Why Donald Trump and Keir Starmer are both failed leaders – Will Deans
Donald Trump has contempt for rules, while Keir Starmer seems incapable of acting without them
We all have friends with that pathological inability to follow roadmaps and rules. The sort who go haring off with unwarranted confidence and arrive sunburnt, bruised and five hours late as a result. We all also know the sort of friend who would follow any direction from their sat-nav without question, even as the water rises through the car windows because it identified a nearby river as a convenient shortcut.
A poor sense of direction on the road is rarely a matter of life and death. In Donald Trump and Keir Starmer, however, we can see the real-life costs of two extremes of government decision-making – between those who have no interest in following the guardrails of normal behaviour, and those who cannot make decisions without those restraints.
One of President Trump’s defining qualities is that he has no respect for institutions or rules, least of all the unwritten rules that stand in the way of his running the US government by whim and short-term self-interest.
Trump’s humiliating peace deal
Those guardrails, of course, are exactly what in more normal times might have prevented his impulsive assault on Iran earlier this year – an attack which has led directly to the humiliating and harmful peace deal that was reached last week.
Billions of dollars unlocked for Iran’s brutal government; the implicit concession that the Islamic Republic now has a right to control and monetise access to the Strait of Hormuz; lives, resources and political capital wasted in record time – and all because of an uncontrolled impulse at the top of the US government.
You might think that this is an argument for the benefits of institutional restraints, codified laws and constitutions – and it is. The case of Starmer, however, shows the limitations of that approach.
The trouble with our outgoing Prime Minister is not, for the most part, that he disrespects institutions. Quite the opposite; this is a man known by friend and foe alike as “Mr Rules”. Instead, Starmer’s problem is that he understands only the rulebook. He seemingly has no ability to make value judgments that go beyond what the rules can tell.
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Judgment calls
Reportedly, one of Starmer’s great frustrations as Prime Minister was that civil servants would bring him a thorny political problem to which there was no obvious answer – and then expect him to make a choice. His irritation speaks to a technocratic, value-free view of politics, as though he believed he could simply let processes and institutions run, and an easy, cost-free solution would magically appear.
Laws, processes and institutions matter not just for what they are, but for the ideals and principles that they imperfectly represent. You have to understand both the rules and the values that underpin them.
The reality of being Prime Minister is that by the time a decision reaches your desk there is rarely an obviously right or wrong answer. Process only takes you so far; at some point, someone needs to make a judgment call.
Following the rules and following the roadmap is usually the right idea – but if your roadmap fails and your sat-nav leads you astray, it helps to have your own idea of where you want to go.
William Deans is chief of staff to Alistair Carmichael MP, and holds an MSc in nationalism and ethnic conflict
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