When electing a president or prime minister it is equally important to consider both aspects of leadership. In the UK we do not directly elect a Prime Minister we vote in the main for a political party. It is the winning party which chooses to select its leader and the leader of the winning party is invited by the monarch to become Prime Minister. Our monarch of course is not elected.
It is an odd system of government which is based on tradition and convention. Because the monarch has no real power, to control legislation or political administration, the Prime Minister effectively becomes the head of state and head of government rolled into one. The monarch's head of state powers are delegated completely to the Prime Minister. If you started with a blank sheet of paper you would probably not invent such a system of government which invested so much power in one person.
In the UK we have seen the political parties set out their stall for the 8th of June General Election.
The Conservative party are focusing very much on the qualities of their leader because their policies for detaching the UK from the EU are either weak of non-existent.
The Labour party is focusing more on policy because they know that their leader is perceived to be weak but would their policies be any better?
How should a judgement be made? It is a fine balancing act, so should policy be more important than personality? My view is that policy should prevail. A leader could become infirm or even die in office to be succeeded by someone who is stronger or weaker. We give too much emphasis to how a personality appears on television and social media sites. A politician who is perceived to be strong could easily be allowed by the public to implement weak policies.
It is abundantly clear that the electors and the press must always objectively scrutinise the policies of all leaders to avoid policy mistakes from being made. Our system invests so much power in one individual. The ideal situation for me would be to have a strong leader implementing carefully thought out policies but we rarely achieve this in the UK. I shall think very carefully before I vote and I hope you will think carefully too.
A place where sceptics can exchange their views
Friday, 21 April 2017
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