Rising without ideas

Many years ago, I was friends with an ambitious young academic woman who was researching for her PhD. As best as I can remember, her research involved interviewing leading members of the education world about future challenges. I agreed to be a proxy respondent to test her interview schedule. Some time later, she told me ruefully that few of the senior people she interviewed were able to reflect on these future challenges or how to respond to them. They were, in fact, almost bereft of ideas.

I suspect that this phenomenon is not confined to education, but is instead a feature found frequently among people who rise to the top. Their energy is devoted to advancement, and their knowledge and skills are subservient to this. The ideas they do propound are therefore those that best suit their advancement at any particular time. They may express them with great force, but in reality their ideas are just weapons to win support and beat down opponents. There is therefore no need for long-term consistency - a person can argue opposite policies within a short space of time if this is the route to promotion. Deep reflection and analysis would be a hindrance because people with deeply-held beliefs or a commitment to the truth are usually less flexible, and thereby handicapped in the struggle for power.

This lack of ideas can create a sense of personal emptiness among the ambitious, that becomes evident when they are interrogated. This fate most frequently befalls politicians, whom the public expects to have some sense of the main problems facing their country and how to deal with them. At the time of writing the British Conservative Party is selecting a new leader, and candidates are required to state their policies and answer questions about them. This sometimes results in cliché - the sign of unoriginal thinking. The leading applicant at present is Liz Truss, who was a passionate opponent of Brexit when this was the policy of the then Prime Minister, and is now an equally-passionate supporter of Brexit now that this is the preferred policy of Conservative Party members. Quite without shame, she can accuse her opponent Rishi Sunak (who has been a consistent supporter of Brexit) of being lukewarm on the issue. But when asked for her ideas on policy, Truss relapses into cliché. Most notably, she said: “Our country became great through its embrace of free trade, free enterprise and free markets. I am determined to double down on levelling up so that everyone has the opportunity to succeed as part of an aspiration nation.” This woman is clearly destined for the top.