1finny
Well-known member
Fair Play
(It’s behind The Times firewall so have cut and pasted)
In the early hours of June 8, 2001, as the general election results showed a thumping Labour victory and I was drafting my resignation speech as Tory leader, Sebastian Coe, my chief of staff, gave me some very good advice. “This speech is more important than you might think,” he said. “It will define how people see you for years to come. There’s no point blaming anyone else. You’re not a victim — we knew what we were getting into. Now we take the blame and walk away with dignity.”
This was the advice you would expect from such a great sportsman, but it also made personal and political sense. It’s easier to start afresh in life if you have learnt from your setbacks, rather than live in denial of what caused them. If you are a resigning party leader, your party can move on more easily if you leave without recrimination. And the electorate have more faith in democracy if leaders take responsibility for their failings.
Accepting blame as a departing leader has the added merit of usually being a close fit with the truth. Politics is packed with difficult colleagues, obstructive opponents, unfortunate media coverage and a daily diet of being let down or betrayed, but it is futile to resent that. If you set out to conquer the jungle you cannot complain that the animals are aggressive. It is your job as leader to find the best path, pick the right fights and summon enough help, and if you can’t do that it is your own fault, not something to blame on your companions. While most prime ministers have not exactly been role models at shouldering blame, many have admitted to crucial errors that ruined their leadership. David Cameron has spoken of mistakes in the run-up to the EU referendum. Theresa May told her MPs after the disastrous 2017 election that she had got them into the mess they were in. Gordon Brown admitted to “a big mistake” over banking regulation before the global financial crisis.
Yet for the two prime ministers who have been forced from office during the current parliament, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, even this level of candour is apparently too much. It is as if their ejection — at the hands of their own party — was due to events no one could have expected and forces that could not be controlled. They were confounded by a mysterious and powerful entity, perhaps a “Blob” or the dreaded Establishment, that jumped out and mugged them when they were innocently minding their own business as the most powerful person in the country. How could they do anything about that? They were shockingly let down by MPs who unexpectedly listened to the views of their constituents. What can a prime minister do with such people?
And there were always experts telling them there was no more money just when they needed some. How can anyone be expected to govern if they are so constrained by reality? Faced with such preposterous and unreasonable obstacles, why should they take the blame for completely screwing things up?
In his resignation speech, Boris Johnson showed no awareness of any personal failings that had led his party to turn on him. “When the herd moves, it moves,” he complained, without apparent thought as to what might have provoked the herd into stampeding. He later complained the rules had been changed halfway through the relay race that the premiership had become. There had indeed been no rule against No 10 parties, but by the time they happened in lockdown it was against the law. There was no rule that a PM must resign if more than 50 of their ministers quit, but since being able to form a government that commands a Commons majority is the basis for being in power it should hardly need saying that these are circumstances that make resignation inevitable. Boris tried to break rules that no one had previously thought it necessary to state.
In her long essay at the weekend, Liz Truss did not opt for the same blanket denial of any responsibility for her fall, but nevertheless came to the judgment that “fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support”. She also lamented that “I assumed upon entering Downing Street my mandate would be respected. How wrong I was.” Yet what actually happened was that the tax cuts and ballooning deficit announced in the infamous mini-budget of September exceeded her mandate, consequently shocked financial markets and gave the impression of going headlong for small-state taxation at the same time as big-state spending. The problem was not the power of a left-wing establishment but the force of good old right-wing arithmetic: there are limits on spending money you haven’t got.
As for the complaint of a lack of political support, could this be from the same prime minister who removed from the cabinet every individual who had backed her main opponent, even though they represented half her party? Or who sacked the top civil servant in the Treasury, who was highly respected in parliament? Or ordered her MPs to back fracking against their conscience or the views of the public, on pain of losing the whip? Might these actions have been in some way connected with a lack of political support? The most powerful prime ministers in history — Churchill, Gladstone or Thatcher at their height — could not have treated their party in such a fashion and got away with it. Liz Truss had no chance of doing so and should have known it.
It has become more common in recent years for political leaders to disclaim responsibility for their own actions. Jeremy Corbyn denied the extent of antisemitism under his leadership. Most glaringly, Donald Trump refused any blame for the Capitol riots, or even to accept his election defeat. These cases illustrate the corrosive effects of such denial, fuelling false narratives of conspiracies and misrepresenting failure as victimhood. When leaders blame others for their own mistakes, we should therefore not hesitate to point that out.
(It’s behind The Times firewall so have cut and pasted)
In the early hours of June 8, 2001, as the general election results showed a thumping Labour victory and I was drafting my resignation speech as Tory leader, Sebastian Coe, my chief of staff, gave me some very good advice. “This speech is more important than you might think,” he said. “It will define how people see you for years to come. There’s no point blaming anyone else. You’re not a victim — we knew what we were getting into. Now we take the blame and walk away with dignity.”
This was the advice you would expect from such a great sportsman, but it also made personal and political sense. It’s easier to start afresh in life if you have learnt from your setbacks, rather than live in denial of what caused them. If you are a resigning party leader, your party can move on more easily if you leave without recrimination. And the electorate have more faith in democracy if leaders take responsibility for their failings.
Accepting blame as a departing leader has the added merit of usually being a close fit with the truth. Politics is packed with difficult colleagues, obstructive opponents, unfortunate media coverage and a daily diet of being let down or betrayed, but it is futile to resent that. If you set out to conquer the jungle you cannot complain that the animals are aggressive. It is your job as leader to find the best path, pick the right fights and summon enough help, and if you can’t do that it is your own fault, not something to blame on your companions. While most prime ministers have not exactly been role models at shouldering blame, many have admitted to crucial errors that ruined their leadership. David Cameron has spoken of mistakes in the run-up to the EU referendum. Theresa May told her MPs after the disastrous 2017 election that she had got them into the mess they were in. Gordon Brown admitted to “a big mistake” over banking regulation before the global financial crisis.
Yet for the two prime ministers who have been forced from office during the current parliament, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, even this level of candour is apparently too much. It is as if their ejection — at the hands of their own party — was due to events no one could have expected and forces that could not be controlled. They were confounded by a mysterious and powerful entity, perhaps a “Blob” or the dreaded Establishment, that jumped out and mugged them when they were innocently minding their own business as the most powerful person in the country. How could they do anything about that? They were shockingly let down by MPs who unexpectedly listened to the views of their constituents. What can a prime minister do with such people?
And there were always experts telling them there was no more money just when they needed some. How can anyone be expected to govern if they are so constrained by reality? Faced with such preposterous and unreasonable obstacles, why should they take the blame for completely screwing things up?
In his resignation speech, Boris Johnson showed no awareness of any personal failings that had led his party to turn on him. “When the herd moves, it moves,” he complained, without apparent thought as to what might have provoked the herd into stampeding. He later complained the rules had been changed halfway through the relay race that the premiership had become. There had indeed been no rule against No 10 parties, but by the time they happened in lockdown it was against the law. There was no rule that a PM must resign if more than 50 of their ministers quit, but since being able to form a government that commands a Commons majority is the basis for being in power it should hardly need saying that these are circumstances that make resignation inevitable. Boris tried to break rules that no one had previously thought it necessary to state.
In her long essay at the weekend, Liz Truss did not opt for the same blanket denial of any responsibility for her fall, but nevertheless came to the judgment that “fundamentally I was not given a realistic chance to enact my policies by a very powerful economic establishment, coupled with a lack of political support”. She also lamented that “I assumed upon entering Downing Street my mandate would be respected. How wrong I was.” Yet what actually happened was that the tax cuts and ballooning deficit announced in the infamous mini-budget of September exceeded her mandate, consequently shocked financial markets and gave the impression of going headlong for small-state taxation at the same time as big-state spending. The problem was not the power of a left-wing establishment but the force of good old right-wing arithmetic: there are limits on spending money you haven’t got.
As for the complaint of a lack of political support, could this be from the same prime minister who removed from the cabinet every individual who had backed her main opponent, even though they represented half her party? Or who sacked the top civil servant in the Treasury, who was highly respected in parliament? Or ordered her MPs to back fracking against their conscience or the views of the public, on pain of losing the whip? Might these actions have been in some way connected with a lack of political support? The most powerful prime ministers in history — Churchill, Gladstone or Thatcher at their height — could not have treated their party in such a fashion and got away with it. Liz Truss had no chance of doing so and should have known it.
It has become more common in recent years for political leaders to disclaim responsibility for their own actions. Jeremy Corbyn denied the extent of antisemitism under his leadership. Most glaringly, Donald Trump refused any blame for the Capitol riots, or even to accept his election defeat. These cases illustrate the corrosive effects of such denial, fuelling false narratives of conspiracies and misrepresenting failure as victimhood. When leaders blame others for their own mistakes, we should therefore not hesitate to point that out.