WHAT qualities make a great political leader? I’ve been mulling over this question while listening to Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir, reflecting on the impending departure from Holyrood of Kate Forbes, and awaiting the outcome of the crunch talks in Washington DC about the future of Ukraine.
It’s all too easy to criticise politicians after the fact. But often the qualities or tendencies that end up being the most fiercely criticised were the ones that secured them political power in the first place. Is there anything we, the voters, can do to change that state of affairs?
Many have some sympathy with Billy Connolly’s belief that “the desire to be a politician should bar you for life from ever becoming one”, but his follow-up line – “don’t vote. It just encourages them” – was perhaps more than just a punchline. He did, after all, decline to take part in the 2014 independence referendum, calling it a “morass that I care not to dip my toe into”.
Easy for him to say, perhaps, but few readers of The National are concerned with keeping their feet dry. So what are the qualities we look for in our politicians?
Principles are a good place to start. Drive and ambition are clearly essential. Political candidates must have good speaking skills, but also a willingness to listen. They will need a thick skin to withstand media scrutiny, while being approachable and personable enough to address issues raised by constituents.
Above all that, if they have serious designs on Holyrood or Westminster, they must first be willing to commit themselves to a political party and earn their dues helping others to campaign. They must set aside any misgivings they may have about individual policies in order to be a team player.
Does this amount to a positive ability to compromise in pursuit of the greater good, or a negative type of cynicism, even dishonesty? That all depends on your perspective.
With political leaders, things get a little more complicated. They need to be able to inspire loyalty, without being hamstrung by it themselves – after all, they will face competition from within their own ranks for the top job.
They will have to be diplomatic when dealing with other leaders (especially civic leaders), and trade-offs will often be required, but any significant differences of opinion among their own colleagues will need to be squashed if they are to be perceived as strong.
Of course, the media play a big role in these perceptions, with internal schisms seized upon by political correspondents who are always on the hunt for a dramatic headline. Any softening of stance can be turned into a “humiliating climbdown”, any change of course into a “flip-flop” or U-turn.
Perhaps a truly strong leader should be able to publicly shrug off such charges, but as long as there’s an anonymous party source or two willing to brief against them, they will be in danger of looking weak.
If they maintain discipline too well that will also be a cause for criticism, as Sturgeon found, with increasingly loud criticisms during her tenure as first minister erupting into overblown comparisons with Stalin from Jim Sillars and Joanna Cherry after the fact.
A surge in SNP membership should have been a blessing, but it was instead treated as a problem that needed to be contained.
With more members came more party funds, but also more differing opinions from people expecting to be heard.
The same was true of the huge group of MPs the party sent to the UK Parliament in 2015, each of whom couldn’t hope to have the ear of the leadership in the way past SNP Westminster groups did. The job Sturgeon found herself doing was very different to the one Alex Salmond had as leader.
In her memoir, Sturgeon does not attempt to downplay or deny the close relationship she had with Salmond, but she does make repeated references to the techniques – trickery, even – that he used on her to achieve the outcomes he wanted. There is no doubt Salmond was a shrewd and effective political operator – more qualities to look for in the leader of whatever party one supports.
But there’s a fine line between persuasive and manipulative, ambitious and ruthless, confident and arrogant, resilient and stubborn, strong and weak.
A politician without principles is not to be respected, and cannot expect to engage and inspire the electorate, but one with too many principles risks being branded “divisive” or even dangerous for talking about them (even when in some cases they have to be pressed to do so).
Ultimately, many voters are probably quite happy to have an arrogant, ruthless, stubborn, manipulative leader if they think those attributes will help deliver the outcomes they want to see. But if the wheels start to fall off, it’ll be easy to find personality flaws to blame.
And if a group of politicians with some or more of those traits get together to try to strike a mutually acceptable high-stakes deal, the world must hold its breath.
