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In the first few weeks of the coalition, I overheard someone ask Theresa May if she was enjoying being Home Secretary. She paused and replied: “I’m glad I’m doing it.” Having watched her as Prime Minister, we’re all now familiar with her particular brand of purposeful but joyless energy. Duty, honour and blind tedium. May paved the way for her successor by proving once and for all that a Prime Minister needs to enjoy the job to be good at it.
So along came Boris. Many people argued about whether he’d be a decent PM, but no one doubted he’d have a riot in the top job. After all: he’d rioted and partied his way through a host of jobs that most people take seriously yet had never come to much harm. He’d spent his whole life aspiring to the highest office, so even if he didn’t read his briefs, or bungled Brexit, at least he would bounce into Downing Street with vim, vigour and vitality — and we could all feel just a touch of vicarious pleasure watching him.
And yet it didn’t happen. The Boris we see is a pale tribute act of the one we knew. He doesn’t look like he’s enjoying the job. He doesn’t even look like he’s glad to be doing it. He’s finally realised what I imagine Theresa May was thinking in that pause before she spoke: this is bloody difficult.
First: the hours. You have a full working day of meetings, then most nights of the week you pop into a reception for worthy people somewhere in the building, or a dinner for your donors. Then you go home to a red box full of papers that need to be read, decided upon, and signed, by morning. You can limit the meetings, you can do your box at 6am instead of 11pm, you can make sure not to attend more than one dinner a day, you can set rules to make sure your papers are brief and make sense before they get to you. But that’s the way to make this a 60-hour-a-week job, instead of 90. You are always on. You are always thinking. There will always be a crisis for which you are unprepared.
Next: the people. You don’t get to pick the people you want. Yes, you get special advisers. But most of your civil servants are new and unfamiliar. More importantly, your Cabinet are the people you had to appoint, not the competent, coherent senior leadership team you’d appoint if government were a business. So you will spend most of your time navigating, cajoling and manipulating people you probably despise.
The people you like, who do the things you ask, won’t get face time, because you’re too busy. An example: David Cameron spent endless hours trying to keep Iain Duncan Smith inside the tent, far too many of them scrutinising the microscopic details of welfare policy he didn’t give two hoots about.
Third: the place and its puritan rules. Our Prime Minister is well paid, by any normal measure. And yet the job requires you to circulate among CEOs and billionaires who would spend your annual salary on a single party — which would make even the most abstemious of us feel hard done by at least occasionally.
On top of that, we have ludicrously guidelines about what the Prime Minister has to be charged for: no free breakfasts or catered lunch at your desk. Everything will be charged to your account. Your diary secretary will probably keep your credit card on her or his desk ready to pay for all manner of trivialities, because God forbid you get a sandwich off the taxpayer. In my first week in government there was a nice man who came around with coffee to people’s desks, but he was got rid of. The cafetieres were put away and only cracked out once a week for Cabinet.
Finally, and of course most importantly, is the responsibility. In normal times, that will include military decisions where lives will be lost and you yourself will call the bereaved parents to console them. Welfare decisions where your choices will make the difference to how many families can make their rent and keep the heating on. Economic choices that will topple or turbo boost livelihoods. Policing decisions that will keep terrorists on or off the streets.
And then along comes a pandemic where the life and death decisions happen not just every day but every hour. You have to be a remarkable person to be able to take those kind of decisions at all without crumbling.
I’ve chosen the word “remarkable” quite deliberately. I don’t mean likeable or even admirable, in a conventional sense.
I remember Nick Clegg being astonished at the speed and facility with which David Cameron made his decision about withdrawing troops from Afghanistan. In the face of unknowable risks on either side, Cameron thought about it overnight, and then he simply decided and moved on. Now, I like Nick Clegg a lot more than I ever liked David Cameron, and yet Cameron’s lightness — his ability not to get bogged down in the uncertainty — made him better at the job than Nick was.
Moral philosophers debate what they call the “trolley problem”. You imagine a heavy trolley racing down a track towards a group of five people. It will kill them. There are points on the track, and if you pull a lever, you can divert the trolley to a track where it will only kill one person. Do you pull the lever? Most people say yes. The next stage is to consider whether you would push a fat man — heavy enough to stop the trolley — onto the tracks. The net result is the same: one death instead of five. And yet most people say no.
The general lesson is that it’s only when separated from the visceral realities of our actions that we are able to do what utilitarianism would say is the correct thing: we can kill with a lever, or a button, but to shove a warm, living body to its death is a step too far. But when I think about what I would do if confronted with a real life trolley problem, the lesson I take is different.
I think I would pull the lever. I might push the fat man, too: I don’t know. But I do know that even pulling the lever would haunt me forever, and that’s one of the reasons why I would be a poor prime minister. Some of the decisions you take in Number 10 literally involve deciding who will live or die. But even the ordinary day-to-day decisions require you to make trade-offs. You are always choosing between the one and the five. And if the guilt about the suffering of that one person paralyses you, then you are doomed.
That doesn’t mean our leaders should aspire to Stalin-hood: to be so closed off to the reality of the suffering they cause for some supposed greater good that they allow tens of millions to perish. I simply believe that a great Prime Minister must be able to take a cool, utilitarian view of costs and benefits. If they couldn’t then the burden of office would be too great to bear.
Which brings us back to fun. It’s the ability to carry the burden lightly that allows a great Prime Minister to have fun, even at the darkest hour. A great Prime Minister is someone for whom responsibility itself is a drug: someone who feels the hand of history on their shoulder, whose narcissistic sense of themselves is actually boosted by working hard, taking tough decisions and shaping the lives and deaths of millions of citizens. Someone who looks at a crisis and says: cometh the hour, cometh me.
We have seen some of that chutzpah from President Macron, who hasn’t done a particularly good job of controlling Covid, and yet even when he speaks of lessons learned and personal humility, he seems to exude the confident certainty that this was his manifest destiny. Along with Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon and New Zealand’s Jacinda Arden, Macron gives the impression he is grateful to have been leader at this moment of direst need, because his country needs, very specifically, him. Of course: these are narcissistic delusions. It doesn’t make these people good company. But it makes them good leaders.
The great mystery is why Boris Johnson, a man who was at the front of the queue when narcissism and chutzpah were handed out, is so different. He appears miserable in the face of responsibility. His people brief that Covid got in the way of his plans, and bleat about the unfairness of the hand he was dealt. He’s good at the fun stuff, they argue: the sunlit uplands and the boosterism. Pandemics aren’t really his style.
But how can a man whose hero is Winston Churchill be so turned off by a crisis? Did he not read his own biography of the man — The Churchill Factor — in which he outlines quite how much hard work it was to fight the Second World War? It’s as if Boris got so dazzled by the idea that a great prime minister could also be a drinker and an orator and an egotist and a Nobel-prize winning writer, that he forgot these were just the added extras — the icing, not the cake. And so he spent the formative years of his life learning cake-decorating skills instead of baking.
And so the country is stuck with a miserable prime minister, with neither the energy nor the diligence to figure out how to do the job well. If Boris is going to make a comeback, he’ll need to channel the whole of Churchill — the sense of duty as well as the sense of fun.
Polly Mackenzie is Director of Demos, a leading cross-party think tank. She served as Director of Policy to the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-2015.
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SubscribeThe answer is obvious. Only people with a vision for the country would want to be and make a good prime minister. The has only been one in my lifetime – Margaret Thatcher.
It was cool to hate Thatcher when I was a kid. But the older I get the more I realise what a giant she was and lament that we may never see her like again.
God preserve us from people with ‘visions’.
Interesting read. The number of western leaders that truly seem to be exceptional seems limited. Perhaps it was always thus. I’m not sure the crop of 1933-9 were that exceptional. I’ve never understood why Nicola Surgeon is so well regarded. She’s a brilliant TV performer. But she’s going to find being a nationalistic leader of a devolved administration much easier than leading a small and heavily indebted nation if it ever becomes independent. I suspect we won’t see her for dust. Macron loves being President. He’s vain, contemptuous of ordinary people and loathed by many in France. Maybe Sunak will be our best bet.
Why on earth do you think narcissists are good leaders? Cometh the hour come the right bloody decision and the guts to be principled, not the decision that trys to portray you in the best light. Narcissists are awful leaders we should treat them like the personality disordered disasters that they are.
Never appoint anyone who is ambitious. Their ambition means they are unsuitable for leadership. The Uk system of the ambitious (flawed people who never appoint anyone who might be a threat) appointing amateur untrained unqualified ministers to run huge departments of state- is ludicrous- and it has not worked in the last 100 years.
It does seem silly that the Prime Minister can’t get a catered lunch at his desk. The cost would be inconsequential, but the consequences of a hangry Prime Minister could be costly.
In fairness, Boris walked into the mess of Brexit, which would have been one of the most challenging periods to be Prime Minister in recent times on its own. He then had a once-in-a-century pandemic blow in from nowhere, got sick to the point of death himself, and seems to have a difficult personal life on top of it. Not many people would be bubbling with joie de vivre under such circumstances.
I bet he is finding it painful. It is a growing up process for him. He is on a steep learning curve. If he absorbs, processes and matures, he has the making of a good PM. If he buckles, he is out. All people are a mixture of talents and faults. If his cabinet can mitigate some of his faults then it can work.
How can he have the makings of a good prime minister? He has already failed to the point of no return. When this is all over he will be measured by the relative death count which will be a testament to the degree of his failure and his inability to deal with the factions in the Conservative party and get them pulling in the same direction. But the real failures will be Cameron and May who didn’t develop a pre-written strategy to deal with a pandemic. They will of course come out of it almost unscathed. What really bothers me is who is going to replace Boris? That is really worrying.
No one had a written strategy to deal with a pandemic. Except the East, from past experience. You seem to forget the only way a virus spreads is by close contact – he didn’t want to be a despot, he had to trust in the people and some of them are pretty stroppy. We are out of the “Union” with a deal and are leading Europe in vaccinations. So maybe my instincts were right.
Congratulations. That is an excellent essay about leadership – particularly in politics – and about Boris’s problem with it.
Justin Trudeau seems unbothered by such weight. Of course, Justin hasn’t written books as Boris has. Not sure if Justin has read books. Dumbness helps.
Trudeau is also unbothered by the three ethical strikes made against him by the Canadian parliamentary standards committee or whatever they’re called. I guess ‘three strikes and you’re out’ only applies to young black men in the US. Whatever, politicians are made of different stuff to the vast majority of people, being completely devoid of shame or conscience.
People vote those politicians to power
Yes they do but only because there is nothing better on offer. Sadly the majority of our politicians seem to have come out of the same mould when it comes to standards of personal integrity.
Boris is a populist who jumped on a particular bandwagon as a means to an end. He is now at the sharp end of having to steer that wagon at a most unfavourable point in time. Perhaps he’d jump a different way with hindsight.
He must also surely know, like the rest of us, that the Conservative party as a body is extremely utilitarian. Boris was made leader for the purpose of winning back a large majority. Job done, and he’s now absolutely dispensable. It’s not a question of if but when. And that will be when it’s safe for the next person in to roll their eyes over Covid and Brexit, imply they would have done differently, and hope the blame and shame stays Boris. Not that I feel the least bit of sympathy for him – it’s the price to be paid when one’s ambition outweighs one’s ability.
“Boris is a populist”
Really? He has to appear that way to please the press (which is the modern equivalent of the Inquisition), but I have my sincere doubts about that.
Well, he has had a very nasty viral infection, and that’s bound to knock some of the panache out of him.
But more importantly, the way in which political leaders and contenders are recruited seems to ensure that the wrong type of person is attracted. When we had some sort of governing elite, Lord Ponsonby’s son got a job in politics because he was the son of Lord Ponsonby. He might be introverted or extraverted, intelligent or stupid, virtuous or vicious. Now we have more of a meritocracy, the people who get to the top are all alike: they have those characteristics which are good at getting you to the top. Which means that there is no guarantee that they will be any good when they get there. It’s like expecting people who are good at climbing pillars to be like Simeon Stylites, and be able to thrive when they are up there. Boris is miserable because he is no longer engaged in his favourite game of winning power, or gaining a position through audacious displays of charm and calculated bumbling. None of them in the past 30 years have really enjoyed it, but part of Boris’s charm is that he wears his heart on his sleeve and his attempts to dissemble are so childish.
Boris’s big problem is not mentioned until the final paragraph – diligence.
I imagine you mean lack of. Yes, he doesn’t seem to like the details but he is a good front man and will have to leave the “diligence” to others. Theresa May had diligence in buckets but no authority, no charisma, no backbone. The EU walked all over her.
“Duty, honour and blind tedium. May paved the way for her successor by proving once and for all that a Prime Minister needs to enjoy the job to be good at it.” Ah, Polly, don’t ever change!
The crazy standards will only attract crazy people. Something about the public school indoctrinated mindset of needing to rule the country helps. Johnson is a reflection, not of who we need, but who is able to do the job. People like Johnson don’t complain because being able to shoulder this responsibility is their USP, their competitive advantage, why make the system easier to encourage more competition? There is the same argument about psychopaths, being able to be more rational in the face of pressure and many leaders have this psychopathic trait. The problem comes if they act too quickly, doesn’t worry force you to weight up actions and consequences better. A lot people look at Trump as someone who can put up with abuse, but he seems incapable of caring enough about things to change. I feel like you need to care enough about things, to have principles, to actually make a change. Trump is able to shoulder the responsibility but he will never be able to make real changes because he doesn’t care enough. Obama may well have been the opposite, if his writing is to be believed.
Some leaders of NHS Trusts, local councils, university VCs and even the leader of Scotland’s pretendy parliament get paid more than the UK PM.
Nice article
It might be a miserable job, but there is a consolation. Think of the generous life pension, the perks of sitting in corporate boardrooms and speaking tours afterwards. Several past prime minsters, especially Tony Blair, have done very well.
Boris has been handed a country with strong Marxist indoctrination and with a
Pandemic on, he is trying to give us a better world, we need to start by
teaching people to love their country internally as we leave the terrible EU.
I think it is not just a defence of Boris, it is true that Boris was dealt a
bit of a poisoned chalice with what we should call by its real name: The
Marxist China Virus. Another set of Marxist mistakes inflicted on the world, a
few more deaths to add to the biblical Marxist genocides of the massive Marxist
Empires which are never mentioned as such in our “free” world every
time more controlled by Marxist politically correct ideology.
This virus wrote for Boris a good part of his premiership. Boris has an
ideology which thrives on freedom but is now forced to limit freedoms in a
Marxist way and to spend in the same fashion, forcing nothing but state
intervention, to lose freedom for to gain future freedom and future life
eventually. Corbyn offered Boris a copy of his manifesto when he saw what was
going on and what Boris had to do.
Boris gets the blame for the virus dead when many of us refused to “be
careful” and journalists would come up with somebody living on a limit of
constituencies or whatever making silly claims of what should they do when they were asking us for simple things like “be alert”. On the other hand, while recognising the huge sacrifice of health workers all over the world and in our Kingdom, we say nothing about the “sacred cow” the NHS, which has skeletons in the cupboard of both babies and old people and a lot of others. This is true and must be said. We must look at merit not at
Marxism. I started looking at the numbers affected by the virus and those which
died and simply dividing infected / dead in the UK gave a number like 7 while
Germany was close to 15 an Japan / Taiwan (right next to the source!) above 20!
We need to get rid of a lot of “politically correct” conceptions such as the sanctity of the NHS. We need to look at “merit” and to look in to NHS cost and comparative effectiveness. All countries had PPE problems, that is not the only problem. Boris needs to return the NHS to a good value service all round.
We have big problems of law and order, real challenges. For example to allow the Marxists to attack “stop and search” every time it gets under way and when it starts saving lives, how can you find knives if you don’t look for knives, the Marxists would want us to show that we are “not racists” by stopping white grannies? We must look at merit Who are the victims, who are the criminals that must be the only condition which must be considered not “Marxist political correctness”. We need Boris to recover our law and order as it should be and is so important. If necessary copy successful immigration policies for law and order sake from nations like Japan.
Boris has a lot to work on but he promised to do so and is trying to do the right things tackling Marxist problems in Education (ideas taught to children),
Judiciary undermining the State, Civil Service etc. Boris is trying to restore the damage done to our society inflicted by Marxism which ended turning Parliament in to “a disgrace”, giving away our sovereignty, destroying our Empire and our union. It was OUR ideology and OUR Empire which made so many places people are prepared to die in order to get in. All our past greatness is being attacked all the time and at every turn by the Marxists
colonising Eaton, Oxford and Cambridge. These Marxists seem to defend Marxism
which made so many places so many people have been prepared to die if necessary
in order to get out of.
Decolonise? Look at decolonised Rhodesia, the “bread basket of Africa” now Zimbabwe which doesn’t only not produce all the food it used produce, not only that, they are killing themselves as never before but they are also consuming 3.5 billion dollars in foreign aid, mostly food! Should these people be allowed to inflict such a loss of the resource potential of all mankind? The Marxists in Westminster want MORE foreign aid for these terrible regimes which they left behind and they want us to let in all the failures of decolonization that turn up at our borders! The Marxists gave up our sovereignty we can fix nothing by giving money to the corrupt.
There are so many things which don’t make any sense today in the UK, all this seems
to show that our education system is really colonized not by “colonial” British values which did mostly positive things for mankind but by Marxist values which are the source and cause of biblical genocide! Our “clever people” are defending the nightmare of Marxism while they attack our superior ideology which has been so good and has been even better where it was kept pure! What is going on is really mind blowing. These people are supposed to be our references and they are all at sea! .
Boris has not had much to say about the extreme attack on everything British and English, for example I speak of the attack of our flag on the Cenotaph, but we must give him time for that and to get his bearings. If our nation is ever going to be a great nation it must be first sure about itself. If Boris addresses successfully this internal decay he will be one of the greatest prime ministers, the one who turned around what was started in 1945..If he fails the prophesies of Enoch Powell may well come to pass.
Boris will be one of the greatest if he subordinates all our UK values in our society to merit, and gets rid of those trying to condition our values for a variety of different reasons from inside and outside the UK..
Yes Prime Minister seemed to argue that the PM doesn’t actually have to do as much as some have.
I doubt whether Boris is fully well after his brush with Covid.
You mention Churchill, but you could have more easily mentioned someone more recent who Boris is a huge admirer of and was certainly born to be a great leader. Margaret Thatcher, “cometh the moment, cometh the Woman” indeed
What makes a great prime minister? Who knows? We haven’t had one for more than half a century.
If the person is under a tremendous workload, then the first thing you do is “delegate and disappear”. Employ those who can make a go of doing the job you have given them. If you can’t do this, for whatever reason, the job of leader shouldn’t be yours. If you haven’t got a system of bringing genuinely good people forward, change the system.
If your system to bringing people through the ranks creates second rate leaders, then again, change the system. Stop recruiting yet another well-bred Oxbridge PPE minion for a position of greatness.
Should the salary be raised to bring forward good people? Lots of people can make things happen when all those under the organisation are under your direct control and leadership.
Creating an efficient tight ship when those around you aren’t that good, or are backstabbers, or have “issues” and they also have to deal with an absolutely savage media, trawling through their past 20 years of twitter and social media messages, and maybe even personal emails. For £80k as an MP, and the extra bits as cabinet minister https://assets.publishing.s…
Rather them than me.
So speaks a lib dem
Rather than discussing the various pros and cons of the personality of the Prime Minister (wholly irrelevant), shouldn’t we really be examining the much larger (and rarely addressed) question of what politics and politicians are supposed to be there for? What is their ‘job’?
This well-written piece is not looking so clever in April 2021 as it did at the end of December. The big difference is the vaccination programme. Boris has a spring in his step once more.