Who should be the next UK Prime Minister?

I revist the 11 political leadership capablities we need from our next Prime Minister.

Who should be the next UK Prime Minister is back on the agenda again. In June 2019 we had a contest for the leadership of the Conservative Party. Boris Johnson won against Jeremy Hunt. He went on to win a General Election in December 2019 with a whopping 80 seat majority. I wrote about the Leadership Election and the General Election at the time.

So why are we back here again? Why do we need a new UK Prime Minister? More to the point, why have his Member of Parliament (MP) colleagues dumped him thus forcing a leadership race? He survived a confidence motion in June 2022, despite 41% of his MPs voting against him. But a string of by-election defeats led his MPs to fear he had become an electoral liability. In the last few days up to his resignation as leader of Conservative Party on 8th July two prominent members of his Cabinet resigned along with 50 Government Ministers. As one said’ “Enough is Enough“.

If you want to read more on this story check out these articles: from the BBC ‘The prime minister who broke all the rules‘; and from the Spectator ‘What is the point of Boris Johnson?’

Read on to find out how the leadership election works and my take on the leadership characteristics we should be looking for in next UK Prime Minister …

Continue reading “Who should be the next UK Prime Minister?”

Political Leadership: Revisited

At a time the country needs strong political leadership, I look again at the characteristics we need from our next Prime Minister.

The political leadership question is back on the agenda again. In June 2017 we had a General Election in the UK. I published an article at that time, ‘Leadership: Your Vote Counts’, inviting readers to decide which of our would-be political leaders best matched eleven business leader characteristics.

The winner of that Election was Theresa May of the Conservative Party, albeit it with a reduced majority. Since then she has struggled to implement the result of our 2016 National Referendum and take the UK out of the European Union. Mrs May resigned in early June and since then there has been frenzied activity in the Conservative Party to select a new leader. This person will not only be the leader of the Party, they will also be our new Prime Minister. Are you with me so far?

Leadership Election

The initial selection process was in the hands of 313 Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs). They took ten initial candidates down to two. In the final stage the Conservative Party membership select a Leader and Prime Minister from the final two. As I write, there are estimated to be 160,000 paid up members who are participating in this final selection. Who will they select to be the new resident of that famous address: 10 Downing Street?

Leadership Characteristic

For this election I’ve come up with a different set of characteristics with which to judge the political leadership capability of our two candidates. I looked at research on the political leadership characteristics of two of our most notable post-war Prime Ministers: Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher. This is not just a random choice on my part. A YouGov survey of the greatest Prime Ministers since 1945 conducted in May 2019 placed Margaret Thatcher number one with 21% of the votes just ahead of Winston Churchill with 19%. Read more to see what I discovered …..

Continue reading “Political Leadership: Revisited”