Going on and on? Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher: Leadership Capital Compared

Abstract

We define Leadership Capital as the aggregate authority composed of three dimensions: skills, relations and reputation of a leader (Bennister, ‘t Hart and Worthy 2015). The Leader Capital Index builds on other approaches to create a diagnostic ‘checklist’ tool for assessing a political leader’s ‘stock’ of authority. This paper applies the Leadership Capital Index to two of the most dominant 20th century British prime ministers, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher at 3 key points in their tenure. The LCI shows that Thatcher’s and Blair’s trajectory is more nuanced and interesting than conventional understandings of them as almost wholly ‘dominant’ leaders.The comparison offers a clear contrast in the overall trajectory of authority. Thatcher swung from weak (but apparently survivable) capital to dominance and back to a different kind of weakness. Blair moved from huge (unspent) credit to steep loss and then a less mentioned partial regain. The analysis underscores the contingent and limited nature of prime ministerial predominance.