War & Leadership

A trio of articles happened upon serendipitously have made me reflect upon politics today: Hébert's A replay of the Liberal-NDP battle of 1988 may be at hand to Flanagan's Politics Now Constant Total War to Cometh the Hour: the Chamberlain-Churchill Succession. Given the previous two, that we are in constant total war, and heading towards a decisive battle, perhaps almost as important as 1988, and the last, regarding the importance of recognising, as noted in the Godfather, the difference between peacetime leaders and wartime leaders, I look around and I ask myself, federally, who is the best potential wartime leader? Who knows how to FIGHT? Who has the jelly for a FIGHT? Who has experience in the toughest of fights, in the most difficult of conditions? Who has shown a willingness to take on much larger, more dominant retrograde forces, and HAS WON, against all the odds?

Peacetime is peacetime, but wartime is wartime. Whatever misgivings one may have about this or that perceived past failing, one has to ask oneself, who is the best wartime leader? I was struck, as ever, by the description of the relationship between Chamberlain and Churchill, who had known each other forever, like all within the small British elite, and the fratricidal nature of their relationship. I was struck by how much effort Chamberlain exerted to try to prevent Churchill from having the top job, despite general recognition of his greater worth as a wartime leader, but the stakes being so high, Chamberlain finally acceding, like a gentleman. The article recalled most potently how mistrusted Churchill was by so many, having "betrayed" the party in his youth by leaving it for a leading position in a more radical left-wing party, and how many recalled some of his supposed past disasters, but that at the end of the day, being at war, being outmatched materially, needing their very best war leader when in the most desperate straits, all swung around behind Churchill. This passage struck a nerve, for some reason:

It is too easy to forget today, because of all that followed these momentous events of May, how unpopular Churchill was within the ranks of the Conservative Party at the beginning of that month in 1940. Many saw him as unreliable, impetuous, difficult to restrain and of poor judgement. At 65 his past career cast a long shadow across his credibility. Many Conservatives still saw him as the opportunist and class traitor who had left the party for personal advancement to join the radical Liberal government of Asquith and Lloyd George before the First World War. He was still remembered by some as the architect of the Dardanelles ‘fiasco’ in 1915. Amery, one of the most prominent rebels, was not at all convinced that Churchill was the right man to succeed Chamberlain. Everything would depend on how events unfolded over the next few days.

There's a reproduction of a great caricature from the Evening Standard of the day, of all the defenders of democracy, regardless of party, Labour & Liberals & Tories united, rolling up their sleeves to fight, all in their identical statesman uniforms, powerful imagery to counteract the Nazi imagery. It's worth reproducing here.