The original title of this piece was ‘Kakistocracy: A System of Government Ruled by the Least Competent Citizens’, with the intent to focus solely on the failings of our local political leadership. I then realised that such a piece might display the naivety I surely carry at 23 years of age and provide a reductive account of our local democratic procedures and representatives. That, or I’d hit the nail on the head and depress you all as our politicians continue to depress me. Instead, this short piece is uncharacteristically positive, focusing on examples of exceptional leadership displayed across Northern Ireland in the last number of months.

If this pandemic has made anything clear, it’s that leadership in this region is best exemplified by those who are not elected. As our politicians play the COVID hokey-cokey (in, out, in, out, spread the germs about) – our front-line workers have been leading the charge. Our doctors and nurses have been widely and rightly hailed as our saving grace, and our NHS support staff can never again be referred to as an unskilled workforce. From care assistants to auxiliaries, porters to cleaning staff, the NHS has been carried on a firm foundation of dedicated individuals who have long been the backbone of our health service.

Away from the NHS, our frontlines are populated with takeaway staff who for many, have provided a night off from the stress of trying to cook a meal that will please everyone in the house. Our delivery drivers have delivered food, medications, and all the things we ordered that we absolutely needed; like new clothes that we could wear as far as the front door. Our shop workers have worked hard to provide food to their communities; often working long hours to keep up combat ever emptying shelves and high in-demand supermarket delivery slots which became harder to acquire than agreement in the Executive.

Finally, and perhaps in bias, leadership is no better demonstrated than through the examples of our young people. No matter what the news story is, there always seems to be a way to pin it on the young people, with this pandemic being no different. Whilst some will point to pictures of Holylands lockdown parties as evidence of the great failings of the younger generation, I would only point to the high number of young people who populate our front-line worker roles. Why is their hard work so easily tarnished by the actions of the few when the Executive so easily survived the Deputy First Minister’s own COVID blunder? Secondly, young people have been some of the worst hit by COVID’s economic impact. Many, including myself, have earned the COVID redundancy badge, as the retail and hospitality sectors which we overwhelmingly populate continue to suffer. So easily blamed and yet so easily overlooked, the younger generation has been quietly marching forward through academic disruption, economic collapse, and uncertainty for the future.

Such quiet resolve is rarely shared by our politicians. They say house divided against itself cannot stand, explaining why our local government has been on its knees for the last number of years. 2020 has been no better. After our Deputy First Minister’s undermined the public health message of the Executive she represents, members of her party somehow failed to notice £10,000 landing in their bank accounts from Land and Property Services. Simultaneously, our First Minster used her political counterpart’s misstep to reinforce the green/orange divide, calling for a temporary resignation, before members of her party openly backed a U.S. President who is a proud proponent of racism, misogyny and deliberate divisiveness.

As Plato wrote, “only those who do not seek power are qualified to hold it.” Disappointingly, it would seem Northern Ireland is less of an exception, and more a validation of the rule.