Rangers manager Philippe Clement shows SNP and Tories what good leadership looks like – Scotsman comment

The quality of leadership can have a dramatic effect on performance, whether in football or politics

In October, Rangers sacked their manager after a third defeat in seven games – a 3-1 loss to Aberdeen – prompted some to suggest their chances of winning the Scottish Premiership title had already gone. Two-and-a-half months later, Rangers have just claimed the first available trophy of the season – by defeating Aberdeen – and now sit five points behind Celtic with two games in hand.

They are a club transformed. Under the guidance of Belgian manager Philippe Clement, they have played 14 games without losing. Beyond the footballing reasons for this new-found success, a wider lesson to be learned is that the quality of leadership really does matter.

If there were such a thing as a league table of political success, the SNP and Conservatives would be relegation strugglers. Both have been in power for more than a decade and both have no one but themselves to blame for the parlous state of the country, with high taxes and crumbling public services. Circumstances outside of their control may have been unkind but, at the end of the day, politics is a results-based game.