Damian Lyons Lowe, Survation: "Miliband's ratings have not only improved, but if you look at most recent opinion (in its polls, Survation asks to rate leaders' performance over the past month), the Labour leader has for the first time ever a net positive score … People like the happy warrior".
Had Peter ever needed to take up paid employment, he would have made a first-rate leader writer for a broadsheet.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg called Mr. Walder "a first-rate leader with big ideas" who had "made significant improvements to the customer experience," and said that Mr. Walder's departure was "a real loss for New York City, the metropolitan region, the state and the country".
And that will allow Ed Miliband, Labour's low-key and lowly rated leader, to become the head of the largest party in the House of Commons, and to replace David Cameron at 10 Downing Street.
The study rates leaders on nine characteristics; compassionate, trustworthy, inspiring, honest, strong leadership, sensible, competent, knowledgable and intelligent.
Granted, Japan's ethic of uncomplaining perseverance — gaman, in Japanese — may also explain why the country settles for third-rate leaders.
GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE) has built its reputation as the world's leading conglomerate on two pillars: its ability to meet or beat analysts' expectations every quarter, come rain or shine, and its ability to produce first-rate leaders.
Marlborough, Repton (where the former archbishop Geoffrey Fisher was a headmaster), Rugby (home of the "Christian gentleman" and Harry Flashman) – all these ghastly Victorian foundations produce strapping men who'd make first-rate leaders of cannon fodder in the trenches, but in later life they treat their own feelings with brutal disdain, much as they'd handle servants demanding a wage rise.
Creating an Urban Development Corporation, initially against the wishes of local politicians, Mr Heseltine worked effectively with a series of first-rate leaders, officers and Labour politicians, a combination which helped turn a national political tide of non-co-operation with the Tories into models for rebuilding cities and industrial areas after the global manufacturing changes of the 1980s.
And when voters were asked to rate each leader's performance, the scores were almost identical, with each rated as good by around 30%, satisfactory by around 34% and poor by close to 40% of voters.
