The leadership the Conservative party needs

Humility, resolve, positive relations, professional competence and consistency. That is, a break from the norm.

2024 Conservative leadership contenders Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick

The continual theme of my 32 year career has been leadership. I have no doubt I have made mistakes, especially as a 20-something Royal Air Force engineer officer managing older and more experienced experts, thrown in at the deep end. Doubtless in software, politics and government too. But somehow, my projects seem to succeed, often notoriously so. Organising people for a purpose is what I do.

Political leadership is in a different category to leadership in the armed forces or business. Members of the Armed Forces choose to be under lawful authority: they are commanded and they are required to obey lawful commands. Employees in business can meet the reasonable requirements of their employer or move on and be replaced.

In neither business nor the armed forces can the followers remove the leader. Authority is given and if you don’t like how it is exercised, there is not much you can do about it.

However, in democratic politics – especially in the Conservative party – the followers very much can remove the leader and, as we have seen, do. Moreover, the followers are themselves sustained in office by their electors and party selectors: the pyramid of power is inverted.

All that means the leadership we require is at a higher standard, not least because it imposes additional complexity in an exceptionally large and complicated context.