of sexual abuse and harassment against MPs is not a witch hunt.

She said: "There are a lot of men saying this has been blown out of all proportion, it's a witch hunt. No, it's not a witch hunt, it's long overdue."

From Wikipedia

Harman was born Harriet Ruth Harman at 108 Harley Street in London, to Anna Harman (née Spicer), a solicitor, married to a Harley Street physician John Bishop Harman. Her parents each had non-conformist backgrounds – her grandfather, an ophthalmic surgeon Nathaniel Bishop Harman, was a prominent Unitarian and the Spicer family were well known Congregationalists. Her aunt was Elizabeth Pakenham, Countess of Longford, and her cousins include writers Lady Antonia Fraser, Rachel Billington, and Thomas Pakenham. Harman is a great-great niece of Joseph Chamberlain and is also related to Richard Chamberlain.

The link

As a rule, men’s station determines their occupation without their gifts determining their station. Thus stifled ability in the lower orders, and apathy or pampered incapacity in the higher, unite to deprive society of its natural leaders.

George Santayana - The Life of Reason (1905-1906)

Quietly rusting away

This is what remains of the Hopton Wood Winding Engine, quietly rusting away by the High Peak Trail. But is it art? I wonder. 

See below for more details.

Do people screw up deliberately?

 Following on from the previous post, do some people screw things up deliberately if –

There is no chance of carrying the can for it.

Potentially harmful change is nudged towards failure.

The nudge is virtually undetectable anyway.

Picking up the pieces will keep the show on the road.

So do organisation folk screw things up deliberately, especially if they don’t have to admit to themselves that screwing up is what they are doing? Especially if colleagues screw up too?

The pedants are not revolting

Our current cascade of tedious Brexit stories does at least remind us that one of the great public sector techniques is pedantry. For all I know it may be just as useful in the private sector, but in the public sector it is impossible to move without encountering it. That of course is the point.

An analogy is climbing hills while out walking. Go at your own pace and the thing is easily done, but ignore the hill and stay where you are - that's easier and less subject to exposure. The advantage of pedantry is similar – it slows things down to a personally advantageous pace. In many cases that would be a standstill - which is what Brexit is fighting.