Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Some leaders find it hard to accept their time is up

Margaret Thatcher clung to the punitive poll tax and had to be chased, bequeathing John Major a struggle with Thatcherites and would-be Brexiteers before Labour swept in.
Margaret Thatcher clung to the punitive poll tax and had to be chased, bequeathing John Major a struggle with Thatcherites and would-be Brexiteers before Labour swept in. Margaret Thatcher clung to the punitive poll tax and had to be chased, bequeathing John Major a struggle with Thatcherites and would-be Brexiteers before Labour swept in.

Leadership; there’s a word and a half. Who urges people to be their best selves out of vision, their worst out of cowardice, conditioning, or simple lack of ability?

This place has seen various kinds of leaders and leadership, necessary qualities much chewed-over in deep and not so deep reflection. The entry and exit of leaders is almost as fascinating, if a lot less complex.

A few, like Ulster Unionist Steve Aiken, are felled at the outset by their own hand. Or New Look (quick, ah you missed it) DUP deputy leader Paula Bradley, the party’s sole Out-liberal who announced to a baffled electorate that she’d be ‘a critical friend’ to her fundamentalist leader. Inside the week and perhaps dizzied by media approval she said her piece on the need for abortion provision. In the next 24 hours she issued a very different statement, because, this said, there had been ‘some misrepresentation’.

Most of those installed in leadership positions last longer. Some refuse to go or drag their feet so noisily their parties are daily reminded why they wanted a change. American fixed presidential terms have always provided a neat remedy against those inclined to squat in the White House beyond someone else’s election. Until Donald Trump, abetted by some in his circle who claim he can make a comeback, perhaps on the back of recounts which are clearly fantasy. The 45th president is still fighting his defeat through the courts.

Trump is an extreme case, deluded then sad Margaret Thatcher and sulking Edward Heath the prime refuseniks in Britain who thought success in shifting their party merited longer leader-life, if not immortality. Thatcher clung to the punitive poll tax and had to be chased, bequeathing John Major a struggle with Thatcherites and would-be Brexiteers before Labour swept in.

Individuals as different as George W Bush and British Labour’s Ed Miliband, though, have let the admission that they found losing painful emerge in print. Given the mockery both reaped in office, deservedly if to different degrees, their regret is probably hard to credit to most people outside political life. A Bush biography has him shaken, feeling life become empty. And then his dog dies. Miliband’s newly-published ‘Go Big’ volunteers that as Opposition leader he ‘wasn’t bold enough’. Since he also gormlessly admits he only learned to ride a bike in middle age, the reasons for replacing him - substantive as well as presentational - come back into focus like a slap.

Winning and then watching the victory dim provides gradual adjustment in advance, even if some only realise it after the last count. Most surely lay down the burden with relief. The Blair electoral tsunami enabled the peace process and Good Friday negotiation, buoyed up Labour and Blair himself. As everyone else discovered, whether or not they wanted to know, it ended in tears, the Blair-Brown battle souring internal relations and the Brown years.

No matter how bitter the outcome, the pseudo-glory of the House of Lords can console the defeated in British politics. It has only worked for the rarest of Irish nationalists; Gerry Fitt, Margaret Ritchie. After its stretch of inept leadership today’s SDLP looks comparatively stable, the shuffled-off removing themselves with grace. In glaring contrast today’s DUP flails through what seems to be the undigested aftermath of its founder’s overdue departure. (Plus a layer of demographic change and what might be termed Unionist/British evolution.)

Hell no, she won’t go gracefully; as elsewhere, the ousted one is too young to retire. Politics sees many rocky career paths. Evolution-denying Edwin has made one intelligent observation at least, in saying that he didn’t want the top job earlier. It could also be that the qualities people need to scrabble to the top make them not good at anything later, and very bad at accepting when their time is up. Like most of us, in life? Even if politics only superficially resembles life.