Personality Politics

With the advent of leadership debates in 2010, the UK has seemingly accepted the inexorable rise of personality politics.

Mr Blair's New Labour project sparked a new era in 1997 and his success, both at winning elections and maintaining a strong majority for a full decade, forced a reaction from other politicians.

'I am the heir to Blair'

    -David Cameron (Pierce, 2005)

Mr Cameron has certainly been heir to a certain brand of Blair's populism, willing to go in directions his own party members dislike in order to ensure success (Kirkup, 2011). Satirical memes, such as 'Call me Dave' (Western Mail, 2006) have done little to slow down Mr Cameron's rise to the Premiership. But despite these memes tying this populism to conservatism, it is not just a conservative trend.

From 'Call me Tony', to Mr Obama the nerd, to Mrs Hillary Clinton drinking for the cameras, those who find themselves on the progressive side of politics are just as often drawn into these personality contests. A particularly uncomfortable example were the desperate attempts to make Mr Gordon Brown smile.

Mr Brown was still further forced to be a public personality, a role he never seemed comfortable with, which led the former PM to some unfortunately high profile mistakes (Greenslade, 2010).

It seems that the question in 2010 became whether Mr Brown's Premiership could continue if his private comments reflected his feelings about the British public. Yet was this relevant to his ability to do the job?

Do these matters of personality affect a person's ability to 'lead'?

Why would we seemingly want, why do we seem to believe, that the people best qualified for important roles, of trust and responsibility, are those who are best at imitating our good friends or better neighbours?

Is the person best suited to a task the one we like most on a personal level?

It seems unavoidable that we should use personality as a means to measure the potential of others. But if we are to do this we must always be clear about our subjectivities: what qualities we look for, what they mean to us and why.

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References:
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+ Andrew Pierce's 'Horror as Cameron brandishes the B-word'; in The Times; 5 October 2005.

+ James Kirkup's 'EU referendum: David Cameron "loses control of backbench" in biggest Conservative rebellion'; in The Telegraph; 25 October 2011.

+ Western Mail's 'Labour in shambles over leadership, says Cameron'; from Wales Online; 29 September 2006.

+ Roy Greenslade's 'It's all over, Gordon - how the press greeted his disastrous "bigot" gaffe'; in The Guardian; 29 April 2010.