Why radical humility challenges personality politics

Amid the political party conferences, George Pitcher searches for the flickers of radical humility.

George Pitcher

George is a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and an Anglican priest.

A cropped image of the face of RIshi Sunak with colours of a flag behind him

Rishi Sunak at a previous party conference.

BNN.

As a glutton craves a fast, so might regular consumers of party political conferences, stuffed with a surfeit of arrogance, yearn for a display of a little humility.

It would, admittedly, be a tough trick for a conference speaker to pull off, when the whole point is to achieve a standing ovation. Unlike his immediate predecessors, prime minister Rishi Sunak did try. Humility is an extra challenge for him, being a multi-millionaire former investment banker married to a billionaire heiress.

But he raised his humble origins again, as he did in his party’s leadership contest, paying tribute to his immigrant parents, a GP and pharmacist in Southampton. Herein lies another problem: As the old saw has it, as soon as you claim humility, you lose it.

So, one is left to wonder whether humility is a desirable quality in our politics at all, or even possible. Kenneth (now Lord) Clarke came close, in a number of Conservative ministerial positions, saying calmly and honestly what he thought. Labour’s Frank Field was another, possibly informed by his quietly devout Christian faith.

Further back, Labour’s post-war prime minister Clement Attlee had a gentle and unassuming demeanour, which only led Winston Churchill to observe that he “had much to be modest about.” There’s the problem. Humility is seen as a sign of weakness.

This is radical humility, a Cinderella quality to its ugly sister “radical honesty”.

But it can be found in politics. Baroness Cathy Ashton, whose many achievements include brokering an agreement between Serbia and Kosovo and negotiating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran, has written a memoir.

She was a guest on The Rest is Politics, the podcast hosted by Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, of both of whom a neuro-surgeon might observe that humility bypasses have been a complete success. But she is a perfect exemplar of what Stewart called, towards the end of the interview, “radical humility”.

This, Stewart observed, counters the “Great Man” theory of history, the super-hero who saves his people – the character currently channelled by so many populist leaders, with Donald Trump as its apotheosis.

Ashton herself said things like “we do our best”, that there’s a web of small, interconnected acts that reach a successful resolution and that the deals aren’t hers to make, but belong to the people making them. A lesson that could be taken from Kosovo to complex circumstances such as British transport infrastructure, the nature of our union, or local governance from Birmingham to Newcastle.

This is radical humility, a Cinderella quality to its ugly sister “radical honesty”, the latter developed since the Nineties by the American psychotherapist Brad Blanton, which is really a licence for being rude. Radical humility, by contrast, puts its practitioner firmly at the service of those affected by a political situation and enables them to resolve it.

Impressed as he was by the concept, Campbell neatly summarised the problem of deploying it as a political slogan: “What do we want? Radical humility! When do we want it? Now!”

But radical humility should be a given for the way we manage the administrative organs of our faith, the Churches. Cardinal Basil Hume, the Archbishop of Westminster who never forgot he was foremost a Benedictine monk, springs to mind.

As does Rowan Williams, whom I observed from the Daily Telegraph and then as his principal spin-doctor between 2008 and 2011, holding the complexity of the Anglican Communion together by empowering its components.

The point about radical humility is that it subsumes personality into the lives of those it serves.

Their aim, in perhaps unconscious application of radical humility, was like Baroness Ashton to give those they convened room to tell their stories, to take ownership of them and become co-narrators. And that has a central gospel provenance. Jesus of Nazareth led by story-telling, the parables inviting listeners to reach their own conclusions – even and especially today.

Radical humility doesn’t invite servant ministry. It is service ministry, precisely because it puts the governed in charge of their own story, which in a grander context could be called their destiny.

Whether that kind of liberation could be applied to our secular politics is a tall order. As I’ve said, there are flickers of radical humility in Sunak, but when he claims to be proud to be the UK’s first Asian PM and “even prouder that it’s no big deal”, he paradoxically feels obliged to proceed to slam Labour for its lack of diversity.

It was telling that home secretary Suella Braverman, in her somewhat incoherent speech this week, widely cast as a leadership bid, claimed that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer didn’t have the “personality” to be prime minister.

The point about radical humility is that it subsumes personality into the lives of those it serves. It’s one reason, perhaps, why we know so little of the personality of the Nazarene. But the likes of Braverman and other populist politicians can’t see beyond personality.

Maybe she, like other politicians, wouldn’t recognise radical humility. And it can’t be transformative unless it’s listened to.

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Economics

23 October 2024

1 min read

Budgeting for discontent

The Chancellor can't please everyone, but is contentment possible?

Paul Valler

Paul Valler is an executive coach and mentor. He is a former chair of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

A woman stands behind a lectern against a blue and red backdrop.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves speaks at a recent event.

HM Treasury.

As the Chancellor Rachel Reeves seeks to raise billions in this Autumn budget, the news media are all over the downsides. Poor pensioners freezing during winter and businesses complaining of the tax burden are political headlines. Tough choices must be made, but we are rarely happy when it comes to money.

Economic discontent is ironically a cultural norm in first world countries. In the west we have become used to what psychologists call the hedonic treadmill – adjusting our expectations to any new benefits and finding ourselves wanting even more, to try to maintain the same level of happiness. It’s a mentality that dooms us to discontent. Socrates said, ‘He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.’

Contentment seems to be a forgotten virtue today, and increasingly elusive in a society striving for happiness through wealth. Yet being content in life is a more valuable form of wealth than money. There is something enormously attractive about a tranquil state of mind and heart. Contentment does not mean passive acquiescence; there is a noble side to being passionately discontented about something that is unjust – especially when we are fighting for others. William Wilberforce demonstrated that with his campaign for the repeal of laws allowing slavery.

Our personal challenge is to be content in ourselves, whatever the circumstances. Oscar Wilde said, ‘True contentment is not having everything, but being satisfied with everything you have.’ Practising paying attention to what we do have and being thankful for it. That attitude of gratitude is a recognised way to lift our mood and strengthen our resilience. But thankfulness doesn’t solve every problem. Warm words may help warm hearts, but they don’t heat cold homes. Although gratitude is proven to improve our wellbeing, it’s not enough to compensate for all the problems of life. Because here’s the deal; life is tough and then you die, and there are many worse things than economic woes.

Pain, grief and loss are all too common, and they can test our resilience beyond what feels like our ability to endure. Chronic physical or mental illness for example; or being permanently disabled. Or the life-sapping effort to parent children with special needs; or caring for a parent/partner with dementia - especially when it goes on and on. Sometimes horrible events happen like violent abuse, or the deep grief of relationship breakdown or bereavement. This level of suffering pushes us to the end of ourselves, to the place where something more than psychological self-help is needed. What is the secret of contentment then?

I don’t envy the Chancellor, and I do not trivialise the very real challenges raised by having to make tough economic choices.

This is where the secular and the Christian worldview are radically different. Secular philosophers call people to show their own self-sufficiency and superior reason when enduring suffering. This can feel principled and stoic, but it lacks empathy and hope. Christianity accepts the reality of our own weakness and insufficiency, recognising that we can’t fix everything ourselves. Instead of trusting in humanity, we choose to trust God both for this life and the life to come. And this trust and hope is linked to a deeper form of contentment, which transcends pure rationality.

Of course, sceptics say this is just psychological comfort from an imaginary friend, and it doesn’t make sense, because surely any good God would not allow us to suffer in the first place. But any realist must acknowledge that a lot of human suffering comes from the damaging exercise of our own free will. Wars and slavery are examples. If God were to override our free will, we would be robbed of the authentic capacity to love, which makes us fully human. The coexistence of free will, suffering and God is a complex issue.

The experience of millions of Christ followers is that trusting God is much more than imaginary comfort. God is real and prayer changes things; the most ordinary, natural and chance experiences can be affected by it. And prayer changes us. In our vulnerability, if we choose to trust God something changes, we begin to relax, things become a bit easier to bear. In fact, the apostle Paul claimed that Christ’s power was perfected in his own weakness.

Contentment is a strange peace that comes from trusting God in the middle of difficult circumstances. One of the great old hymns was written by a man who lost his four daughters in an accident at sea, and also lost all his money in a fire. The refrain says, ‘It is well, it is well with my soul.’ This isn’t denial or delusion, it is the inner sense of quietness that God can give. Only an eternal perspective allows for that kind of contentment.

I don’t envy the Chancellor, and I do not trivialise the very real challenges raised by having to make tough economic choices. Britain is clearly in a place where some stringent fiscal discipline is needed, and that will inevitably cause some hardship and difficulties. But in the face of all the discontent that is so freely shared in the news, there is another way to respond. Instead of complaining about our flawed Government or moaning about our circumstances, we can change our perspective to put our trust in the ultimate Authority. And in doing so can find a peace that the world cannot give. Contentment is a treasure beyond the wealth of nations.