Is it the nature of politics to make leaders fail?

SIR— The once controversial British MP, Enoch Powell, made a famous dictum which says “all political lives, unless they are cut off mid-stream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics.”

So, according to Powell, many of the greatest leaders like Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher were forced to give up when their party (or their now-forgotten colleagues) compelled them.The loss of power seems to hold few compensations.

Former Ugandan president Milton Obote ruled for two terms which, as you know, ended in disaster. Yet the desire to regain the reigns of power, if only for a day, is for him always there.

Thus whatever a president or politician has achieved, there remains that sense of failure for what he still wished to do. This sense of failure, as Enoch Powell said, comes from “the nature of politics.”

Steven Siima
Jinja