Nowhere do political leaders have it easy

I recently spent time in London and, as always, I indulged in comparing and contrasting what is happening there on the national political scene with what’s going on in Kenya.

Above all it left me feeling sorry for political leaders in both countries – and indeed across the globe. Certainly these days none seem to be judged to have achieved anything worthwhile.

Any action they take or don’t take is immediately condemned by the opposition and by business, trade unions, the media, and of course now the social media as having been plain wrong, and always too much, too little, too late or too soon.

Take British prime minister David Cameron’s July Cabinet reshuffle. Cameron has held back from the frequent changes many of his predecessors indulged in, on the basis that ministers need time to settle into their portfolios and become effective in pursuing the policies that brought them to power.

Now though, Cameron is being criticised for merely moving people in and out of office in order to position himself better for the next election, only a year or so away. It has nothing to do with their suitability for the job, the critics sneer; it’s just a cheap way of seeking popularity ahead of the polls.

Much of the talk was about the appointment of several women into the Cabinet, which hitherto had been dominated by middle-aged men, “the male, pale and stale” as some described them.

“Out with the suits,” shouted one headline. “What’s wrong with middle-aged men?” posed another, defending the voice of experience.

And “Seat belts on as L-Plate ministers take the wheel,” worried a third, concerned that those appointed, most serving their first parliamentary terms, would have insufficient time to master their briefs.

“Massacre of the moderates,” accused the opposition Labour Party, drawing attention to the sacking of pro-European ministers.

All this was happening while Labour leader Ed Miliband was in Washington for a photo-op with President Obama, inevitably leading some to ask why he wasn’t back home hammering Cameron at this juicy opportunity.

Miliband was in America with his shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander, whom I watched being interviewed at length – a clear example of the benefits of a shadow cabinet.

You want a comment on foreign affairs? Go to the person who’s covering the substantive minister… and is preparing to take over in that capacity in the event his party wins the next election.

As I looked at the opinion polls I had to sympathise with the leaders of all three main political parties, whose ratings are uniformly low.

“So who’s going to be the next Prime Minister?” I asked politically savvy friends in London. “If they’re all useless, all losers, what will happen?’ To which I got only lame comments such as “I don’t know,” and “It will be a close race”.

A big part of the problem is that many Cabinet and shadow Cabinet members are viewed as “untrustworthy”.

And some of this is thanks to them being poor communicators. They come across either as stilted and awkward (like Ed Miliband), or glib and with no core convictions (like David Cameron).

Then, while those in office struggle to see Britain recover from the financial turmoil they inherited, their opponents and much of the media insist on seeing the national cup as still largely empty.

Nowhere in the world is the press more savage – not least in the viciousness of its headlines – than in Britain. Everyone is fair game, from the Queen and Putin to footballers and other celebs. And those who specialise in nasty headlines are the tabloids.

While in London I picked up a copy of The Sun that was lying discarded on a table. I was again puzzled that its circulation in this most advanced of economies is so massive.

The Sun’s 72 pages are full of trivia and sensation, and the only difference I could see from before was that the mandatory picture of the topless lady has drifted from its former page three to page nine.

The editors must have struggled long and hard before undertaking such a strategic change, but of course there are plenty of other well-built and scantily clad maidens scattered throughout the publication.

I don’t need to spell out the differences and similarities with Kenya. Here too observers all too easily condemn government leaders as zero performers; and here too we castigate our president for his Cabinet selections.

We want more women to be given leadership positions, but when they are appointed we rush to criticise them too. As for the media, well no toplessness yet, but otherwise an identical appetite for selecting the noisy and the negative.

What do I conclude? Leadership anywhere is hard, and leaders everywhere are harshly judged.

As Theodore Roosevelt so wisely said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

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