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Need for stable political leadership and its impact

liz truss
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Readers of British History would be familiar with the story of ‘Anne of the Thousand Days.’ Henry VIII a very capricious despot and a philanderer, dissatisfied with his wife Catherine of Aragon, starts a discreet affair with Mary Boleyn, a daughter of one of his Courtiers, Sir Thomas Boleyn. Soon he falls in love with her 18-year-old younger sister Anne. Though she spurns his love, the power of the royal connection, gets the better of her, and she uses it to undermine Cardinal Wolsey, the Lord Chancellor. Henry VIII created the Church of England as a religious body unique from the Roman Catholic Church to achieve his goal of divorcing his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to marry Anne Boleyn and father sons to continue his dynasty.  This led to a split with the Pope in the 1530’s and 1534 Henry passed the Act of Succession and thereafter the Act of Supremacy. His liaison with Anne resulted in the birth of a daughter, Princess Elizabeth. Henry was unhappy about this, and soon got attracted to Lady Jane Seymour, one of Anne’s maids!  Subsequent tragic events and the intervention of Thomas Cromwell resulted in Henry VIII ordering the execution of Anne Boleyn. One of history’s most tragic love affairs was captured on celluloid and named “Anne of the Thousand Days”. Richard Burton and Genevieve Bujold starred as King Henry VIII of England and Anne Boleyn, their ill-fated marriage, from its exciting beginning to its tragic finale.

Anne Boleyn’s short-lived reign of just a thousand days in the 1530s and Liz Truss’s brief stint of only 44 days, in 2022, give interesting insights into the social development of Britain. Today, neither gender, sex, offspring, nor royalty matters. People have become an extremely selfish and only desire to lead luxurious lives, hence cannot accept a declining economy, high cost of living, hyperinflation, and unemployment. The global energy crisis caused by the Russia-Ukraine conflict has led to declining economies in many countries. Her proposals of massive tax cuts created huge economic uncertainty, leading to a fall in businesses and consumer confidence. The excessive borrowing proposal fed the inflationary spiral. The Russia-Ukraine conflict added to her difficulties in controlling inflation. The conflict contributed to rising inflation through higher energy and food prices. The Bank of England had to hike interest rates to control inflation. Increased interest rates fed into mortgage rates and imposed an extra burden on homeowners with higher mortgage payments. Many households and small businesses needed state support to survive. Many Tory supporters began to have serious misgivings about her economic policies, which led Tory MPs to panic about their next electoral prospects. Anxious Tory MPs immediately demanded a change of leadership, as they had branded her and her policies a failure. Earlier, Boris Johnson had to bite the dust, as everybody lost faith in his leadership and capabilities. The ‘Partygate’ scandal added to his woes. The sudden elevation of Lizz Truss, was negated by her finance minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, whose mini-budget created great turbulence for UK bond markets. Most of the policies had to be reversed three weeks later by the second Finance Minister, Jeremy Hunt.

If dictatorships cause uneasiness, democracies cause instability. We live in an age where people thirst for uninterrupted prosperity, luxurious lives and continuous entertainment. Even a mild tremor in this Utopia can trigger an earthquake in the higher echelons of the political leadership. This is exactly what happened to Liz Truss. Her 44-day tenure went “too far and too fast” with her economic reforms. Everything derailed.

Similar derailments routinely happen across the globe, affecting nations and people. In India, former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s first government in 1996 lasted only 13 days while his second government lasted 13 months. In both cases, Vajpayee’s government was defeated by no-confidence motions. While in 1996, Vajpayee stepped down ahead of a trust vote, he failed to secure enough support in the 1998 vote of no-confidence.

In Portugal, in 2015 Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho saw the collapse of his 13-day-old government. No Prime Minister had had their programme voted down in the Assembly since the even shorter-lived government of Nobre da Costa, in the late 1970s, which lasted a mere 11 days.

Italy’s shortest-serving Prime Minister was Tommaso Tittoni, who served for only 16 days in 1905.

Nurul Amin a prominent Pakistani Muslim League leader, and a jurist who served as the eighth Prime Minister of Pakistan and as the first and only vice president of Pakistan, got a term of only 13 days, from 7th December 1971 to 20th December 1971. He is also noted as being the last Bengali leader of Pakistan.

Every nation is facing complex issues relating to various economic, educational, exodus of illegal immigrants, terrorism, drug trafficking, environmental and security issues. Demographic changes caused by refugees are a cause of concern in many countries. Geopolitical instability is now a common experience within and across nations. Citizens and businesses always need government leaders to help and support them navigate from these complex problems. Although the challenges governments face are nearly universal, how leaders go about tackling them often varies significantly, depending on the government structure and ideology. Globally, major processes of growth, decay, breakdown and transformation are happening which require continuous policies of harmonious adaptation and adjustment, which often is sought to be tackled by novel forms of political activity, new methods of mass communication, widening the scope of people’s participation in politics, an extension of governmental activity and interference.

The “revolution of rising expectations”, especially among the middle and weaker segments of society, failure of the political leaders, to cater to their needs, leads to discontentment, and can result in violent political change. Understanding the complex processes of political development and change is the hallmark of any great leader, otherwise, it can lead to internal feuds resulting in the collapse of governments.

Crisis situations often lead to confrontations that test the stability of political systems, as they place extraordinary demands on political leadership. During such times the quality of the political leadership is often crucial, for, the result of any crisis is primarily to disgrace the leaders in power, and, bring about a regime change. Political assassinations and military coup d’etat lead to the abrupt, often violent replacement of national executives. Fortunately, Lizz Truss bowed out gracefully, in the consoling wisdom that uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

By

Dr. G. Shreekumar Menon IRS (Rtd), Ph.D.

Former Director General

National Academy of Customs, Indirect Taxes & Narcotics

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