‘Keir Starmer Is Out of His Depth and Out of His Time’

It’s hard in modern politics not to think constantly about leadership. It’s little wonder. Traditional politics feels incapable of dealing with the complexities and the sheer scale of the challenges we face. So, we look to roll the dice, again and again, to find a leader capable of leading us. What we don’t do is stop and reconceptualise the nature of leadership in the 21st century. 

I was reminded of this while reading Tom McTague’s recent profile of Keir Starmer, in his first outing as editor of the New Statesman.

I came away feeling slightly more sympathetic to Starmer but not really in a good way, more sorrow and sadness than warmth or regard. Starmer, as his handling of the welfare rebellion inside Labour has shown, is simply out of his depth, trying to fix our fiendishly complex problems for us. 

In the interviews for the profile, Starmer talks about the responsibility he feels to always step up and organise those around him. At one level such a trait is admirable, the sense of public service in Starmer feels almost profound.  

But it’s the sense of his own uniqueness to lead, the duty and responsibility on him and him alone which is the worry. This is a common trait in old school leadership. Leaders who believe too much in themselves and not enough in others. People who believe it is uniquely them who were ‘born to rule’. 

In an older, more linear and predictable world, a world that was more machine like, this kind of all-seeing and all-knowing leadership was at least feasible. But in a more fragmented and chaotic world a different style of leadership is needed.  

We’re still between the old and the new and morbid symptoms are obviously appearing. As leaders inevitably fail to fix the complex chaotic and fast-moving world around them, trust in politics diminishes. Traditional political leaders respond by promising to deliver even more onerous targets. It is a doom-loop.

But instead of going forward to more plural and open forms of leadership, we seem to be going backwards from paternalistic politicians to more authoritarian ones.

Instead of an adult-to-adult relationship, we are reverting to the relationship we know and understand best, that of the parent and child. This is the battle to come, between the strongman, the heroic CEO, the warrior leader and a more humble, relational and realistic form of leadership. As such this is a battle for our souls, to retreat into a false comfort that someone will run our lives for us or to step up and grow up? 

In this convulsive moment I’ve been reading The Accountability Machine: why big systems make terrible decisions by Dan Davies. It’s a book about bureaucracy and accountability and reacquainted me with the work of the cyberneticist William Ross Ashby.

Ashby devised the rather wonderful Law of Requisite Variety, which simply states that any regulator of a system, such as a government, needs to have at least as much variety as that system.

Davies explains the law in terms of how you might steer various kinds of vehicles, writing: “A train can really only go forward and backwards, so only needs a single handle. A car can make turns, so its control system requires a steering wheel to represent the added dimension. And an aeroplane needs a joystick rather than a steering wheel, because it can make two kinds of turns”. You get the idea.  

In today’s networked, fragmented and complex world we’re going to need forms of governance and leadership at least as varied as the society they are trying to govern. So, what might be some of the key traits of this new political leadership if we follow the Law of Requisite Variety? 

The first is that any leader must by definition have a strong sense of self and their ego – but that ego must be kept in check. Humility, even the ability to express vulnerability should be combined with sufficient boldness.  Likewise, charisma is now a prerequisite of effective modern leadership, but it needs to be in service of transformative progressive change.

The cultural prerequisite of modern leadership is that it’s not about them, it’s about us. “We are all the chosen few” writes Elizabeth Gilbert in her enchanting book Big Magic. Or as Clare Richmond writes from her liberating leaders stance, “In place of this ‘fix-it’ mindset we need a curious, creative smart mindset that focus not on looking for ‘neat answers’ but discovering new levels of understanding, igniting imagination and inspiring a ‘community’ approach to address complex problems” (for full disclosure Clare is my partner).  

Second, an effective progressive political leader must have a well thought through political analysis, which mixes vision with an understanding of the cultural, technological and electoral zeitgeist. 

Other assets such as management skills are important but the lack of a governing framework is fatal to twenty-first century leadership. It is the thing that provides leader and lead with a sense of purpose, direction and momentum to chart the course and stick with it through thick and thin. 

Third, they must have a strong values base. For a progressive leader the issue of equity must be front and centre, for people and the planet. 

Sadly, but inevitably, no new leader is going to perfectly embody all these traits. But the ‘good enough’ leader will be sufficient in the key elements. 

The last year shows what happens when leaders try to fix everything in the absence of a governing loadstar that tells them how and why things need to be changed, and by whom, rather than pretending anything of significance can only be fixed from on high by them.

Despite a 165-seat majority and the effective Opposition being a party of just five MPs, the Prime Minister, in less than a year, is being forced into embarrassing policy U-turns and on the world stage is being exposed as impotent over issues like the Iran bombings.

Expect more wobbles and crises such that Starmer’s leadership of Labour and the country could be challenged before the end of this parliament. As such it will follow a similar pattern to the Conservatives, who despite a comfortable parliamentary majority veered from one parliamentary leadership crisis to another. To be clear, these are not a crisis of particular leaders, but of a style of leadership well past its use by date.

And so, in all this we should not be beguiled by the next leader who again promises to fix things for us, rather we should look to new forms of leadership, people willing to say, “I don’t know”, “I’m not sure” and “it’s not all about me, it is about you”. 

Maya Angelou wrote: “A leader sees greatness in other people. You can’t be much of a leader if all you see is yourself.” 

The stakes could not be higher. On one side so called traditional values, nativism and hierarchical and authoritarian leadership, on the other curation, curiosity and cooperation. Isn’t it time for us to grow up?