Just before Christmas,
Gareth Hughes posted on his view that Ieuan Wyn Jones is Plaid’s nost successful
leader. It’s an opinion which some will
share, and with which others will disagree.
It’s inherent in the issue that a large element of subjectivity comes
into play, but it’s worth considering some of the factors that lead to such a
judgement on any leader, in an attempt to take a more abstract view.
The first factor is
about defining some criteria on which to judge 'success'. Gareth seems to base his conclusion largely
on the fact that after 80 years of being an opposition party, Plaid first
entered government under the leadership of Ieuan. But that isn’t the only possible criterion
for judging success as a leader – and given that there was no Assembly in which
to form a government, it’s not something which any of his predecessors could
ever have achieved anyway.
If I may diverge to
consider the Labour Party for a moment, there is surely no doubt that Tony
Blair was the most electorally successful leader that that party ever had. Unfortunately, that success was achieved by
abandoning much of what the Labour Party had traditionally stood for. My personal favourite Labour leader was
Michael Foot. He was not only a great
orator, but also a man of principle, who never feared putting the difficult and
unpopular arguments. He was an electoral
disaster, though.
And that’s the
point. How do we measure the ‘success’
of any leader of any political leader?
Is it in electoral terms, in being in government, in achieving aims, in
behaving with principle and integrity, or in putting the difficult
arguments? All are relevant, but any
assessment of ‘success’ in a leader owes more to the weightings attached to
the different elements than to the inherent qualities of those being judged.
The second factor
is to do with attribution. There is a
tendency to attribute success of an organisation to the nature of its
leadership, but it ain’t necessarily so.
Indeed, Gareth himself recognises that when he points out that Plaid’s
best-ever election result was in 1999 under Dafydd Wigley – and then goes on to
attribute the success not to the leader, but to the campaign manager, one Ieuan
Wyn Jones. It fits Gareth’s own
position, of course, but it also opens the door to other interpretations.
Over-attribution of
success to individuals is extremely common in the corporate world. Sometimes, indeed, business managers do
achieve success for their organisations, although there is some variety in the
way that they do that. Some are simply inspirational
leaders, others are superb facilitators who create space in which the talents
of the workforce can shine through. But
there are others who run their organisations by creating a climate of fear.
Far more common, in
my experience, are those who just happen to be lucky enough to be in the right
place at the right time, and are able to claim the credit for events over which
they had little real influence.
And it’s not uncommon for organisations to succeed in spite of, rather
than because of, their leadership, as motivated people who know what needs to
be done simply ignore the titular leader.
I can think of nothing
there which applies in the business world which does not also apply in the world of
politics. Some leaders are regarded as 'successful'
because of what they do and say, others regardless of what they do and say, and
some in spite of what they do and say.
Mis-attribution of success, and over-attribution of success, to the
person who happens to be at the top at the time are natural tendencies. The main difference that I can think of between business and politics in this sense is that political parties - or at least those claiming to be run democratically rather than hierarchically - should probably expect the personal influence of the leader on outcomes to be lower than it would be in companies.
So, in judging
whether a particular leader was or was not a successful one, we need not only to
decide on the criteria, we also need to judge how far the leader was actually
personally responsible for meeting those criteria – and that’s much harder to
do.
And that brings me
to the third factor – timescale. Looking
back, it seems to me to be quite rare that the initial judgement made of any
political leader stands the test of history.
Some get re-evaluated upwards, others downwards. Two reasons for that immediately strike me.
The first of those
is that more information, facts, and opinions emerge over time. History, rather than hagiography, requires
that more rounded set of inputs.
But the second, and
the more important, is that the passage of time provides context. And any period of political leadership needs
to be judged in the context of what follows it as well as what precedes
it. It is only the passage of time which
can provide that context.
To return to the
specific subject of Gareth’s original post, namely a judgement on the 12 years
which Ieuan Wyn Jones will have spent as the leader of Plaid Cymru, there are a
number of possible sequences of events which can follow from this point
on. I choose two not because there are
only two, nor because they are necessarily the most probable, but because they
illustrate the importance of historical perspective in making a judgement.
In scenario 1,
Plaid simply continues from where Ieuan leaves off. Its official core aim is regarded as nothing
more than a ‘long term aspiration’ to be mentioned as infrequently as possible,
and the party becomes a party of government based on an appeal to the same
middle ground as the other parties in Wales. In that context, the last 12 years would be
seen as a turning point in the party’s history.
In scenario 2,
Plaid rediscovers a sense of historical mission and sets out to shift the focus
of political debate towards its own position.
In that context, the last 12 years would be seen as something of an
aberration.
Neither approach
would necessarily lead to success, of course; but the way in which IWJ came to
be regarded in each would be very different indeed.
History is neither kind nor cruel, it just is; and perspective is all in
interpreting events.
I don’t agree with
Gareth’s conclusion, but I recognise that it’s at least partly a result of
looking at the same facts and events and applying a different interpretation to
them. I simply don’t know which view
history will eventually uphold.