Leadership and the Labour Party Narrative and Performance

The relationships between narrative and leadership, between rhetoric and performance, between doctrine and its voicing, are crucial to party politics and are underrated by both practising politicians and scholars. This study analyses the ‘performance of leadership’ in the UK Labour Party, and what this means for a new approach to understanding politics. The main focus of this study is the five-year leadership of Ed Miliband, 2010-2015. The fortunes of the party and the party leadership can be apprehended as a series of performed rhetorical events. A political leader’s persona is a construction that performs – rather like an actor – in the political space. The author identifies and analyses the architecture and the modalities of leadership persona construction and performance in contemporary politics.

Acknowledgements.- List of Abbreviations.- List of Figures.- 1.Political Leadership, Rhetoric and Culture: Aristotle Good, Max Weber Bad.- 2.Leadership Lessons from the Past.- 3.The Arc of Rhetoric and the Leader as Author.- 4.Rhetoric and Performance: Miliband’s Finest Hour (sixty-four minutes and forty seven seconds, in fact).- 5.Narrative Collapse and the Teller Without a Tale.- 6.Conclusion: Narrative, Rhetoric and the ‘Personalized Political’

John Gaffney is Professor of Politics at Aston University, Birmingham, UK and Co-Director of the Aston Centre for Europe.