The Personalisation Of Politics – The Last Refuge Of A Scoundrel

With Peter Mandelson once again slinking away from British government with his (apparently forked) tail between his legs, it gives pause for reflection on the dangers inherent in the fact that, at some level, politics comes down to the personal. Just like all news is local news somewhere in the world, the people at the heart of power behind the headlines, campaigns, and scandals of national or global significance, are people, driven by personal agency and motivations.

For decades, column inches in the UK told stories of Mandelson’s various perceived personal abuses of power and peddling of influence, his self-serving ambition and – admittedly – his individual nous for navigating politics. Today, the headline story is of how the institutions of state may have been permeated by a discreditable financier convicted on paedophilia charges, enabled by this shady character who lurks in the halls of power, the special government advisor who helped create ‘President Blair’.  

Aside from the effects these and other associated scandals might come to have on Starmer’s premiership, it is of great significance for its grim reflections of a political disease infecting twenty-first century politics worldwide. The personalisation of politics – the bending of politics towards one person’s control, interests, and clients – has become so widespread as to be something of a hallmark of our times. Mandelson may have operated covertly, but publics are increasingly identifying with a single public-facing individual for navigating politics, while permitting similar patterns of co-option and abuse of the state’s political machinery for personal gain. 

On this latter point, it would of course be naïve to suggest that politics has at any time in history been free from corruption, or that personalism did not rule the day for centuries under absolute monarchies. But particularly in the West we have been sharply jolted out of our democratic daydreaming by examples of leaders across the world like Putin, Modi, Lukashenko, and Erdoğan. Closer to home, the likes of Trump and Orbán showed that this would not just occur in ‘other’ parts of the world; the UK has even seen its own attempt at a leader ready to publicly embrace politics for personal gain or protection, in Boris Johnson’s ramshackle politicking.  

As far as publics embracing cult-of-personality politics goes, this stems from two sources. Firstly, the technological revolution which has connected billions of people through social media and smartphones has meant that images and soundbites of an individual’s face and person – literally impressions of their very presence in miniature – has a greater capacity for intrusion into our daily lives than ever before. 

Secondly, we exist in an epoch marked by a psychology of extreme individualism. In the name of consumerism, the neoliberal order that shaped the world around the turn of the millennium created a balance of political forces weighted more towards the individual’s rights, choices, and conveniences than their mutual responsibilities to society or the environment. As a result, publics have become hooked on consuming highly personalistic content that allows them to feel they can delegate the representation of their political agency and responsibilities. 

At its extreme end – to which depths the UK has thankfully not yet sunk (despite Mandelson, Johnson, and others) – the complete personalisation of the highest office of state becomes the last refuge of the scoundrel. Thus did Donald Trump in January 2026 appeal to his Republican party supporters to not lose control of Congress in the upcoming midterm elections: “if we don’t win the midterms they’ll find a reason to impeach me. I’ll get impeached”. We have yet to see how far Donald Trump takes his attachment to the privileges of the presidential office, but there are other, even more severe contemporary examples of how damaging this can become.

Consider the mass protests and civil disobedience by millions in Israel in summer 2023. Prime Minister Netanyahu was forcing through judicial reforms that would effectively gut the power of the courts to hold government and criminals from the political class responsible for their actions, and perhaps one in particular – himself. He had found himself with serious corruption charges hanging over his head and sought safety through breaking apart the institutions of law and accountability. Today, he remains in office with his corruption trials long drawn-out, and in November 2025 he requested personal pardon from president Herzog, offering that though he wanted to see the trials through, “the security and political reality – the national interest – dictate otherwise. The state of Israel is facing enormous challenges.” None other than Donald Trump weighed in on his behalf.

The reason this personalist pattern of politics is so dangerous is that it inverts the political process. It goes from one in which a person represents a platform of ideas and policies, and publicly seeks backing to gain and continue having access to control of the state’s decision-making processes, to one in which the privileges of office and the political process are auctioned off in exchange for shielding an individual from accountability. 

The UK awaits the full details and fallout of Mandelson’s use of politics for personal gain from behind the curtain. But to those decrying the death of democracies today, we are racking up the warning signs that the defence of our democratic institutions from predation by personal influence is an urgent and moving imperative. 

Image: Flickr/UKinUSA (White House Photo, Daniel Torok)

Licence.

No image changes made.