Hero worship

As usual, Joyce McMillan writes eloquently and with passion on the tragedy of Gordon Brown (Perspective, 2 September). Her analysis of his descent from world-class politician to supposed petulant bully is powerful and convincing.

In personality terms, Gordon Brown appears to be an intellectual who values personal competence and rigour of standards; such people will demand even more of themselves than they do of other people.

Although it may seem that they are emotionally cold, such people do have deep emotions but they may struggle to be in touch with these emotions. In many ways Brown was Blair’s opposite: Blair was apparently able to “emote”successfully as required, but was latterly accused of superficiality in his dealings with others. Joyce McMillan is quite right that we should be focusing not on individuals in politics, but the system that creates them. There appears to be something of an obsession in the UK with what is termed “leadership” but in fact seems to be hero worship.

If we concentrated more on understanding what leadership involves, rather than trying to turn flawed human beings into “great leaders”, we might become more aware of our own leadership potential, and so more prepared to challenge what our political representatives are doing.

Gordon Brown is, I believe, blessed with great talent and a healthy respect for social democracy, and as Joyce McMillan says, untainted by personal greed. I would love to see him, paradoxically, taking a lead in developing a new political culture which embraces the qualities of courage, radicalism, intellectual rigour and forgiveness.

(Dr) Mary Brown

Dalvenie Road

Banchory