Should good leaders be 'ordinary folk'?

[Chil1234]

Inspired by listening to a documentary about one of our more inspirational prime ministers, Winston Churchill, in which it was stated that his proud boast was that he had 'never visited a shop'. If a man born in a palace & into the aristocracy could capture the hearts of the masses and convinced them to suffer and die for their country... I wondered just how important it is for political leaders to be men/women of the people. Some of the current administration get accused of being 'toffs' - with the implication that this means they are out of touch with reality - but which is more important? That they have good leadership qualities and have the courage to take tough, even unpopular decisions ... or that they 'feel our pain', empathise more than impose, and are nothing much out of the ordinary?

Not sure Thatcher counts as working class btw, her parents were lower middle. Which explains her knee-jerk hatred for the working classes. People who are inclined to do that kind of thing often focus class resentment on the people just beneath them. In order to show or believe that they are 'better' than them.

She didn't hate the working class. She hated unions. They are certainly not synonymous - and she proved it.

She created millions of "working-class Tories". Manual labourers, secretaries, market-stall owners, all people who might once have voted Labour because they were "working-class" - decided that they liked the party of aspiration instead.

Yeah, she hated unions because they are the method by which the working classes can gain political clout. Millionaires can donate money to political parties, buying access, influence and seats in parliament. Ordinary people can't.

Yay! We can all rest easy now. No thread is complete without Edam mentioning Churchill firing on starving miners.

Could we steer clear of Thatcher for a second? When a thread starts on Thatcher you know it's fatally sidetracked and probably dead :)

People who liked the opportunity to send their kids to grammar school if they were bright enough, even if they weren't rich. People who wanted to own their own home, to get richer by working hard on their own merit. People who liked taking holidays to Spain or Portugal for the first time in their lives. They were all working-class - and Thatcher won them over with her no-nonsense attitude.

It is a crass generalisation, but think Essex man and woman.

(Obv. they can donate, but not enough to get a meeting with DC.)

One of the worst things about our country is that riches can buy you a place in parliament where you can make the laws that everyone else has to live by.

purits, I mentioned the Dardanelles especially for you...

To sum up what we want out of a leader therefore (selection committees take note)

• No-one posh with a slappable face, trust fund, private school education or with too many friends in high places
• Someone that has done a 'proper job' or voluntary work - preferably not in PR, advertising, research or journalism which are wussy pretend jobs..
• Someone with no formal training in politics.
• Someone that has made no mistakes & has no previous history but who has experience of life
• Someone with direct experience of being old, young, middle-aged, rich, poor, disabled, able-bodied, female, male, gay, straight.... etc.

In the 1980s many of the real Tories (not the wets) were genuine businesspeople who had come up the hard way, pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.

Many of the Labour people, for all their faults, really had come up through the union movement and made their progress to Parliament in the old fashioned stump-speech, street politics, way.

More than class, it's the think-tank/wonk/SpAd culture which leads to disconnection. Politics isn't a burning desire to put your ideas into practice for these people, driven by the fire of conviction - it's an intellectual discipline.

edam out of interest, can you please give a real-life example of what you consider a superior (to Britain) political structure.

Without wanting to get fatally Thatchered (IYSWIM), she was from a small business background, went to state school in a backwater market town, and worked in industry (ICI?) before entering politics. so there was an "ordinary folk" aspect to her background - as was true for all PMs from the mid-70s to John Major (who ran away from the circus) who were all state educated, and I think had all worked elsewhere before entering politics.

I really do agree with the posters who have said we want leaders to be exceptional. I don't think you can prescribe a selection route for this.

Personally, I would like to see more MPs having previous careers before entering politics. I do not think the current vogue for candidates coming from a narrow pool of those who have been engaged only in politics since leaving university is helpful.

I'm not attracted to the ordinary. I would like a politician to have achieved something extraordinary given the starting point that particular person has. So someone born into an elite position and having attended elite institutions should be achieving beyond the norm for people in a similar position. Why should a politician be ordinary? Someone who achieved exceptional things in life is someone who is obviously intelligent and hardworking and sounds to me like the type of person likely to do a reasonable job as a politician.

Personally I am not in the least interested in the personal life of politicians and it annoys me to see photos of them going to church with the spouse and dc showing you the common touch etc, they are people like you and me etc etc. Couldn't care less if they have affairs, frequent gay bars or whatever else. I am also not interested in what the wife of the American president has to say, I am interested in what the president says. I am not interested in hearing what the husband of a minister has to say about anything either. If you attend a chemistry seminar, do you listen to what a professor's wife thinks of the role of women, or what her husband has to say about bombing Libya? That's the kind of thing that annoys the heck out of me : detach them from their families in public life.

It is only when they are involved in breaking the law/corruption etc that it interests me.

A leader should be inspirational and interested. Churchill apparently is also the only PM to have been a member of a union (something to do with building). By his own addmission he would rather have been a bricklayer and did not really want a public life. The problem with the 'leaders' we have is that they are mostly career politicians who love/crave the public life and believe their own hype.

I'm not entirely sure about this, but I vaguely remember hearing that Thatcher was a member of some scientist union? Or is my memory playing tricks?

Chill 1234 - "Elitist pompous twits.... " it's not prejudice just fact.
Our current lot look down their noses at people like Gordon Brown and John Prescott because they didn't go to public school so what do they think of the rest of us!!!???
By the way everyone seemed to think Gordon Brown a really great guy - when times were good and everyone was enjoying themselves.
A day is a long time in politics.

Chilli

to - Someone that has done a 'proper job' or voluntary work - preferably not in PR, advertising, research or journalism which are wussy pretend jobs..

Can I add, someone who has applied for, been offered and worked in a job on their own merit. i.e. not been offered every job they worked in based solely on who they know and who will recommend them for a job (David Cameron take note)

I have no objection to posh boys with slappable faces being elected as long as they can prove they are capable of doing a job and didn't just get it because their girlfriend's Mummy knew someone in high places.

I was being sarcastic..... If we really applied those criteria we would have no candidates to choose from.

@yelloutloud.... no-one ever thought Gordon Brown was a really great guy, with the possible exception of Mrs Brown and maybe his mother. 'Charisma' was not his strong suit.

longfinger - I should have made clear that I was referring to a trade union

I dont think background matters. What concerns me is the growth of "career politicians" who have do politics at Uni, work as a researcher for a few years, then stand for parliament.

I seriously think that 30 should be the minimum age for an MP and you should have had to do something else first.

I think the archetype of living in a politico bubble at the moment is the Balls/Cooper pairing. Career politicians only both outside and inside the home.

Sarkozy is interesting from this pt of view, because he is in a no-win position in many respects.

He is seen by many as too "ordinary" in that he is crass, vulgar, speaks crude, basic, often ungrammatical French, has knee-jerk reactions to things he should rise above, and is pretty blatantly materialistic. He is not President material.

He is also seen as part of a clique that is not ordinary and that doesn't understand ordinary people.
A clique that doesn't face the everyday problems the average citizen does, that doesn't attend state schools (rarer in France than the UK) or university (Sarko is the exception, but even that backfires on him as it reinforces the idea that he is a bit dim), use state hospitals, public transport, etc., doesn't pay the same proportion of taxes in relation to income as the average citizen, benefits from a huge network of pals sharing out jobs and other perks amongst themselves, etc. In a period where you slash public funding and services and tell everyone that they must tighten their belts, belonging to this clique is unhelpful.
Marrying a supermodel, even though you are a tiny, unattractive man with nervous twitches, also takes you out of the realm of normality, I think.

Moral? Maybe politicians need to be extraordinary in intelligence, eloquence and selflessness, but must at least appear to be vaguely in touch with the current preoccupations of the citizens?

"Maybe politicians need to be extraordinary in intelligence, eloquence and selflessness, but must at least appear to be vaguely in touch with the current preoccupations of the citizens?"

I hear outgoing Tesco boss Sir Terry Leahy is available.... but, hang on, even he might struggle to meet the criteria of selflessness.

I don't think charisma is a requirement of being an economist - Chil1234 I've never met one anyway!:o