First taste of power

When Barack Obama took office as President of the United States, I was struck by his effort to accommodate rivals within his cabinet. Now we have our own cabinet of rivals governing the United Kingdom and the impact on the tone of our politics has been immediate.

There are warnings in the press that the unlikely pact between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives will end in tears. All governments end in failure at some point. But for now, we have a more adult-to-adult and consensual political discourse and the signs are that the leaders will try their utmost to make it stick.

Nothing exemplified this better than the ease and humour with which David Cameron brushed aside journalists playing back his previous jibes about his new colleague, Nick Clegg. His answer gave substance to the claim of a new politics:

Both David Cameron and Nick Clegg displayed courage and leadership in reaching out to each other. There was self-interest in it, but also a determination to mediate differences so as to establish a majority that can give stable government.

Clegg laid the foundation for the partnership the day following the election when – finding he held the balance of power – he exercised moral integrity in asserting the right of the Conservatives to have first shout at forming a government. In doing so, he will have affronted many on the left of his own party who see themselves as more natural allies of Labour.

Cameron responded with creativity and lateral thinking when he made his “big, open and comprehensive” offer to the Liberal Democrats to join him in a coalition, identifying areas of common purpose between his party and the Conservatives. He carried his party with him by drawing clear red lines, and not extending too far with his opening position. But he must have known that he would have to compromise much further if he was to close the negotiations successfully.

That he was willing to make these further compromises is testimony to his seriousness as a leader. He was prepared to do what was necessary to secure power, knowing that without it his leadership of his party is nothing.

In this context, Nick Clegg’s flirtation with the Labour Party before completing the pact with the Tories was a necessary part of the dance. Members of the Conservative Party and its supporters in the press expressed outrage at this “betrayal”. But it was noticeable that Cameron and his lead negotiator, William Hague, were forbearing. In my view, this was the manoeuvre in the negotiations which cemented the marriage and the Conservative leadership recognised this.

To carry his party, Nick Clegg needed to gain more from the Conservatives than had been outlined in Cameron’s opening offer and he needed to demonstrate that he’d given the alternative option of a deal with Labour a chance.

To carry his party, David Cameron needed a plausible reason for compromising further than many of his supporters would have liked. The prospect of the Liberal Democrats sustaining Labour in office provided that pretext.

If there were any lingering suspicions that this is a marriage of convenience, the choreography yesterday was intended comprehensively to dispel them. The parties have agreed ways to allow for the differences that they know will surface between them. But they’ll want to avoid this if possible, so there will be more emphasis on leadership by consensus.

And the two leaders implicitly draw upon another aspect in which comparisons with Obama seem relevant: the generational shift which may embed the shift in style. Modern leadership displays a relaxed ease – tolerant and inclusive. Both Cameron and Clegg were keen to show a break with the more sectional politics of the baby boomers. And there was a palpable sense that – of a similar age (and background) – they could do business with each other.

The break with the past was most pressing for Cameron. As a journalist, I attended Conservative Party conferences where the attendees aged in their fifties and sixties would have represented the youngest end of the membership. As Jonathan Freedland observed, the new Prime Minister regarded a partnership with the Liberal Democrats as anything but a necessary evil:

Since taking over in 2005, the Tory leader has tried to recast his party as one with which liberal Britons could feel comfortable – modern, tolerant, environmentally aware. That has been an uphill struggle, as the failure to ‘seal the deal’in last week’s election confirms. Yet at a stroke, Cameron has rammed his point home. How, runs the logic, could anyone dispute the liberal credentials of the new prime minister now?

The management theorists Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones argue that what is valued above all else in a leader today is authenticity.  The coalition provides David Cameron a totemic opportunity to substantiate his claim to have changed his party.

But before we become too awed by the touchy-feely cosiness of the new administration, let’s take note of the subtle messages beneath the gentle body language.  Peter Collett decodes it:

One of the litmus tests of power relations is who laughs at whom. That’s because laughter serves to elevate the status of the person who manages to elicit laughter, while it reduces the status of the person who does the laughing. During the press conference Clegg made a bold attempt to be amusing when he feigned hurt and pretended to be leaving. Cameron responded with a show of embarrassment, but he didn’t laugh. But when Cameron made an amusing remark, Clegg cracked up. On the surface it all looked very jolly, but the underlying purpose of the levity was to sort out their status positions.

The overriding impression that everyone went away with was of two men who are at ease in each other’s company, and who could definitely work together.

But Cameron also managed to stamp his authority throughout the day, reminding Clegg and the rest of us that he’s the man who’s very much in charge.

It may yet end in tears.  But, in the meantime, we’ll witness an experiment in more honest and grown-up leadership that may have repercussions beyond politics.

This is the second of a pair of blog posts on the leadership lessons of the 2010 General Election.  Part 1: Gordon Brown.

Image courtesy The Prime Minister’s Office.

Gordon Brown at the G8

I hesitate to blog about politics, but am inspired to reflect on a post at the Coaching Commons blog about Gordon Brown’s handling of the post-election situation.

My initial response to the post, written by a US observer, was to notice the folly of making coaching judgments about foreign cultures. The premise of the piece was a misreading of the British constitution, that Brown was clinging to office. As evidence, it offered, without scepticism, opinion drawn from Britain’s famously partisan press. Clinging to office Brown may have been. But he was also prisoner of the vacuum at the heart of power, unable to leave until it was clear a new government could take Labour’s place. As it turned out, the premise was undermined almost as soon as the piece was published, with Brown announcing his intention to resign so as not to stand in the way of any possible deal between his party and the Liberal Democrats.

Nonetheless, there was clearly truth in the reading of Brown as a control freak who undermined his own strengths of resilience and the drive to leave a virtuous legacy. This much was confirmed by Andrew Rawnsley’s book, The End of the Party. The more interesting aspect of the analysis was the focus on Brown as an introvert: more energised by working with small groups of people than large groups, who would tend to exhaust him. The piece highlighted how his failure to work with the grain of this characteristic led to an inability to draw out his strengths.

This rang true for me. I often puzzle at the disparity between the Brown we came to know in office and the earlier rising star that was such a force in bringing Labour in opposition back from the brink of oblivion. As a reporter in Parliament in the 1990s, I observed Brown as a formidable communicator. The benches of the House of Commons, routinely two-thirds empty, would be packed for one of his set-piece speeches. These combined razor-sharp analysis with acerbic wit in their deconstruction of the Conservatives’reputation for economic competence, after they had presided over the humiliation of sterling on the foreign exchange markets. Here was a man comfortable in his own skin, able to function in front of a crowd but not beholden to it. Required to perform on the national stage, he would rise to the occasion. But he could retire sufficiently to his own space not to be overcome by the energy-draining demands of public service.

The Blair years changed all that. Not simply because they represented the vanquishing of Brown by his mentor. They also established Blair’s extravert style as the zeitgeist. Blair was clearly energised by being with people and and connecting with them at levels far beyond the political discourse. On the death of Princess Diana, Blair was the conduit for a very public mediation of emotion the like of which Britain had not experienced – at least not in my lifetime.

A succession of Conservative leaders could no more grasp this style of leadership than Brown; until David Cameron arrived in similar mould to Blair – informal, open and emotionally literate. By the time Brown reached prime ministerial office, the dye was cast – to the extent that he felt himself forced to ape the style rather than play to his own.

Operating outside his comfort zone would have exacerbated Brown’s worst tendencies to bully and control – the only ways left to influence the situation he was supposed to be leading. It needn’t have been that way if he’d made more effort to lead with authenticity – making more of a virtue of his downbeat, austere style rather than deploying his awkward rictus grin at alarmingly inappropriate moments. This uncollegiate leader needed to be able to rely much more than he did on others, more relaxed in public, to carry his party’s message. It may not have ended differently, but it may have been less painful – for him and for us. As it was, there was a severe disconnection between himself and the British people, and a failure to influence successfully the people around him.

Nonetheless, the downsides of Brown’s leadership can be overstated. The banking crisis may have been partly of his own making, but he showed courage and judgment in his response to it. He led the world in containing the risk – as he had done earlier in prompting western leaders to alleviate third world debt. These areas of high policy allowed his strengths – his intellectual mastery, his powers of rational persuasion – to come to the fore.

Appropriately enough, it was when he was most alone – staring defeat head-on – that he showed consummate political skill and leadership. Reportedly, he had decided as early as Friday, the day after the election, to step aside. He demonstrated astute timing in waiting until Monday to announce this. It was an act which combined both statesmanship and low political cunning. It recognised the likelihood of a coalition of his opponents taking power, but created enough room for the alternative – a Liberal Democrat deal with Labour – to be tested.

Had that alternative succeeded, he would have kept his party in power. The gamble failed. But the eventual, and always more likely, outcome was rendered more legitimate as a result of the best deal Labour could offer having been put on the table and found wanting. Before it reached this point though, Brown’s act had electrified the negotiations between the parties and immediately elicited concessions from the Conservatives which significantly moderated their governing agenda. So Brown left office in the knowledge that he had secured, from a bad hand, what he could view as the most progressive result possible.

It was striking, watching him walk down Downing Street with his family, how he gained a spring in his step as the burdens of office lifted. His face bore a more natural, human smile than we have been used to seeing. The scene was well described by the drama critic, Michael Billington:

“It rounded off the New Labour era with a perfect circularity. Just as Tony Blair on a bright May morning in 1997 had arrived at No 10 to pose with his family, so Brown quit the stage on a chilly May evening in the consoling presence of those closest to him. Of course, there was a touch of political calculation to it. It made for a great image. It was also, I suspect, a reminder to the media, who, in their hounding of Brown over the last two years, have more than justified Blair’s epithet of ‘feral’, that the ex-PM is still a human being.”

The pictures from inside Downing Street in Gordon Brown’s final hour in office tell the same story. He was reconciled to departure and this reserved, introverted Prime Minister was relishing a return to private citizenship.

This is the first of a pair of blog posts on the leadership lessons of the 2010 General Election.  Part 2: Image courtesy Downing Street.

]]>