I have been fairly reluctant to get involved in the Brexit debate. I find that, having put energy and concentration into understanding the Brexit debates yesterday, I am today left with completely obsolete information. The brain has been urged to attempt to understand complex arguments and perspectives to absolutely no purpose.
One comment that can be made consistently about the present Brexit state of impasse is that, among the political establishment, there appears to be an almost complete lack of leadership. This is true of both the main parties. The various factions are so bitterly divided that no one on either side of the political divide seems able to rise above the fray to suggest a realistic way forward. It is this lack of leadership in the political sphere that is also causing so much damage to the fabric of society as a whole. One senses that divisions have been created which may take a generation at least to heal. Among many surprising statistics is the one that says that ordinary church goers are likely to be supporters of Brexit. This does not follow the lead taken by most bishops and clergy. Will this solid phalanx of Brexit loving older church people be another reason for today’s europhile youth to refuse to engage with the institution in the future?
There was a time when I tried to tackle some of the massive literature that is available on the topic of leadership. Now that all my books are temporarily stored in boxes pending a house move, I cannot pull off the shelf one particular work that engaged my attention when I read it some time ago. The book made the point that every definition of leadership is inadequate in some way. There are simply too many variables in the concept. However, there is one idea around leadership that comes close to understanding what might be the ideal.
The successful leader is someone who has risen up the ranks in some way and now embodies and represents a number of people. The group represented could be as small as a family. Alternatively, it could be a nation. The important facet of leadership is to be a person who has listened to and is tuned into the group in such a way that they, as leader, embody the essence of the group. He or she is then able to act and move the group forward in some way. In one sense Donald Trump is a successful leader. He has effectively identified himself with the bigotry, the hatreds and the prejudices of a large segment of the American population. In his speeches and tweets he well articulates the frustrations of that large group and gives it a voice. The fact that his leadership is taking his ‘base’ in a malign direction should not hide the fact that it is always important to have individuals who can embody and represent others. Our nation and our churches desperately need good leaders to represent us and raise our vision to give us positive hope for the future.
Those with power within our UK political system seem estranged from the aspirations of ordinary people at present. No one seems to hear what people in general really want in the present muddle and confusion of parliamentary strife. It is easy to speak about a failure of leadership. The main reason for this goes back to the time when the Referendum was first called. Instead of taking on the burden of being a national leader, David Cameron handed over this role to a poorly thought out process of calling a Referendum. It did not matter that no one really knew what were the issues at stake or whether they had been properly explained. The confusion of today’s debates goes back to that moment when a British Prime Minister opted out of the task of leadership.
My suggestion that Trump is an embodiment of effective leadership may have seemed a somewhat perverse claim. Effective leadership does not always have positive outcomes. When a leader like Churchill was able to inspire among the led qualities of sacrifice, generosity and patience, we speak of a great leader. In contrast to Trump’s ‘onward and downward’ style of leadership, Churchill during the War drew out of the nation positive qualities. He identified with the nation and the people largely identified with him. There was, in the best sense, a narcissistic merger between the charismatic leader and those who trusted him in this role. This temporary arrangement helped to bring the nation through to victory. Any collapse in morale could easily have broken what effectively was the necessary psychological spell binding leader and led. These were needed to obtain final victory.
When we look at the state of the Anglican Church, we see similar crises in leadership to those faced by our political system. Although Justin Welby and the bishops of the Anglican Communion are not leaders in the party-political sense, the ordinary people in the dioceses want them to be leaders. They long for someone to represent them, their hopes and their aspirations for the future. The problem is that the church is bitterly divided on issues that have been inflated by American Right-Wing caucuses. In some extraordinary way, large swathes of Christians have been persuaded by these malign forces that the defining mark of a Christian is someone who hates the LGBT population. Because support for this position has been backed up by large sums of institutional money across the world, the leaders of our church have been reluctant to confront this perverse teaching. Thus, the power of this ‘orthodoxy’ remains unchallenged, or at any rate not properly confronted, because our church leaders are frightened by the power of such ideas. Anglicanism has traditionally stood for the mutual respect for differing views in a creative tension. Evangelical and Anglican Catholic have always been allowed space together in the same overarching tent. The way our bishops seem to buckle before these intolerant forces from home and overseas can be described as a failure of leadership. They have not listened to what the vast majority think and feel. Thus, they cannot help them to move forward with vision and hope. Leadership has been exchanged for appeasement. The bishops have become concerned only to preserve the Church as a place of safety and protection.
The other topical test of leadership in the church is whether church leaders are doing the right thing for survivors and victims of past abuses. As with the LGBT issue, the primary concern of our leaders is apparently always to take steps to protect the institution and its officers. Openness and truth as well as doing the absolute best for survivors are never seeming priorities. Being in touch with a few of these survivors, I hear of the frustrations that are constantly felt every time things happen that indicate avoidance of the problem and those who suffer from their past experiences. Effective leadership might involve simple gestures like the picking up a telephone or even sending an email to a survivor. These gestures are largely absent. When there is a failure by church leaders to offer small gestures towards the abused, the impression is given that they do not care and are only interested in protecting the institution they serve. In this this way they can be described as mere servants of the Church rather its leaders.
Failures of leadership seem to be all around us in this March 2019. Are we so wrong to expect to have leaders in Church and State who listen to us and help us to move forward together? Are we wrong to expect our leaders to be able to articulate what is in the best interest of all and help us with clarity and vision to move forward to embrace it?
I have US friends, have followed US politics closely since the Nixon Kennedy election and travelled fairly widely in “heartland America”. Most of my friends were Obama/Hillary supporters but nevertheless acknowledged that Donald Trump was the only one who was remotely capable of beating Hillary.
To do so he overcame the Bush family, the GOP establishment, the media, Hollywood, Academia, the public services unions the Democrats and the formidably funded Clinton election machine that had hoovered up all the donor money to ensure the only Democrat rival was Bernie Sanders, an obscure Vermont Socialist with no record of public service achievement. Nevertheless she struggled to beat him and that was with dubious assistance from the Democrat establishment.
Hillary outspent Trump by nearly 3:1 yet as a political outsider, he devised an extraordinary winning strategy that won the rust belt States which everyone thought he was foolish to even attempt to win. The received wisdom is that you have to win 2 out of
3 of Ohio, North Carolina and Florida. The extent of Trumps victory was such that he could have lost all 3 and still won. He won over 3000 counties, Hillary under 60.
The prevalent U.K. narrative that Trump is a stupid man who only won through bigotry is lazy. He is not the nicest man, yet he was trusted by ordinary decent Americans as the best on offer. So far he is doing what he promised. The economy booms, he has created 300k jobs a month – a seemingly impossibly high figure. He has avoided foreign wars and is bringing troops home. His work on the Korean peninsular might work. Manufacturing jobs are coming home, China is admitting US goods, the EU is next. He is increasingly helping black and Hispanic people into work and is building support, he appoints Judges who implement the Law but do not try and create it. He has required free speech on campuses. He has taken action on Jerusalem, border security and energy independence which EVERY past President and most candidates said needed to be done. He has done it in 2years.
It’s hard to love him, yet suggesting that there are not good reasons for people following his leadership is hardly sustainable.
I was in the minority by predicting his win. I am prepared to take another chance even this far out.
He almost certainly will be found not to have “colluded” with Russia. The Hillary campaign looks as if it did. He will have a field day and will probably win re-election by a landslide.
But he’s a liar and gropes women. Bit of a problem for me.
I fully understand folk who want moral probity in leaders but that said, neither JFK. Bobby Kennedy or MLK were beyond reproof. That said it didn’t stop people supporting Bill, or Hillary who enabled him , and was the most aggressive silencer of those who accused her husband. She knew and deceived a more naive generation. The whole press core knew and never said a word about Bill’s behaviour.
In contrast the tape of Trump’s juvenile “ locker room talk” bears some thinking about.
A tape was left running after an interview. A man with no political or public life ambitions was caught unguarded. Somebody thought “ I could just erase that, but I’ll keep and catalogue that in an archive in case it comes in handy.” It was not used at the time or handed over to the police. The boast may or may not have been true or idle boasting.
Consider how the two cases were handled by the media. This lack of even handedness probably irritated many sympathetic to Trump and made them more likely to forgive than might has once have been the case. Plainly it is a dirtier game now.
The failed attempt to delegitimise an elected President via the now discredited Russia allegations will similarly strengthen the hand of a man who would be rightly judged more harshly were the game played with probity by participants and media alike.
That said, Romney, McCain, Cruz, Sanders – men without serious moral allegation against them – lost to those with less probity.
I agree that HIllary was not a good candidate, and her sense of entitlement was very off-putting. Even so, she won the popular vote by a margin of 2.1% (2.87 million more votes than Trump). It was the vote in the Electoral College that gave the election to Trump. Nor is it by any means certain that Russia didn’t interfere in the election. We know now that several people very close to the Trump campaign met with Russian officials during the campaign, and we await the findings of the Muller Report for further information.
Nor is his presidency so far a picture of unmitigated success. The two government shutdowns caused a lot of hardship among government employees (including a member of my own family). His healthcare policies have caused hardship more generally. And there’s been widespread unease about his continuing fomenting of divisions within American society, and of aggression and violence.
Having grown up in the US, in a political family, and having been grounded in American history and the US Constitution, I’m frequently surprised and dismayed at how Trump’s disregard for the Constitution and traditional American values is tolerated by Americans who consider themselves patriotic.
I think what we are seeing both in the US and in Britain is the result of decades of policies which have increased the gap between rich and poor. People who have few opportunities and viable choices and whose voices are ignored will eventually grow desperate enough, and angry enough, to grab for radical change when they get the chance. It’s a tragedy that the changes thus made too often disadvantage them further.
Fair enough. But saying something on Twitter one day, and then saying the opposite two days later us not the behaviour of a rational man.
Leaders have currency.
It’s like virtual money and has far more buying power. It buys followers. We’re talking hearts not minds. Voters buy emotionally, not intellectually.
A prime minister may not be a leader, just like a vicar without much of a congregation.
You can’t demand leadership. You can only choose someone who you think knows what needs doing. Or do it yourself.
Successful leaders (not necessarily nice ones) generate more currency. Unsuccessful leaders (who may be lovely people) use their currency up quickly.
The power of human irrationality is truly stupendous. Rational argument rarely makes a dent in it. This is particularly true in our churches.
Only cataclysmic events can sway the hearts of the faithful. E.g. like the Credit Crunch 2008. A second term will have been and gone before such a repeat.
Sundry indiscretions or moral lapses hardly seem to register with the blind-eye congregation. Indeed, a display of oafish humanity can even increase a leader’s currency.
Until we understand this, we will never counter it.