A New and Necessary Leadership Style

The Roman Republic had a keen sense of political dualism. In ordinary times, the Senate served as a theatre for the aristocracy’s disputatious squabbles, each family pursuing its private ambitions under the banner of public interest. But when existential threats loomed, Rome cut through the noise: a dictator was appointed, granted extraordinary powers for a limited term to unify command and save the Republic.

Modern advanced democracies have mirrored this approach in practice if not in theory. In normal times, government operates as managerialism - weak leaders triangulating between a fragmented chorus of competing interest groups, lobbyists, and policy technocrats. Yet, when national survival is at stake, a Churchillian figure may somehow emerge - a previously derided figure capable of galvanizing the nation in the face of war or crisis.

The appointment of Winston Churchill in 1940 exemplifies this dynamic. Weak appeasers were swept aside for a man whose single-mindedness matched the gravity of the moment. Britain’s victory depended not on consensus but on clarity and resolve: "action this day".

Today’s elites - to their dismay - are rediscovering this lesson. Decades of neoliberal globalism and cultural progressivism have widened the chasm between ruling fractions and the non-elite majority. The rise of populist leaders like Donald Trump - dismissed by elites as aberrations - in the first instance signalled an internal 'cold civil war', a backlash from the forgotten majority whose patience was exhausted.

Ironically, these populist leaders, derided as unfit for power, may be precisely what is needed to confront the growing and ominous threats posed by hostile states like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

Just as Rome needed its dictators and Britain its Churchill, arguably the West’s internal divisions might yet produce leaders with the fortitude to face under-realised external dangers.