CEO's Blog - 6 September 2010

It is amazing how candid and honest political leaders are about their successes and failures.  Unfortunately, these admirable traits rarely surface while they are in office.  Instead, the sudden rush of self-analysis tends to coincide with them leaving high office and signing a book deal.

And so it was that last week's media was obsessed with Tony Blair's appraisal of what he did well and not so well.  He did accept getting some things wrong.  As the Scottish Farmer reprinted at the weekend, he said of the foxhunting ban that: "If I'd proposed solving the pension problem by compulsory euthanasia for every fifth pensioner, I'd have got less trouble for it!”

I'm not entirely sure whether Blair regrets the fox hunting policy itself or just the flak he got for it.  Although he concedes the legislation was a product of him not understanding the countryside properly.

My point is that candour and analysis of performance while in power is good, but largely worthless to voters if you only expose it once you have vacated the office where you could actually do something about it.  Blair staunchly defended the debate on fox hunting at the time, so too the passing of Freedom of Information legislation (which he now says was "a really bad idea"). 

Perhaps if our current political leaders acted more like human beings while they are in power and accept that they will get some things right and some things wrong, there may be a greater engagement in politics.  Their press officers and spin-doctors will hate it because they'll get adverse headlines.  But I suspect the average voter may just hold a smidgen more respect for them (it would be difficult for many to hold much less).  Of course, it would make the post-retirement memoirs slightly less newsworthy and the serialisation deal with a newspaper less financially rewarding, but our politics might be in a better state.

Perhaps there is also a lesson here for industry or voters as well.  Lets take fox hunting as an example again.  Blair concedes he made a mess of it.  But perhaps industry should have dealt with it better? 

Hundreds of thousands of rural-dwellers marched through London on the issue.  Frankly, it made many city dwellers envious of a part of the world where the most important problem was apparently whether you could chase a fox on a horse.  Of course the opposite is true.  Of far greater importance to rural areas is the future of schools, health care and other essential services; whether the food supply chain can deliver affordable food whilst providing a sustainable income to producers; whether the loss of young people from rural communities undermines future prosperity. 

Yet, none of those issues got the coverage they should have done, despite them being billed as part of the "Liberty and Livelihood" march through London back in 2002. 

Blair refused to accept he was getting it wrong (he must have known at the time) because he feared getting ripped in the press.  And rural groups failed to get their wider message across because they were happy to let fox hunting hijack the debate because it secured more press coverage.  In an age of media-driven politics, maybe we are doomed to accept questionable politics and simplistic lobbying.  I hope not, because wouldn't the other way produce much better results all round?