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As I see it | Is ‘hubris syndrome’ the reason why UK’s Boris Johnson took so long to resign?
- Term was coined after a 2008 study found a personality change brought on over time by people in power, often sparked by a specific trigger – exercising power
- Johnson had earlier said he would ‘of course’ remain as prime minister, despite facing pressure to quit amid a mounting rebellion within the Conservative Party
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Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been said to be like a cat with nine lives, having survived a long list of unforced errors and scandals since taking office in 2019.
Finally, his country has been put out of its misery and Johnson has belatedly taken the advice his former ally David Davis offered way back in January: “In the name of God, go.”
Before his resignation speech on Thursday, the British media had been on overdrive offering advanced eulogies for Johnson’s two-decade political career.
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The Daily Mail columnist Stephen Glover wrote this week that while Johnson would be revered for delivering Brexit, his “chief flaw” was his “reluctance to tell the truth, which has marked him out even in a profession not celebrated for its veracity”.
For me, Johnson’s travails represent a good case study of the tendency of those in power to be prone to extreme hubris, more than others.
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David Owen, a former British politician and a doctor trained in psychiatry, in a 2008 study said a so-called “hubris syndrome” manifests in leaders “the longer the person exercises power and the greater the power they exercise”.
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