I think it’s a driving force in people, the sense of being outside and wanting to prove to the world that you’re just as good as anyone born inside. You can also consider Margaret Thatcher a social outsider, coming from Grantham, yet leading a party ruled by social insiders. Wellington was from Ireland, Alexander the Great from Macedonia. Why did they come to embody French, German and Russian nationalism with such conviction? Napoleon from Corsica, Hitler from Austria and Stalin from Georgia. Which is why when people say that Boris Johnson thinks he’s Winston Churchill, I think he’s clever enough to spot that the wartime and peacetime prime minister are entirely different things. We see that again in Churchill’s career: he wasn’t a very good peacetime leader, frankly, but a great wartime one.
I think this is where the great leadership-studies industry, especially in America, pretty much breaks down. What does leadership in war teach us about leadership in peace? Having said that, we’re very lucky that Winston Churchill did have that extremely egotistical disorder, because it kept him fighting, even when all seemed lost.
But to believe you’re specially chosen – apart from Jesus – it’s pretty much a prima facie case of psychological disorder. He believed his survival from the assassination plotters on 20 July 1944 was providence. No, I think it’s a form of psychological disorder to think you are specially destined. There is a tendency to see truly great leaders as men and women of destiny. Even though it was for a bad cause, Robert E Lee can’t be considered anything other than a great war leader. I think Adolf Hitler was a successful war leader up till June 1941, but then he fell off a little, so I have included him because there are lessons to be learned about the errors. Napoleon is the key exception to the rule. History is written by the victors, but can someone lose a war and remain a great leader?
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