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The leader we need

Wednesday, 1st October 2008

The Spectator on the need for resolute leadership

The latest news in the financial crisis is that, after weeks of blame-calling by all parties — generally misdirected, as Dennis Sewell argues in our cover story — a single culprit has at last been identified. It is human nature — that incorrigible force which makes us want too much of a good thing when it is within easy reach, and makes us dangerously complacent about risk when the going is good. It was human nature that made bankers behave irresponsibly when their judgment was warped by the temptation of giant bonuses; it made homebuyers and credit-card holders overreach themselves when they were offered too much cheap credit; it made politicians overborrow and encourage market folly when they thought it would buy them electoral popularity.

In the midst of a financial cataclysm like nothing we have experienced in our lifetimes — in which mighty banks, suddenly starved of liquidity and swept by rumour, have been falling by the day, and more will surely follow in the weeks to come — it is sufficient for now to declare that we are all at fault, we should all have seen it coming, we will all have to share the pain. Far more important than blame-calling at this juncture is the coming together of presidents, prime ministers, central bankers and financial practitioners to shore up the world’s defences against economic ruin.

In this respect too, human nature is the key: in times of uncertainty, people naturally look for leadership. They are not reassured by committees or commissions or elegantly drafted proposals, but by individual leaders who are sufficiently charismatic and clear-sighted to calm fear and restore confidence. We think of Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist assault on the World Trade Center in New York, and of course of Winston Churchill in the darkest hours of the second world war. Right now, the need for resolute leadership is made more apparent by its absence from the world stage — but a promising new generation is waiting in the wings.

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ralgeol

October 4th, 2008 2:32pm

D'Ancona

You are a silly twit. I would like to see your expression in Bush's position on 9/11.

What dya think Churchill looked like on Dunkirk news, loss of Tobruk, Singapore. You don't know because there was no tv. grow up you little turd.

A child of our time

From the economic and psychological bedlam of the global downturn has emerged a particularly dangerous false dichotomy: namely, that there is somehow a choice for ministers over the next few years between economic reconstruction and the repair of Britain’s broken society, and that the government (whether Labour or Conservative) must prioritise the former at the expense of the latter.

Diary

Anne Robinson

The daughter and I spent the last few days before the American election in Arizona.

Politics

Fraser Nelson

Fraser Nelson reviews the week in politics

The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

‘A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman’s famous “helicopter drop” of money.’ So said Ben Bernanke, now the chairman of the Fed, in a speech about how to ward off the ‘extremely small’ chance of deflation, which he delivered in 2002.