Green Party deputy leader: being 'good and decent' should count for something
As in many areas of policy and process, the Green Party is ahead of its time. (That’s one way of being progressive.)
Take this statement about leadership from us as it pertains to good governance:
‘We seek a society in which people are empowered and involved in making the decisions which affect them.
We advocate participatory and democratic politics. Leadership should always be accountable, consensus-driven and moral.
We reject the hierarchical structure of leaders and followers.’
The complaints of Corbyn’s erstwhile front bench colleagues have become a cacophony over the last few days. A vote of no confidence was precipitated and won by them. Corbyn has never looked more vulnerable.
Far from seeking to capitalise on Labour’s grief for party political gain, I simply wish to understand it and what it says about leadership in politics.
Given Corbyn’s refrain that he was elected overwhelmingly by grassroots members to pursue a new and different way of doing politics, we should ask whether his leadership style needs to be given a better chance.
The scenes of people gathering to greet and support the Labour leader outside parliament this week were quite extraordinary.
Far from finding himself undermined in their eyes, Corbyn is seen as representing their cause more vividly, as the underdog versus the establishment. Here is a leader they can identify with – for them, it is his detractors who have lost touch.
What does this tell us about what his detractors say makes a good leader? Should Corbyn have made others believe in something he didn’t, or at least not to the extent required, by confecting emotion? How does that sit with honesty and authenticity in politics, characteristics in all too short supply?
The biggest clue comes from Hilary Benn’s put-down of Corbyn:
‘He’s a good and decent man, but he’s not a leader. That’s the problem.’
Benn begs the question about what counts as a leader, or at least a good one.
It sounds like he is claiming Corbyn’s stated attributes count for nothing towards leadership. Yet surely he is wrong about that.
To be a good leader one should surely be at least ‘good and decent’; call it a necessary if not sufficient condition.
Leaders pursuing wrongful causes are ten-a-penny. They are bad leaders in the most important sense, in their failure of moral judgement.
While Corbyn’s own colleagues plot against him, they might reflect on the alternative: empower thyself – not to have control over Corbyn, but rather to direct oneself to post-Brexit emergency planning.
This might require rather more leadership than they are used to showing, and it sounds to me, for all their protest, that they would not make for good leaders.
Shahrar Ali is deputy leader of the Green Party
20 Responses to “What do Jeremy Corbyn’s critics mean by ‘good leadership’?”
Nigel Bowden
JC has excellent leadership skills, leads from the front and by example. All those poor saps in the PLP fail to realise he is leading 250,000+ members and nearly all the CLPs with support from the Unions. He hasn’t lied and spun his way to that position, he has the qualities people have been looking for after so many years being treated as irrelevant. He believes in us, we believe in him.
John Woods
I am amazed that so many people do not understand leadership. Amazed. English history is a working example of how lucky England is in having leaders at crucial moments. These people lack imagination. Think of May 1940 as the most recent example of a change of leadership being crucial to where we, as a nation, are today. Neither Chamberlain nor Halifax (the preferred leader by most of the Tories who hated Churchill) would have won the war. Go to 1960 and Harold Wilson chalanged Hugh Gaitskill for the leadership of the Labour Party. He did not win but is there anyone out who thinks Gaitskill would have won the 1964 election if he had been the leader. I feel the same about John Smith in 1994 but that is more difficult to demonstrate. Anyone who thinks Jeremy Corbyn would have won the 1997 election needs their prejudices examined. He cannot even present a report on anti-semitism without causing people to leave the room. Get a grip. We need to start winning elections, otherwise the delicate balancing act that is the Labour Party will cease to exist.
Colin Bushell
If not Corbyn. Who
Glenn Stillaway
I joined the Labour Party in 1995 to campaign against Margaret Thatcher and help elect a Labour MP in my constituency. Since then I have campaigned to keep my MP and increase Labour councillors in my local area. This infighting over who should lead the Labour party will, in my opinion, cause a devastating split in my party and undo all the good work that I, and hundreds of other Labour members, have fought to achieve. Mr Corbyn and the PLP need to reflect on this and ,hopefully, realise the damage they are causing to the party and its supporters. They both need to start to lead and come to an agreement that will not only save the party but forge one that will return to what the party is all about, winning elections.
I campaigned for Corbyn — but he's failed to change the conversation | Left Foot Forward
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