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It is often the case that the Prime Minister of the day is asked to read from the Bible at national church services. On Friday, the passage was from St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians. ‘Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just….. think about these things.’ No sooner has the United Kingdom spent 4 days reflecting on the meaning of our character as a constitutional monarchy than our attention has promptly turned to one of the democratic processes within that system. And particularly the fate of the first among equals in the Parliamentary context: the prime minister who leads the elected government and who, like the monarch but in a completely different way, operates within the checks and balances of the constitution and its conventions. The words read at St Paul’s Cathedral on Friday were inspired by the life of Christ: a life which was shaped by what is now referred to in many management courses as ‘servant leadership.’ It was said at that same national church service last week that good leaders don’t just lead, they’re people who know how to be led. By their own consciences or set of values, sometimes by their faith, Leaders know how to be led: and in a democracy not just by the enduring values written about by St Paul, but also inevitably by the will of the people founded on their consent, and also inevitably by the events of the day. It is arguably in balancing these considerations that the alchemy of good leadership finds its best expression. Yesterday, Parliament was full of heated slogans: change or lose. Stay and win. Slogans repeated in what commentators often call a febrile atmosphere but which provide noisy surroundings to voting that was each MP with their pen in a room in a secret ballot. The process that Conservative MPs went through is striking, because it was a vote of confidence: a concept coming from two words con fides that mean with faith. What might be learned from the interaction between Scripture read in public that provides some of the context for voting held in private, is that the relationship between any leader and the ones they lead is more nuanced than maths might suggest. In a democracy, majorities are crucial: they are the way things are determined and the Prime Minister achieved a clear majority last night. Alongside this, as Scripture outlines, more than critics or supporters of any one individual might like, leading and being led is a matter too of faith and belief.