Leader fatigue, it seems, works in a few different ways.
In most cases, voters become tired of a leader, and send them packing at the ballot box.
The list here is long, but a few notables include Scott Morrison and Bill Shorten.
In other cases, it is the party’s own MPs who grow weary with one leader, and decide it’s time for them to step down.
The list here, at least in Australia in recent times, is even longer. Read Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd.
And then there’s a third self-generated ‘leader fatigue’, and the latest casualty is Nicola Sturgeon, the no-nonsense, straight-talking First Minister of Scotland and leader of the Scottish National Party since 2014.
She followed New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern, who announced she no longer had “enough in the tank’’ exactly four weeks ago.
Calling ‘time’
In both cases, they admitted knowing their time was up; a cataclysmic difference from those other fatigue categories, when someone calls time on the job.
Ms Sturgeon, 52, said she’d always believed that part of the job was knowing when “the time is right to make way for someone else’’.
“In my head and in my heart I know that time is now.’’
And the time wasn’t only right for her – but for her party and her country too.
Ms Ardern, a decade younger, showed similar insight when she told her party’s first caucus meeting of 2023 that ‘it’s time’.
Ms Ardern and Ms Sturgeon almost used the same words, as the rationale for stepping down from their countries’ top jobs.
A prime minister had a responsibility to know “when you are the right person to lead and also when you are not’’, Ms Ardern announced. “And I know that I no longer have enough in the tank to do it justice. It’s that simple.’’
How utterly refreshing; politicians, with the top jobs, signalling they are no longer the best people to lead, and calling ‘time’.
In Australia, it seems, “it’s time’’ in political jargon has meant something entirely different. When Labor leader Gough Whitlam announced ‘it’s time’ in 1972, it was the Liberal-Country Coalition’s prime minister William McMahon that he was calling on to resign.
Game-changing trend?
But despite popular commentary, this isn’t a female ‘thing’ or indeed, foreign to Australian politics.
Yes, Ms Sturgeon and Ms Ardern have both presented as emotionally literate female leaders, but in New South Wales Mike Baird, for example, retired from politics in 2017 because he said he wanted to spend more time with his family and help his parents and sister through tough health challenges.
And former Northern Territory chief minister Michael Gunner did the same, citing family reasons.
Six years ago when Mr Baird made that decision, he was 48 (four years younger than Ms Sturgeon is now, and six years older than Ms Ardern) – so the ability to know when it’s time to go isn’t necessarily driven by generational factors either.
That means it comes down to individual leadership, and the personal insight to know that clinging on, at any cost, doesn’t help anyone. And that life might deliver bigger things – personally, for the party and the country – with someone else in charge.
What’s delightful about Ms Ardern and Ms Sturgeon’s decision is that it paves the way for others to see politics not as a retirement plan, but a career option.
The consequences of that could be game changing.
Imagine if this cohort of two drove a trend among others – politicians, business leaders, public servants – which in turn widened the view that senior positions were part of the journey, not the destination.
Imagine how it would change politics, change ideas, change trajectories.
And who knows, we might soon have other long-term leaders – like Daniel Andrews in Victoria and Annastacia Palaszczuk in Queensland – decide their time was up, too.
Before others made that decision for them.
