Ronan Bennett writes:
What makes a leader, and what is leadership?
We are told
every day that Jeremy Corbyn is not a leader, from Hilary Benn’s
“He’s a good and decent man, but he’s not a leader” to the Daily Mail saying
Corbyn “is the worst Labour leader in history”.
But in spite of the relentless
Corbyn-bashing, beyond the ability to win elections (Owen Smith: seriously?)
there has been little discussion of what a leader, or leadership, means.
The adjective that sidles up most
insistently to “leader” tends to be “strong”. For a strong leader is the thing
to be.
Margaret Thatcher was a strong leader. Tony Blair was a strong leader.
David Cameron? He had pretensions in that direction.
Theresa May’s performances
at PMQs suggest she believes she too belongs in the strong leader club, and
that condescension and archness are the way to achieve it, though her bid for
membership took a turn for the worse this week when Corbyn
challenged her on grammar schools.
Not all of us, however, are quite so in thrall to politicians who take voice coaching, visit bespoke tailors, employ image groomers, holiday with media moguls, or jettison past commitments (Blair’s unilateralism, for instance) when these things start to get in the way of a smooth ascent; and – to prove they are really strong, that they have the guts to take the really difficult decisions – bomb or invade some of the poorest countries on Earth.
Few people will rush to Cameron’s
defence. Yet the former prime minister might be forgiven for feeling a pang of
irritation at the committee’s uncompromising verdict.
In March 2011, when
Cameron went to the Commons to propose bombing Libya, no fewer than 557 MPs
voted with him. Just 13 voted against.
Those 13, just in case anyone is
interested? They did not include Crispin Blunt. They did not include Theresa
May. They did not include Owen Smith, Corbyn’s rival for the Labour leadership
or Angela Eagle, who kicked off the leadership challenge (she abstained).
Just last year Cameron was at it again, sombrely assuring
the country that the deployment of Britain’s air power over Syria was essential
for the defeat of
Islamic State.
It showed how little MPs had learned from the catastrophic
interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya that the government was able to
muster another majority. But it did.
Among those who opposed, amid the familiar
howls and insults and questions about their patriotism, were Jeremy Corbyn and
John McDonnell.
Spooling backwards to March 2003,
and the eve of the invasion of Iraq, when Blair told the house that Saddam
Hussein’s weapons on mass destruction not only justified invasion but
necessitated it as an urgent act of self-preservation, 412 MPs voted for the
war, 149 against.
Leading up to the vote, the government whips subjected Labour MPs
to every kind of inducement and coercion – much of it highly unpleasant – in an
effort to get them to support invasion.
Those who held out were branded
appeasers and cowards. Among them? No prizes for guessing: Jeremy Corbyn and
John McDonnell.
When it comes to foreign military intervention, do I look to
strong leaders or to someone who has, over 30 years in parliament, consistently
shown that he makes the right call?
Those MPs who now shake their heads in dismay at the utter calamity of Cameron’s bombing of Libya and Blair’s invasion of Iraq had the chance to make the right call.
Those MPs who now shake their heads in dismay at the utter calamity of Cameron’s bombing of Libya and Blair’s invasion of Iraq had the chance to make the right call.
At the time when it really
mattered, when the vote was before the House, when the issue was live and front
and centre, they failed.
Their judgment, their principles, their ability to
stand their ground – they all went missing.
It is all very well to say, years
after the event, that you believed the prime minister when he said that Saddam
had weapons of mass destruction, or that bombing Gaddafi would bring peace and
democracy to Libya.
But what counts is what you do in the moment. What counts
is where your vote goes. That’s when you get your chance to make the right
decision.
Time after time, the Labour
party’s worst leader in history has called it right.
When he had a full head of
hair and weighed a pound or two less, he was out on the streets marching (and
being arrested) for the end of apartheid in South Africa and the release of
Nelson Mandela, who was then branded a terrorist.
I know because, like
thousands of others, I saw him there. We didn’t see the iron lady, Margaret
Thatcher. And maybe I wasn’t looking hard enough, but I didn’t see Tony Blair
either.
When the scandal of systematic miscarriages of justice
involving innocent Irishmen and women was at its height in the 1980s, desperate
families approached senior members of the Labour opposition for help in
reopening the cases.
They were rebuffed. Anti-Irish sentiment was rife, and
there were no votes for responsible politicians in helping Irish prisoners
against the police and judiciary.
Who took up their cases? Jeremy Corbyn and
John McDonnell (not forgetting Chris
Mullin’s powerful work on
behalf of the Birmingham Six). Corbyn and McDonnell had the courage – and it
took courage back then – to campaign and organise.
But that’s what leaders do.
On ID cards, on extended
detentions, on equal pay and gender quality, on protection for workers and
trade union rights, on anti-racism initiatives, on tax avoidance by the super
rich, on the bedroom tax, on the recent welfare reform bill (Owen Smith? He
abstained), on PFI – a massive, shameless scam perpetrated by financial
institutions already as rich as Croesus, aided and abetted by government, that
has brought
the NHS to its knees –
Corbyn and McDonnell called it right.
Give me this kind of leader
anytime.
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