Political leaders are prey for adulator and assassin both

Not for us the Stalinist dragooning to the polls to stuff ballot boxes with votes for an unknown him or her just because we are affiliated to one banner or another.

So it is easy to claim the dispassionate high ground to assess the machinations contorting the political tribes and their figureheads across the water.

Even if you disagree with his policies, how he was chosen and how he conducts himself or the nation’s affairs, it is difficult not to feel a distinct queasiness over the recent very personal mauling meted out to the Prime Minister and the implied contempt for the role of government leader. Calculated to undermine, it was an unprofessional, hypocritical vendetta by cronies and adversaries alike worthy of gladiators’ night at the Coliseum.

Furthermore, responsibility for fuelling the media frenzy lay directly at the door of individuals who, having been publicly shamed for their own activities, chose to vent their wrath directly against their former boss.

And it was infectious. How many times did we hear and read over the past couple of weeks: ‘Gordon Brown is fighting for his political life’ as if it was the media’s job too to stoke the pyre on which he would be roasted?

So we saw a shabby trail of leaked e-mails and resignation letters by cabinet light-weights awash with personal name-calling, discredited harpies flouncing out of government with all the painted venom of Cinderella’s sisters denied the glass slipper, and accusations of ‘negative bullying’ (tell me, pray, what ‘positive bullying’ might be?).

It seems to me a perverse way of concluding that ‘Gordon Brown is fighting for his political life’ on the evidence of four Cabinet ministers forced to resign for either having been caught out in the ‘wrong doing’ department or throwing a juvenile hissy fit because they weren’t given their choice of toys in the cupboard. And don’t tell me they weren’t aware of just how destabilising such action could be.

What’s more, the spotlight has thereby been swung away from the misdemeanours of the party apparatchiks and the trust-challenged lieutenants waiting to pounce.

What responsible band of brothers would conspire to make their leader’s position untenable and risk rendering the country ungovernable if they weren’t intent on concealment and deflection?

The Daily Telegraph may have done us all a favour by exposing the cross-party financial shenanigans, but, as they say, a week is a long time in politics and surprise, surprise, a dense smokescreen is now being generated to conceal the general sleaze and focus opprobrium on one man. And it is succeeding.

We’re back to ‘business as usual’. Those on both sides of the political divide, who by any form of natural justice (that is, the kind that’s meted out to the likes of thee and me) should even now be ‘having their collars felt’, are either lying low, preparing a comeback or joining the baying pack from the sidelines.

It is of course the nature of high office that those at the top should accept responsibility not only for their own actions but also for those of their troops – that’s the quid pro quo of corporate loyalty. It is necessarily high risk because it assumes honour among thieves and financial manipulators – let alone megalomaniacs or zealots. Margaret Thatcher discovered spectacularly that 1990 was a poor vintage in that regard!

Let’s face it, opportunists are naturally predators, and the targets they stalk are always in their sights. The closer they come, the more they know, and are better able to exploit the weaknesses of their prey – who, once on the defensive, is cornered and vilified.

So forget any record of past success, even if it has resulted in providing the very team escalator from which to launch the attack. A tall poppy is up for the plucking, whether it grows in home territory or in the greener grass beyond.

But woe betide any complacency by gleeful Judas or opposition magpie. The same rules apply whether fighting among the street gangs or the shire vandals: once your own red, blue or yellow packaging begins to unravel, you will be exposed to friend and foe alike. Prisoners are rarely taken.

The recent elections for the European Parliament, which very few UK voters know or care about, were turned into a sideshow by commentators eager to portray them as a national plebiscite. The overriding motivation of those voters who did bother to turn out had, we were told, little to do with representation in Europe; it was to register their disgust with the squalid profiteering by Westminster politicians and the weakness of its leader.

MEPs, by the way, are getting away with institutional scams and unaccountability to die for. Funny how that readily slips below the radar of a media consumed in a febrile twitter of speculation and regicide.

Now, all this personal back-stabbing, pack envy, e-mail leaking or mutual impugning of professional standards and veracity wouldn’t happen here, would it? Of course not! There would be no point in the free-for-all of our cherished system of consensus politics and non-party allegiances. If nobody aspires to leadership, there’s little appetite to topple the leader.

You could say, I suppose, that there is a perverse thrill in performing in the centre of the ring even if it represents the most uncomfortable place in the circus – a focus for adulator and assassin both.

Would the achievements of Julius Caesar have been so highly praised if he had simply met a quiet end in a Consul’s retirement villa?