When Does It Matter If a Leader Is Popular? | Psychology Today Ireland
Leadership
When Does It Matter If a Leader Is Popular?
Leaders’ longevity depends on perceived trajectory, not current popularity.
Posted June 23, 2026
Reviewed by Margaret Foley
Key points
– Leaders survive based on the systems that grant them power, not their personal popularity.
– Parliamentary politics in Britain offers low shelter from removal by peers.
– Football managers are judged by results, which can shield them from the ups and downs of fan opinion.
– In both politics and football, a leader’s longevity depends on perceived trajectory, not current popularity.
On the weekend of June 20-21, 2026, leaders of two British institutions were under great pressure. Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, was deciding whether to resign after more than 100 of his own party’s MPs called for his departure. Thomas Tuchel was managing the England men’s football team through the group stage of the FIFA World Cup under the long shadow of a predecessor, who, despite relentless criticism, delivered the team’s best sustained run in 60 years.
Neither leader’s popularity was at its lowest ever. But confidence in neither of them could be described as high.
In late 2025, Ipsos rated Starmer’s popularity at -66, the lowest ever recorded for any British prime minister. By the time Starmer announced his resignation, on June 22, his popularity had improved slightly, to -60. But even this was lower than Liz Truss’s previously record-breaking score of -59 in 2022, at the end of the briefest premiership in British history.
Similarly, in a Betfair/YouGov poll in September 2025, nearly a year after Tuchel’s appointment, only 28 percent of respondents considered him to be the right man for the job. Following England’s 4-2 defeat of Croatia last week, confidence in his leadership appeared to rise, with the percentage of supporters believing England could go on to win the World Cup doubling from 12 percent before the match to 24 percent afterwards.
When Does Popularity Matter?
Such statistics, and their seemingly tenuous connection to leaders’ longevity, raise the question: Does it really matter whether or not a leader is popular?
The instinctive answer, whether in politics, football, or any other field of human endeavor, is: Yes. Leaders need followers. If you lose the room, you lose the ability to lead. But a closer look at the conditions under which different leaders operate reveals a more complicated picture. Some leaders hold on to power for years in the face of sustained public opposition. Others are dispatched quickly to the dustbin of history despite their popularity.
What seems to matter isn’t popularity per se. It’s the system within which that popularity functions. Some systems convert unpopularity directly and quickly into removal. Others shelter leaders from the impact of public opinion.
British parliamentary politics is a low-shelter system. Members of parliament can remove a prime minister without a general election. There are no fixed terms or institutional buffers to protect the “first among equals” from being fired by their peers. An informal erosion of confidence in his or her capacity to lead is ultimately all it takes to topple the leader.
Football operates differently. Failures cannot be papered over with reports or buried in committees. A manager’s performance is measured by what his or her team does on the pitch. Team selection, training, and tactics matter, but only up to a point. As the late Nottingham Forest manager Brian Clough put it: “We had a good team on paper. Unfortunately, the game was played on grass.”
High-Shelter vs. Low-Shelter Systems
The clarity of score-keeping in football is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it exposes managers to the impatience of boards and supporters when results are poor. But on the other hand, it renders a coach’s personal popularity less relevant. As long as the wins keep coming, criticism of a manager’s leadership or frustration with their methods can be dismissed as noise: sound and fury, signifying nothing.
The tenure of Thomas Tuchel’s predecessor, Gareth Southgate, is a case in point. During his eight years as England manager, his popularity seesawed between national treasure and object of derision. He was alternately praised for inspiring the team’s confidence and criticized for a defensive playing style that failed to capitalize on the wealth of attacking talent at his disposal. During Euro 2024, his approval ratings fluctuated wildly, hitting a low of 43 percent shortly before the quarter-finals, only to rebound to a high of 69 percent just before the final.
Tuchel inherited little if any of the warmth people felt towards Southgate. But he did inherit the structural shelter of a system in which the manager serves at the pleasure of the English Football Association rather than the court of public opinion. That’s why he’ll outlast Starmer. As long as the English FA believes he has the capacity to bring the results the nation craves, they’ll continue to back him. In contrast, members of Labor’s enormous parliamentary majority stopped believing in Starmer’s ability to turn things around or win back enough of the nation’s support to get them re-elected.
In leadership, what matters is not the leader’s current popularity but his or her perceived trajectory.
