The Morality of Leadership
Moral Maze
BBC
4.4 • 623 Ratings
🗓️ 21 March 2019
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Brexit is only days away and we still don’t have a plan. This is enraging for many, perplexing for most, and amusing for those who like their humour black. As one current slogan observes, “even Baldrick had a plan”. Some argue we are locked in a crisis of leadership. The major parties are fragmenting, collective cabinet responsibility has been trashed and the political atmosphere in parts of Britain is toxic. Have the two main party leaders ever been as weak? Many voters can’t understand how Parliament has so dismally failed to follow a simple instruction, and why the political class has flunked collective moral leadership. Kinder observers point out that the task facing MPs was anything but simple, and explain that while politics is working exactly as it should, the chaos in Parliament reflects an electorate with a split personality. So, with all this in mind, what sort of commanders-in-chief do we need now, in politics and beyond? Visionaries? Listeners? Pragmatists? Power-watchers have reported a sea change in recent years: many leaders now spend more time trying to please their rank and file, they say, and less time actually leading. There was a time when leaders were prepared to defy their supporters for “the greater good of all”. That sounds persuasive unless you think it was the top-down, managerial style of leadership that contributed to people’s sense of political alienation in the first place. Do leaders like Churchill, Thatcher, Blair and May define their eras or do the events of different eras determine the leaders? Do we always get the leaders we deserve?
Producer: Dan Tierney
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a programme from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:04.5 | Good evening. So days away from Brexit's supposed deadline, and the only two things nearly everybody agrees on is that the process has been a shambles and we've no idea what's going to happen. |
| 0:13.8 | It's breaking up our major political parties, made the idea of collective cabinet responsibility a joke, and trashed nearly all the assumptions and conventions |
| 0:21.3 | by which we're led. Batman was right. We don't get the heroes we need. We get the heroes we |
| 0:26.7 | deserve. That may be unfair. Politicians may have been left wrestling with an irreconcilable |
| 0:32.9 | conflict between direct and representative democracies. Their fractures fumbling may reflect how rancorous and divided all the rest of us are. |
| 0:41.0 | But there are many who see this as a moral failure of leadership. |
| 0:44.2 | An entire political class seemingly unable to define objectives, attract support, |
| 0:49.1 | act in the wider public interest rather than their own. |
| 0:51.9 | A crisis that is as much about the nature of leadership itself. |
| 0:55.8 | Do we want visionary leaders or leaders who listen? Idealists or pragmatists? Messires or managers? |
| 1:03.0 | With faith in, trust in our leaders at such a low ebb, with posters outside Parliament sneering, |
| 1:08.8 | even Baldrick had a plan. What sort of leader do we need? |
| 1:12.8 | Our moral maze tonight. |
| 1:14.2 | The panel, the former Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo, |
| 1:17.1 | Matthew Taylor, currently chief executive of the RSA, |
| 1:19.8 | but formerly Tony Blair's chief political advisor. |
| 1:22.7 | Mona Siddiqui, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies |
| 1:25.4 | at Edinburgh University and the historian Tim Stanley. |
| 1:29.3 | Well, Michael Portillo, you were in Mrs Thatcher's cabinet. |
| 1:33.4 | Is that the question? |
| 1:34.9 | No, it's a statement, but I didn't feel you'd be reticent about it. |
... |
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