It is too easy these days to fault politicians. They have become the go-to scapegoat. And we should always be suspicious when a scapegoat is offered as the explanation for society’s ills….In Germany, in the 1930s, it was the Jews; post-war America chose the “Commies”; Trump and the Brexiteers immigrants.
The
account Tom Bower gave in his book about Blair’s record in government – Broken Vows – Tony Blair,
the tragedy of power (2016) which I reviewed in the last post but
one was, quite bluntly, a bit of a travesty. But it did indicate some of
Blair’s personal weaknesses – in particular indecisiveness, cowardice and
downright fear of his Finance Minister, Gordon Brown, to whom he deferred on
all budgetary matters (if not also of his spin-man Alastair Campbell).
And
few of us needed reminding of Blair’s greed,
superficiality and delusions (of grandeur) which became very obvious once
he left power in 2007.
Blair is not the first political leader to register psychological issues – and certainly not the last. His immediate successor, Gordon Brown, was a bit of a bully (with all the implied weaknesses) but had the compensatory gifts of high intelligence and political nous. The walking disaster that is Boris Johnson has no such excuses.
Trump’s
narcissism has made us all more aware of the neglect of political psychology as
an explanatory factor in leadership. In the 1970s I remember a wonderful book written
by a reforming Labour MP Private
Member Leo Abse (1973) which applied Freudian analysis to the issue of the social
liberalisation process of the Wilson Labour governments.
But
we needed The Psychology of
Politicians ed by Ashley Weinberg (2012) to get the full picture.
As
a rather reserved strategic politician in Europe’s largest regional authority (in
Scotland) I had in the late 1970s been briefly tempted to go to Parliament –
with a strong chance of victory – but had decided against simply because I saw
the damage it did to your psyche. I knew a few MPs quite well – and they all
had this harassed look in their eyes
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