Given the UK’s Rishi Sunak sacking Suella Braverman for saying what many others would feel – that the police were too lenient towards pro-Palestinian marchers, whom she called mobs – it seems her cardinal sin is to tell the truth as she sees it. She had also previously stated what has become obvious worldwide, that promoting multiculturalism has dearly cost the countries embracing it, that ‘it makes no demands on the incomers to integrate’. Her call for a more effective stance against what she described as the virtual invasion of Britain by small boats, filled with illegal migrants, crossing the English Channel, produced hand-wringing from various clerical and political figures –although there is little doubt the British public largely agree with her. Above all, she did not take on board changes requested by the Prime Minister’s department before her Times newspaper article was published.

Throughout the West now, what the leader says goes, and any divergence from this policy costs individual politicians. We can recall Jacinda Ardern’s requirement that statements made by her ministers must be pre-approved by her department. And I recall the disillusionment a friend felt when selected as a candidate for the National party some elections back. With a degree in political science, qualifications as a world-class chef, involved in community aid programmes as well as head of his department in a leading local college, he stood up to the politicised, pro-radical Maori edicts being forced on teachers by our Ministry of Education. A fine writer, he was reprimanded by the National party hierarchy who required him to send them his speeches to authorise or re-write. The results were predictable.

It is high time we revisited this whole leadership cult. Leaders such as Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot treated the people of their country as cannon fodder. The totalitarian control of North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and China’s Xi Jinping, together with Vladimir Putin’s utopian aim to restore a Russian Empire – leading to the invasion of Ukraine – and Hamas’s murderous attack upon Israel: all lead to the suffering inflicted on ordinary people and their families.

What of Australia and New Zealand? The often-absent Anthony Albanese apparently likes to cut a figure on the world stage, but his enthusiasm about the supposedly benevolent intentions of China towards Australia and other Pacific countries is extraordinarily naive. The resounding defeat of the indigenous Voice proposal has cost him credibility, as has his ongoing support for the global warming scam requiring diminishing reliance on fossil fuels, and their virtually impossible and costly replacement by green energy. As Peter Westmore points out in the Australian News Weekly, Europe’s dream has become a nightmare. ‘After 20 years of heavy government subsidies for wind and solar farms, the harsh reality is beginning to bite: intermittent energy sources are both expensive and unreliable and require very substantial overinvestment in capacity to provide sufficient battery power for the times when the sun does not shine, and the wind does not blow. The efficiency of wind farms is about 20 per cent of capacity, and solar panels on average generate just 10 per cent of their rated power.’ Moreover, people ask why we should decarbonise when China, the world’s largest emitter, continues to get all the benefits of cheap fossil fuel, while building more and more coal-fired power plants. The West is being taken for a long and costly ride.

In New Zealand, too, the dominating Christopher Luxon apparently thinks he always knows best. Although more and more people are highly sceptical about the canard of CO2 causing global warming, gullible politicians are not helped by two factors. Our now corrupt mainstream media refuse to publish any well-researched articles by highly qualified scientists refuting this. In addition, the call for ‘collective responsibility’ voiced by  Sunak – to justify his sacking of Braverman – plays into the hands of leaders like Luxon, who has already rebuked three of his own MPs for voicing opinions they were perfectly entitled to hold.

With Luxon the leader of the new coalition government with ACT and New Zealand First, his tendency to conduct himself as if still CEO of a large corporation may lessen. We should welcome this, as one of the weakest parts of our democratic process is enabling party leaders to cling to power. New Zealand is suffering the consequences of actions by those who virtually ruled their parties, in recent years, such as John Key, Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern. In such cases, power becomes concentrated in the hands of a cabal, dominated by the Prime Minister. When the country is run by a virtual autocracy continually passing new top-down legislation it is no longer a democracy. And when one asks who on earth would vote for an Albanese or a Christopher Luxon, the answer so often is that the electorate votes in desperation to throw out one political party, because of the damage it has caused, rather than because of any great enthusiasm for its replacement.

With much of this damage caused by a strong-willed party leader, an obvious solution is that used by the once Roman Republic and today’s Swiss government. No leader is allowed to stay in place for more than one year. Each of the republic’s two consuls was also able to veto the actions of the other. One needlessly doing so would assuredly  encounter the same. As the lure of power was strong, they were sent away to preside over a province the following year, with the opportunity for personal enrichment.

The  Swiss President stays in office for one year only, in a seven-member cabinet. The most democratic and prosperous democracy in the world, Switzerland is also ranked as the most talent-competitive country, attracting the brightest and best. Australia currently ranks eight out of 10 with New Zealand not figuring, for reasons increasingly obvious.

One reform both our countries should undertake is the requirement for the head of the party currently in power – and in the opposition – to step down after a year to enable a new leader to take their  place. Although there is much that could be done to enable genuine electoral reform, this one step alone would potentially reduce the overweening domination our leaders have managed to contrive for themselves.