We tend to think that leadership is all about the leader, and the qualities that separate them from their followers. But more recently there is a recognition that leadership is better understood when thinking about what connects leaders with their followers. This connection, and its deterioration, is what best explains the end of Boris Johnson’s political career, argue Stephen Reicher and Alex Haslam.

What on earth just happened? Why, did the electorate and then Tory MPs and finally his own Cabinet turn on the Prime Minister and force him out? It’s not as if the rule-breaking and lies and lack of integrity were anything new. They have been known for years. The public and the politicians voted for him despite (and, as I shall argue below) possibly because of them. The expressions of horror at the Prime Minister’s misdemeanours in MPs and Ministers resignation letters were about as convincing as Captain Renault’s outrage at discovering illegal gambling in the back room at Rick’s in Casablanca.

So, if the lying was no different from before, what was the difference which led his erstwhile supporters to turn on the Prime Minister? And why was it so hard to get rid of him? What led Boris Johnson to cling on well past the point when everyone else considered him to be a dead man walking? Moreover, what did last week’s drama teach us about the psychology of leadership?

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Most of the time we accept and even reward leaders who act immorally, unfairly, dishonestly, even illegally, as long as they do so to the advantage of our group.

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The starting point in answering all these questions lies in understanding the profound disconnect between popular representations and the actual dynamics of leadership. For millennia, leadership has been conceptualised in terms of what distinguishes leaders from followers. Leaders are exceptional beings with unique qualities that allow them to save us when we cannot save ourselves. However, recent work suggests that leadership is better understood as what connects leaders and followers.

Leaders are always leaders of a particular social group. They are effective to the extent that the group recognises them as ‘one of us’: representing the qualities and values which make our group unique, and working towards and promoting the interests of our group. Moreover, in order to be seen as such, leaders play an active part both in defining the nature of the group and the nature of their contribution such that the two are consonant. Effective leaders need to be skilled ‘entrepreneurs of identity’.

There may be some groups which are defined through a strict moral code, such that acting immorally violates a core value, makes one unrepresentative and hence unsuited for office. But most of the time we accept and even reward leaders (and other group members) who act immorally, unfairly, dishonestly, even illegally, as long as they do so to the advantage of our group. Such a leader might be a bastard, but can still be revered as ‘our bastard’.