UK Leadership

This week there developed a discussion on 'leadership' in the press and why we don't have any good leaders any more. I do not think we have less potential leaders than we did in the past, but our society has changed. More indeed are better educated. Many of us are alone and independent financially and politically in possession of the latest news. At the same time globalisation has created a newly educated international business class (of which I am one), who are not well-regarded by the politicians at home. It still troubles me that I am not allowed to vote in the UK as if I am not really English any more.

Politicians themselves to be successful stay at home in small parochial districts that do not lead on to any understanding of international affairs. The broad Scots accents of our government confirm this! How many of our politicians have ever lived abroad in other cultures? This is a terrible handicap for good global governance. The people who have been overseas for many decades are not normally part of the democratic system. The UN, World Bank, IMF, the EU, Regional Development Banks etc are not democracies either.

The modern competitive market system which encourages economic success and freedom,with which I might agree in some respects, also has its downside. For example it seems to me that many of our best university graduates, once it is recognised they won't reach the top (in politics or business) to eliminate competition are retired early on adequate pensions: It is 23 years now since I retired. There is little interchange in the UK between one profession and another, so these potential leaders are lost to society. Indeed it also looks as if to be a successful leader in modern society either in politics or business it is necessary to cut corners and practice dubious moral practices. This has resulted in people reaching the top - such as Bush and Blair - whose eyes are to the main chance with very little grounding in morals or ethics. I would not be invited, but would I want to be part of such a system?

Modern instant communications have also destroyed individual independence and initiative. Decisions - and the leaders making them - really need to be spread as widely as possible throughout society with many decisions delegated to the lower levels. Yet the advent of the computer means all decisions have to be sent to the top. There is no point in having 'leaders' if they are prevented from making decisions by some higher authority some 5 seconds away by telephone, but 10,000 kms by distance. This last week we have the Captain of a formidable British warship 'Cornwall" abandoning his own sailors and soldiers, and letting them be captured on the orders of Tony Blair in London. What is the point of training leaders in the British Navy when they are not allowed to make decisions for themselves?

This is symptomatic of modern politics that leaders are not wanted because orders are reserved to the very top. It is one of the problems of modern society that a few politicians at the top demand to be in control while at the same time more of us than ever before are free to do our own thing. We have therefore a void opening up between domestic politics and the fact that millions are no longer attached to the countries they originally came from. In these circumstances, leadership is downgraded
and yet one might suspect that eventually the global democratic pressure cooker will explode in unexpected ways as the old concept of national sovereignty loses control