Personality and politics

One of the things about the press that politicians frequently complain about is that papers concentrate more on personalities than policies. But reading the latest extracts from Alastair Campbell’s diaries you see just how much personality matters. Indeed, according to Campbell, Tony Blair excluded Gordon Brown from a discussion about what to do after 9/11 not because of any difference about how to respond but because he had become fed up with how difficult Brown was to deal with on a personal level.

Now, there are nowhere near the personal tensions at the top of this government that there were in the last one. But because politicians are humans and not purely rational actors, the individual relationships in the government matter. For example, the fact that friends of Nick Clegg says that he feels ‘naïve’ about how Cameron allowed the No campaign to attack him during the AV referendum, undoubtedly influences the way the Lib Dems now approach coalition.