It was never going to be easy for Gordon Brown, for starters he’s Scottish. Okay maybe that one’s just my opinion, but we all know he’s going to live under Tony Blair’s shadow for a long time to come. In fact, according to news during his first few weeks in office his rating was lower than David Cameron*, the pompous elite Conservative Party’s Shadow to Brown, which encouraged the Tory to challenge him to a General Election (kind of a snap election). Obviously, Brown didn’t bite, which some will see as weakness. Don’t be fooled though, it’s not like there’s any real alternative.

Unfortunately for him, his first few months in office and his government’s immediately rocked by the Northern Rock saga.

Brown’s team decided to loan money to the sick bank and it caused uproar. Up to now they’re still trying to save it. I will not pretend to follow the current events in the UK (or anywhere else), so I do wonder why the UK government’s bothering to save this institution. I mean, shouldn’t they sort out the pensions crisis before saving some private organisation?

A few months after the bank troubles, another scandal airs: dodgy party donations (actually this is Blair’s legacy). If this was Pinas, I’d be surprised they actually audit the money that goes in their party coffers, much less make it public. Anyway, a lot of smelly-garbage have been dredged up and in the end the Conservatives were under scrutiny, too. What goes around, comes around.

Then, of course, HM Revenue lost some CDs containing personal details and bank records of people receiving Child Benefits. Brown had to apologise. Then a few weeks ago, another CD was lost! This time it contains DNA of 4000 wanted criminals.

How bad. How poor. Some people said it was unacceptable and there were calls for resignation, blah, blah, blah.

I am not going to defend the Labour Party. My thought is about leaders taking the blame for everything. Captains go down with sinking ships. Yes, there are shameless Presidents who wouldn’t resign even if her entire family should be hiding in shame. And there are politicians who do resign even with just a hint of a scandal (there is an example from China, but I can’t find the link anymore).

If like Gordon, it wasn’t your fault the CD was misplaced. You do not handle the files yourself. You do not arrange the fund raising events and do not even see the cheques, how can we actually say it was his fault? Books, movies and convention say that good leaders should shield their team and they take the fall (at least, if they were decent).

Perhaps leaders, no matter in what capacity or type of organisation, should surround themselves with reliable and intelligent people then. There will be less risks and you can actually delegate tasks with a calm heart.

If that is not possible, then I guess you can always resign, then dust yourself and say it’s not your problem anymore.

Or you humble yourself, say sorry and hope you don’t get fired.

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*This guy said we should hug the hoodies (aka yobs) because he thinks all these miscreants need is love. This didn’t work because he was photographed with such a hoodie behind him firing finger pistols at him (that’s my fave picture of him). He’s now trying a different tactic, he said adults should approach these kids and tell them to behave.

I’d like to drop him in the middle of Hackney with instructions to “go forth and practise what you preach” sans bodyguards.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 12:02 am and is filed under napansin, news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.