In 1964, US Supreme Court Justice, Potter Stewart, famously gave his opinion in a case that revolved in part around what did and did not constitute hard core pornography. ‘I shall not’, he wrote, ‘today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it’.
As for pornography, so for leadership. We all think we know what it is, yet we find it hard to come up with a universally-agreed definition − mainly because our conceptions of what constitutes it are very often subjective and, indeed, contextual. Many British voters, for instance, lionised Winston Churchill as a war leader, but famously decided after the conflict ended in 1945 that he was not the man to ‘win the peace’.
Understanding leadership
Our understanding of what constitutes a good and bad leader is also cultural and even, perhaps, psychological − something that recent research on Britain’s party members certainly seems to suggest.
The Party Members Project based out of Queen Mary University of London and Sussex University has been surveying the members of five political parties since 2015. We did so again just after the 4 July General Election. Having explored extensively both the sociology and ideology of party members, we decided this time to focus on the psychology of membership. And as part of that effort, we included in the survey (one we also fielded to the general public as well as members) a number of questions about leadership, some of which were designed to tap into the so-called dark triad − Machiavellianism, narcissism, and psychopathy.
What we discovered is that there are very significant distinctions between what the members of different parties want from, and expect of, leaders − distinctions which, for the most part, split people who belong to the Reform and Conservative Parties, on the one hand, from those who belong to their ‘progressive’ counterparts, the Liberal Democrats, Labour and the Greens.
We also found that, more often than not, the general public’s views on and expectations of leaders aligned more closely with those held by the members of the progressive parties than they did with those of their right-wing equivalents − not entirely surprisingly perhaps, given that those who voted Labour, Lib Dem, and Green outnumber those who voted Conservative and Reform, but enough maybe to give those on the political right pause for thought about what kind of leadership they should be projecting.
Certainly, it would seem sensible for the Tories’ new leader, Kemi Badenoch, to think long and hard on that score. But so, too, perhaps, should Keir Starmer, who, if his less-than-impressive poll ratings are anything to go by, has hardly got off to a great start as Prime Minister.
Members’ views
So how, then, do the qualities the general public think are important for leaders to demonstrate compare with those of the members of the country’s two largest parties? We began by asking respondents the following question: ‘Which, if any, of the following qualities do you think are most important for a leader to possess?’, allowing them to pick up to three from the list in Table One, which also displays the results in both percentage terms and rank order.
Two things stand out. The first is that when it comes to what is expected in a leader, the public are closer to Labour members than they are to Conservative members. The second is that the overall gap between Labour and Conservative members is huge: we’re not just talking chalk and cheese but Mars and Venus − carnivores and herbivores, even. These very different responses suggest many Labour members have all sorts of reservations and compunctions which many Tory members would regard as unnecessary, indeed positively counterproductive, hangups.
Of course, there are some qualities on which the views of the general public are closer to those of the Tory grassroots than to Labour’s membership. Take, for instance, ‘being able to stand up for the UK in dealing with other countries’. Here the gap between the public and Conservative members (for whom that quality ranks as number one) is only half the size of the gap between the public and Labour members (who rank it way down at number nine).
Yet that gap is smaller than the one that exists between the public and Conservative members when it comes to what the public ranked number one, namely ‘being in touch with ordinary people’ − a quality that Labour members also ranked very highly. Given some of the post-election polling which shows that one of the main reasons for voters deserting the Tories in July was the feeling that ‘they are out of touch with people like me’, this is one that the party’s members and leaders clearly need to rethink.
It is, however, the second stand-out feature of the table that is really striking: it is clearly far more important to Tory members than to Labour members to have a leader who can demonstrate ‘strength and authority’. The Tories ranked this quality at number four compared to number eight for their Labour counterparts, while ‘being able to unite the party’ was also considerably more important to Conservatives. Whether, though, this reflects an underlying preference for hierarchy over equality and unity over dissent, or whether it reflects the state of the two parties in the run up to and during the election (one divided and poorly led, the other disciplined and with a leader firmly in control) is a moot point.
The darker side of leadership
It is when we move on to what we might call the darker side of leadership, that the differences get really big − and, some would say, really revealing. Table Two once again records the responses of the general public and Tory and Labour members. This time they were presented with a series of statements and asked to disagree or agree. The net agreement or disagreement records the gap between those who agreed (or agreed strongly) and those who disagreed (or disagreed strongly).
What stands out is that Tory members are far more inclined than their Labour counterparts (and, indeed the general public) towards self-confident, charismatic, even show-off leaders who regard themselves as exceptional, who are capable of dominating people, occasionally through displays of aggression, and who aren’t afraid to speak bluntly and stir up controversy. They are also more inclined to favour leaders who are ‘prepared to hurt the feelings of others without worrying about the consequences’ and ‘able to manipulate situations to get their way’. Labour members are also much more inclined than their Tory equivalents to reject the idea that ‘Britain needs strong leaders who are prepared to break the rules in order to get things done.’ True, it is important here to note that almost as many Conservative members disagreed with that statement as agreed with it. But, given all the above, their enthusiasm for Boris Johnson and (initially at least) Liz Truss, makes a lot of sense. It should also come as no surprise, perhaps, that, when we surveyed them just after the election, those members most likely to agree with these more controversial statements tended to favour Badenoch − the eventual winner of this autumn’s leadership contest.
Again, while it is tempting (and may well be accurate) to argue that this suggests a fundamental difference between the members of both parties − and one that is even more pronounced if we were to look at the gap between, on one hand, members of an avowedly populist party like Reform (inasmuch as donors to a company can properly be called members) and the Liberal Democrats or the Greens, on the other − we need to enter one or two caveats. The fact that Labour members are clearly uncomfortable with take-no-prisoners, potentially rule-breaking, leaders who stand out from the crowd may well be down, for instance, to greater agreeableness (something we plan to test) or to their inherent egalitarianism (or, to put it more mischievously, their tall-poppy syndrome). But could also be, for example, a long-lasting reaction to Tony Blair or else a desire to reflect the relatively modest, almost self-effacing way that Keir Starmer went about presenting himself as leader of the Opposition.
It’s also important not to run away with the idea from their responses that all ordinary members of the Conservative Party are somehow narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopaths who therefore like leaders who are just like them. For one thing, their responses will seem to some to be merely realistic rather than hopelessly idealistic: to those who believe, albeit in heavily diluted form, in ‘survival of the fittest’ rather than in ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’, politics is inevitably a no-holds-barred sport played by people engaged in a permanently competitive struggle to climb to the top of Disraeli’s now-proverbial greasy pole. This is one reason, along, perhaps, with a degree of respect for plain speaking, why there are a couple of things on which they appear to be no further away from the public than Labour members, such as the need for leaders not to suffer fools gladly and to give as good as they get on social media.
For another, the willingness on the part of Tory members to tolerate the darker side of leadership − something, incidentally, which research suggests might be characteristic of populist voters − only goes so far. True, fewer Conservative than Labour members may disagree with the idea that ‘leaders must be able to take revenge on those who cross them’ but only just over one in ten actually agree with it. And eight out of ten disagree when it comes to a leader using ‘any means at their disposal in order to get things done, including lies and deceit’.
Be careful what you wish for
All of which raises a question: to what extent do views of what makes for a good leader determine the politicians who are selected by their party members to take charge? The answer is clearly impossible to calculate with any precision, but it’s hard to escape the impression that they do play an important part. Take, as a case study, Boris Johnson. In 2019, he could lay fair claim to ticking both boxes when it came to the qualities ranked first and second by Tory members, namely being able to stand up for the UK in dealing with other countries and being a good communicator. But, perhaps, more importantly, he was almost the personification of the kind of leader they say they like − a self-confident, charismatic, show-off who regards himself as exceptional, who is capable of dominating people and displaying aggression, who isn’t afraid to speak bluntly and stir up controversy, who is willing to manipulate situations to get his way, and who is prepared to break the rules in order to get things (in his case Brexit) done.
Sadly, of course, Tory members were prepared to overlook (or else genuinely did not foresee) the lies and deceit that were also part of the package and which (not surprisingly given the dim view taken by the public of both those and some of the other aspects of the darker side of leadership) eventually saw him booted out of Downing Street. Even more sadly, however, Tory members have very short memories − possibly because their views on the darker side of leadership are so hard-wired, possibly because those views have been so influenced by Johnson himself. When asked in another survey of party members by YouGov in August this year whether Johnson had been a good or bad Prime Minister, only a quarter (27 per cent) responded negatively while a third (35 per cent) said he’d been a good Prime Minister and a fifth (22 per cent) thought he’d been great. And when asked, ‘Hypothetically, and assuming it was possible, to what extent would you support or oppose [him] becoming Conservative Party leader in the future?’ only a third (32 per cent) opposed the idea, compared to over half (52 per cent) who supported it.
Our research, however, suggests they might want to think again. The public turned to Johnson in 2019 more out of desperation to resolve Brexit than because he represented what they wanted to see in a leader. They then turned on him when he displayed many of the traits and behaviours they seem to dislike most. Once bitten twice shy is an age-old adage, but one that the Tories, whenever they pick their leaders, should − if, that is, they are culturally and psychologically capable of doing so − take as seriously as the rest of us. As for Labour, does the party’s faltering and occasionally chaotic start to government suggest that its members’ ambivalence about leadership has led them to select a leader who, ultimately, lacks both the charisma and the killer-instinct that are necessary (though by no means, of course, sufficient) conditions to become a great Prime Minister?
First published at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/20419058241305470
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