One’s flying a steady course, the other is flying solo into turbulence
HIS last weekend showed us two leaders, and two different approaches to leadership. They are about as different as they could possibly be from each other. Both of them are important to the way we live our lives.
The difference between them could almost be a study in leadership. One leader is modest, unassuming, down to earth and matter of fact. The other is brash, loud, argumentative and almost never open to persuasion.
One offers opinion when asked, the other has an opinion on everything under the sun. One has real power and never flaunts it, the other behaves as if they have all the power in the world.
One is female, the other male. One more or less runs the civilised world, the other runs an airline.
Both are immensely successful — although the one who runs the world has a much more modest income than the one who offers us all cheap flights. But I found myself wondering this weekend what would they make of each other.
If you put Angela Merkel and Michael O’Leary together in a room, which one, I wonder, would be the first to start telling the other how to run their business?
I’m guessing we all know the answer to that — Michael has never been shy about telling government ministers and others what a complete hames they’re making of things.
Mind you, I was really tempted to make a list over the weekend of all the people who have written learned newspaper columns, or letters to the papers, suggesting that the answer to more or less everything was Michael O’Leary.
The only man to run the economy, the health service, the education system, the political parties, the Catholic Church. O’Leary for taoiseach, or president, or minister for finance. Just make him dictator, and all our problems will be solved.
Not too many people are offering that view this weekend — and to be fair to O’Leary he’s always described himself as unelectable.
But there’s never been a moment when he has seemed under pressure about his unique approach to leadership and decision-making. Until now, that is.
Around 15 years ago, I wrote a piece here that suggested a slogan for Ryanair — “here’s a cheap ticket, now feck off!”.
At the time, Michael O’Leary was generating publicity by having a go at everyone around him, and especially anyone who wanted him to conform to things he didn’t want to do.
He ran an expensive and pretty personally gratuitous advertising campaign against the Fianna Fáil minister, Mary O’Rourke, because she wouldn’t force the semi-state body under her control to slash airport landing charges. (Mary O’Rourke stood her ground, but she did speak later about how hurtful the lampooning ads were, coming soon after the death of her husband. She said she believed O’Leary was “taking pleasure in it”.)
Around the same time he attacked the trade unionist Des Geraghty, who had the temerity to criticise pay and conditions in Ryanair. Geraghty (who probably earned a hundredth of what O’Leary earned at any given time), was a fat cat in Michael’s eyes, who went on to describe him as an old windbag.
As I said, Michael has never been behind the door when it comes to criticising others, especially anyone who doesn’t agree with him.
That characteristic was very much in evidence over the last few days, as he flailed at everyone — pilots, unions, media, politicians — whom he seemed to feel were taking pleasure at the misfortune of his airline.
But actually, who is? Michael O’Leary has built a huge and successful company that has transformed the aviation business for millions of people, and made travel abroad accessible to everyone.
It’s not that long ago when foreign travel was the preserve of the privileged, and O’Leary, more than anyone else, has changed that.
I hope O’Leary comes through this crisis, and that the business isn’t irreparably damaged. But I also hope he learns some humility (just a tiny little bit would do) and a few lessons.
Perhaps the most important of them is that he can’t do it alone, and he can’t always dictate.
It’s long past time that he welcomed dialogue and discussion about the working conditions of the people who work for him, and that he dealt with his irrational fear of unionisation among his hard-pressed workforce.
Rather than lecturing others, he could perhaps take a leaf from the book of the woman who is his polar opposite in most respects.
I know a lot of the commentary ever since the weekend will have concentrated on the rise of the far right in Germany.
But the truly remarkable achievement — perhaps the most outstanding democratic achievement in modern world history — is the decision of the German people to put their trust, once again, in Angela Merkel.
She’s not wildly charismatic. She’s not even particularly well-known, and lives a completely private life when she is off-duty.
She doesn’t make rousing speeches and she will never be known as a style icon. With one exception, she doesn’t ever seem to do anything radical.
She’s a politician, of course, and there are times in politics when you have to bite the hand that feeds you.
She was originally promoted by Helmut Kohl, the chancellor who reunited Germany, but turned on him, and effectively finished him, when he got involved in a political scandal about political donations and slush funds.
To the end of his life, Kohl never forgave her.
I don’t know Germany well, although its statistics are the most impressive in the world. As an occasional visitor, what I’ve seen is a handsome country whose infrastructure works, whose people appear to live modestly, where social services like health and education are delivered efficiently and well.
It’s not a place where you see enormous disparity or division, or vulgar displays of wealth.
That’s the country that Merkel inherited, and she has managed it (perhaps more than led it) diligently. In her approach to the great European issues, she has displayed the same care, even conservatism.
We don’t like her seeming lack of sympathy for our dilemma when our banks collapsed — many of us seem to think she should have persuaded her countrymen to bail us out without any pain or suffering on our part.
But she has been careful at all times. Except, of course, for the one radical decision she made, in the face of the refugee crisis.
She decided unilaterally that Germany could afford to accept 1m refugees, and that it was the right thing to do. It was an enormous risk — but all the signs are that Germany has been more than able to cope. And she remains a trusted leader of her own people.
But still, if they ever got together, I can just imagine Michael telling Angela where she’s gone wrong, and how, if it were up to him, there’d be none of this tiresome consensus rubbish.
And I can just imagine Angela gazing at him, as she has gazed at Trump and Putin, and letting him know who’s really in charge. I hope, if it ever happens, that he has the good sense to know that he’s not in her league.
I hope O’Leary comes through this crisis... But I also hope he learns some humility
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