In all sorts of organisations, we now embrace the cult of personality in the mistake that this is the same as character
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Stuffed with middle managers, the BBC now looks and sounds a shambles. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP
Believe it or not, the failure of leadership so painfully evident among top suits at the BBC is not the only important thing going on in the world, though there's a self-fulfilling danger that it appears to be the case because the obsessed-with-itself media neglects other issues.
Some people think that George Osborne's Friday night grab – the FT's choice of verb – of £35bn worth of surpluses built up by the Bank of England as a side-product of its policy of quantitative easing (QE) is a serious breach of the fundamental separation of the Bank from the Treasury. It was taken to flatter the chancellor's borrowing figures ahead of his important 5 December autumn financial statement, which will affect us all.
It's all electronic funny money anyway, a circular device to rebuild confidence and free up bank lending, and someone called Osborne's seizure of the e-money "Zimbabwe-style banking". But that's abuse, not analysis, and so far none of the expensive newspapers I buy has devoted a proper editorial or comment page to it; they're too busy with the BBC. Nor has any of the wannabe candidates for Sir Mervyn King's job as Bank governor had the guts or instinct for leadership to complain.
Not good enough, I'd say. But it's also above my pay grade to arbitrate. Here's a simpler failure of leadership on which we can all take a view. Yesterday the Sunday Telegraph reported the case of Sergeant Danny Nightingale, an 11-year SAS veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, who was sentenced to 18 months in the military "glasshouse" at Colchester by a court martial last week, just ahead of Armistice Day.
His offence? Illegal possession of a handgun in Britain, a 9mm Glock given to him as a present in 2007 after helping to train an Iraqi counter-terrorism force as part of his own counter-terrorist activities, the SAS working with US Delta Force soldiers.
Nightingale had intended to donate it to his regimental sergeants' mess as a war trophy, but left Iraq in a hurry after two members of his squad were killed in a helicopter crash. Colleagues packed his kit - Glock included – and sent it home to SAS HQ in Hereford.
Stay with me on this one or read the Telegraph's inside page article here. You won't see much in today's papers (too busy settling score with the BBC again) though the Sun which sees itself as the squaddie's friend, does carry a report here.
The bald facts of the case are these. In 2011 Nightingale had returned to active counter-terrorism duty in Afghanistan after living close to base with a fellow-soldier. Alas, when his colleague's wife complained to the civilian police that she was the victim of domestic violence the West Mercia forced searched the house and found the Glock, which had been transferred with other possessions, still locked in the case into which Sergeant Nightingale had placed it in 2007.
Illegal possession of a handgun is a serious offence in Britain, as it should be, though whether a five-year mandatory sentence is appropriate in all circumstances is doubtful. It sounds like another case of politicians trying to play tough guy to impress the tabloids. In any case the civilian police decided it was a matter for the military and passed the sergeant's case over to the Royal Military police.
Last Tuesday, Nightingale appeared before Judge Advocate Alistair McGrigor for a court martial. Such courts usually follow civilian sentencing guidelines, so the defendant was warned that if he pleaded not guilty he risked a five-year sentence. After a family consultation outside the courtroom Nightingale and his legal team took the judge's promise of leniency at face value and reluctantly pleaded guilty.
Whether an 18-month sentence and a criminal record when he is discharged from the army on its completion is an appropriate one may be a matter of disagreement.
Clearly the sergeant did not keep the weapon to rob banks or sell to a gang of teenage hooligans in Hereford (where I imagine even hooligans watch their step in the presence of so many local SAS men); it was an oversight. But wait, I haven't finished yet.
While on a fundraising venture for SAS widows and orphans in 2009, Sergeant Nightingale collapsed during a 200-mile hike through the Amazon jungle, the sort of thing SAS types do instead of the Great North Run. He was in a coma for three days and suffered severe memory loss - "talking like a two-year-old", says his wife Sally.
He recovered and, though he covered up his difficulties, had suffered brain damage and permanent memory loss. It was the defence's case that the losses included any recollection of the 9mm Glock. Two expert witnesses of some distinction testified that this was a credible defence. But Judge Advocate McGrigor refused to accept that he was not aware of the gun. Hence the lenient 18 months.
That strikes me as a severe case of poor military leadership. Isn't the SAS supposed to look after its derring-do volunteer elite? What was his commanding officer thinking of? Don't the army regulations cover such eventualities? Why did it get this far?
Listening to a succession of BBC suits and frontline troops – the Chris Pattens but also the Jeremy Paxmans and David Dimblebys – on radio and TV this weekend makes it easier to imagine Brigadier Patten or Colonel Paxman reading yesterday's Sunday Telegraph and saying: "Why did no one tell me?"
Make that, not reading yesterday's Sunday Telegraph but hearing about it on Twitter in three or four days time. Arghh! We only know of the case because the Nightingales waved their anonymity after the shock of the sentence.
What do I know about military matters, I hear you ask? Good question. Not much beyond a bit of reading, a few military weddings (good occasions) and the occasional drink with a soldier.
So I took the precaution this morning of phoning Colonel Bob Stewart, MP for Beckenham and former British army commander in Bosnia, a familiar florid face on TV.
Colonel Bob had missed the Sunday Telegraph but is now on the case. The whole case sounded "completely absurd" to him and should have been dealt with by the sergeant's CO – with a black mark against his record, that should have been enough.
Stewart himself recalls being given a 1904 Steyr hunting rifle – in mint condition – by a captain in the old B Specials in Northern Ireland of the violent 1970s. He got it back to England, possibly illegally, he can't remember, and had the barrel filled with lead to make it unusable. He gave it as a souvenir to his corporal and arms storeman. These things happen.
Bob Stewart is now 63 and I rate his chance of becoming prime minister as slim to zero. But we can all vaguely remember him as a fighting soldier who believed in speaking his mind, in leading from the front. Which takes me back to the BBC.
Listening to ex-DG, the hapless George Entwistle, being toasted by John Humphrys on the Today programme on Saturday – you can catch it here – I wondered what anonymous folk, still employed at the corporation, sent him into battle with Radio 4's rottweiler so ill prepared, what sort of person had not told him about the Guardian's Friday morning demolition of Newsnight's Alistair McAlpine story. Patten too has often sounded ill-briefed during this crisis – the last one over the one-time saintly Jimmy Savile.
That's not leadership either, I'm afraid, but leaders need good staff officers with high morale and motivation who tell the boss what he/she needs to know. Stuffed with middle managers the Beeb looks and sounds a shambles.
But as David Dimbleby remarked on Today on Monday morning, it's not the only victim of managerialism – his wife works for the NHS. Plenty of organisations, public and private, are like that now. We embrace the cult of the personality in the mistake that personality is the same as character, that a soundbite equals leadership, when it often merely passes the buck.
Of course, Dimbleby who wisely told everyone not to panic – and Patten not to resign – was turned down for both top jobs, DG and chairman of the BBC, in his time. Too late now, at 74 he's almost as old as John Prescott. All the same, he sounded like a grown-up.
I wish I could pin a campaign medal on Colonel Paxman, too. He's Newsnight's senior officer and I thought Paxo should have been the one to front Newsnight's big McAlpine grovel on Friday night, instead of leaving it to the less authoritative Sergeant Eddie Mair and issuing a bad-tempered statement (why no interview?) attacking the suits.
Paxo's untouchable and wouldn't go hungry even if they dared fired him (which they wouldn't). Viewers recognise courage and can spot leadership – though perhaps not as instinctively as soldiers.
