The Tribune

ANTHONY Seldon, the well-known British headteacher and political observer has written books on each of his country’s prime ministers over the past 40 years.

His most recent is on Boris Johnson, a scathing review of a man who he submits came to office with, “No sense of any fixed position. No religious faith, no political ideology.”

Seldon, along with other experts in government, recently released a report from the The Institute for Government’s Commission on the Centre of Government. The Report notes:

“A poorly organised centre is one of the core weaknesses of UK government. Successive prime ministers have found that their ability to deliver their priorities has not been helped, and has sometimes been hindered, by the way the centre of government is structured, and by failings in No 10, the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury.”

More on the report in successive columns, which may be found at: https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/commission-centre-government.

Seldon describes a reality of which we are most familiar in The Bahamas, of when a new government assumes office: “… People come into No 10 [The Office of the Prime Minister in the UK] knowing less about [complex organisations] than most people running companies employing less than 20 people. That’s forgivable. What is unforgivable is that almost without exception, they do not want to learn how to do it. They think they know best.

“They are often snide, poisonous, dismissive of previous teams, particularly teams from their same party. And they come in with frothing adrenaline and swagger.”

Have we not witnessed this before with new administrations of both parties, intoxicated by what some have described as, “the rarefied environment of the cabinet room”?

Individuals with little to no experience in or understanding of government, management, constitutional matters, policy formulation and implementation, history, social sciences, economics, etc, are suddenly overblown with their abilities simply because they now have a blue plate, a bevy of aides, sycophants, and the temporary trappings of office.

It is as if some of them are injected with a narcotic that induces euphoria, hubris, and magical thinking. They are convinced of how popular and beloved they are. They quickly become near hermetically sealed in a bubble, incapable of seeing reality, living in a land of make-believe.

Each of our past prime ministers were convinced they would win re-election, which followed by wide scale political rejection and defeat.

One of the worst examples was Perry Christie, who became so unpopular that he lost the bedrock PLP seat of Centreville, which he held for decades. They rarely or never see the impending defeat coming.

Most of our prime ministers have known something about domestic politicking. But in significant ways, a number of them, and many who enter frontline politics, do not deeply appreciate the history and psychology of power.

Few of our politicians have read widely in history, politics and literature. Many in our professional class have professional degrees. However, very few are intellectually imbued with a more liberal and classical education.

Most literary traditions and religions contains warnings, insights, and lessons on the uses, conceits, and limits of power. Special warnings are repeatedly issued in various traditions on the imperative of restraint and its companion, humility.

In Measure for Measure, William Shakespeare offers simple advice which often goes unheeded by those drunk with power and oblivious to their own weaknesses: “O, it is excellent/To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous/To use it like a giant.”

In Sonnet 94, Shakespeare suggests to youth and others, that power, beauty and other traits must be used with caution and restraint, lest one give way to gross hypocrisy and the abuse of one’s gifts and immaterial possessions:

“They that have power to hurt and will do none,

That do not do the thing they most do show,

Who, moving others, are themselves as stone,

Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow:

They rightly do inherit heaven’s graces

And husband nature’s riches from expense;

They are the lords and owners of their faces,

Others but stewards of their excellence.

The summer’s flower is to the summer sweet

Though to itself it only live and die,

But if that flower with base infection meet,

The basest weed outbraves his dignity:

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds;

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds. Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” One’s greatest gifts, including intellect, may be the instrument of one’s demise and defeat. Throughout history, some of the smartest people have made the dumbest decisions.

The Crown, the award-winning Netflix series, is an historical drama about the life and times of Queen Elizabeth II.

The initial season, the young Elizabeth is schooled by the ageing Winston Churchill, the avid and unreconstructed imperialist, who helped to defeat Hitler.

The drama explores power, its reaches, limits and abuses. The young monarch is also instructed in the restraint of power by her grandmother, Queen Mary and by her private secretary, a stickler for the ways of the establishment and centuries of convention.

Elizabeth realises early that because of her constitutional role as head of state, and her role as head of the Church of England, she has to abide by various traditions, conventions, strictures and norms.

She does not simply get to do what she wants to do. One of the greatest lessons she quickly grasps is the restraint of power. Queen Mary famously instructs her granddaughter that doing nothing in a given situation is quite hard and requires discipline.

Elizabeth surrounds herself with advisors and wise counsel who will tell her what she may not want to hear, the proverbial speaking truth to power.

A prime minister who lacks wise counsel, or who allows certain officials to abuse their power, lays the ground for his or her eventual political demise. In The Bahamas, successive prime ministers have been hobbled and severely disadvantaged because they lacked policy experts.

Elizabeth does not sideline or lock out advice contrary to her own desires or thinking. She learns not to make monumental decisions amidst high emotions, especially anger and unrestrained exuberance.

She understands the difference between impetuousness and foolhardiness on the one hand, and genuine courage on the other. Churchill schools Elizabeth in the realities and restraints of politics.

The first season of The Crown forecasts an Elizabeth who becomes more comfortable with power. She upbraids Churchill and others for not informing her of the true nature of a particular prime minister’s poor health.

Elizabeth learns that the adept use of power and authority comes only after one has learned and practised the restraint of power, much as an artist, dancer or jazz player learns how to innovate only after mastering the basics of their craft.

Those who fail to learn the rules and subtleties of the ancient art of politics soon succumb to the physics of politics, including the force of gravity, which can quickly tumble a politician from a high perch and political favour.

Former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher enjoyed fine political instincts. She took the Conservative Party to three victories and weathered many storms. But she was blind to how her arrogance would eventually lead to her political death. They never see it coming.

The PBS series Victoria, on the life of Queen Victoria, tells the story of a young monarch coming of age and coming to understand the use of power.

Victoria is at first giddy with her new home at Buckingham Palace, the roar of the crowd, and the pleasures and delights of being queen of the then most powerful country on earth. At times, her ego consumes her judgment.

But after a terrible misjudgment Victoria is necessarily rebuked by a dying female courtier who reminds her that the monarchy is not a plaything, that her office is bigger than the person temporarily occupying the throne.

Queen Victoria is reminded that it is an awesome responsibility like all high office, requiring responsible action, seasoned advice, prudential judgment – and restraint.

Every prime minister and would be prime minister may wish also to reflect on the admonition by Enoch Powell, who wrote in his life of Joseph Chamberlain, in 1977: “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”

While this is not always true, it is quite often the case. It is the wiser leader who appreciates the deeper nature of politics and human affairs.

This includes how an individual, whether a leader or not, plants, waters, and nurtures the seeds of one’s own undoing because of the realities of one’s character, weaknesses, and hubris.

For the political leader, the fall is typically more spectacular, especially for leaders not given to appreciating traditions of wisdom and personal and political restraint.