Leadership Quote by Ian Gilmour

Gilmour’s line lands because it refuses the comforting fantasy that political compromise is either noble pragmatism or pure sellout. “Trim and tack” borrows the sailor’s lexicon for hard, fussy adjustments made under pressure. It’s a clever demystification: politicians aren’t prophets charting a moral course; they’re sailors constantly altering angle and rigging to stay afloat. The phrase also smuggles in a quiet judgment. Trimming and tacking aren’t acts of conviction, they’re techniques - skilled, even necessary, but fundamentally reactive.

Then comes the sting: “in order to get the wind of votes in their sails.” Wind is free, fickle, and outside anyone’s control. Votes become weather, not a deliberative public voice; politicians are incentivized to read gusts rather than lead into them. The subtext is not that democracy is a sham, but that it produces a particular kind of rational behavior: calibration over candor, responsiveness over risk. Gilmour implies that the system rewards those who can translate public moods into momentum, not those with the steadiest principles.

As a Conservative thinker with a reputation for being more liberal-minded than his party’s hard edge, Gilmour is also speaking from inside the machine. This isn’t populist contempt; it’s insider realism, bordering on rueful. He’s acknowledging the structural bargain of electoral politics: power is pursued through persuasion, and persuasion often looks like repositioning. The metaphor makes that bargain vivid, and a little unromantic.