When Jeremy Corbyn was first elected as leader of the Labour party in 2015, he was framed in the media as a new type of authentic political leader. Corbyn seemed to represent everything that a typical politician was not: honest, straight talking, principled and someone who always stayed true to his beliefs. In the aftermath of the December 2019 general election and the worst defeat for the Labour party since 1935, this article takes stock of how authenticity featured in the media discourse during Corbyn’s tenure as a party leader. Three competing discourses are identified. The first discourse categorised Corbyn as authentic and framed his authenticity as a leadership strength. The second discourse framed Corbyn as inauthentic. The third discourse framed Corbyn’s authenticity as a leadership problem. The study reveals a deeply ambivalent and contradictory set of discourses of authenticity that circulated in the media and highlights the ideological function performed by these competing discourses, which juxtapose ideas and ideals of personal authenticity against ideas and ideals about what constitutes effective political leadership. The article concludes by advancing an ambiguity-centred approach (Alvesson M and Spicer A (eds) (2010) Metaphors We Lead By: Understanding Leadership in the Real World. London: Routledge) to understanding authentic leadership, where authenticity is understood as a set of ambiguous and competing discursive attributions made within a contested social and political context.

当杰里米·科尔宾在2015年首次当选为工党领袖，他在媒体上被诬陷为新型正品政治领袖。Corbyn似乎代表了典型的政治家所不具备的一切：诚实，坦率，有原则，并且始终忠于他的信念。在2019年12月大选和工党自1935年以来最惨的失败之后，本文回顾了科尔宾担任党魁期间媒体报道中的真实性。确定了三个相互竞争的论述。第一个论述将科宾归类为真实，并确定了他作为领导力量的真实性。第二种话语将科宾定性为虚伪。第三种话语将科尔宾的真实性描述为领导力问题。这项研究揭示了在媒体中流传的一系列真实性论证之间的矛盾和矛盾，并突出了这些竞争性论证所发挥的意识形态功能，这些论点将个人真实性的观念和理想与构成有效政治领导力的观念和理想并置。文章最后提出了一种以歧义为中心的方法（Alvesson M和Spicer A（eds）（2010）我们所领导的隐喻：了解现实世界中的领导才能。伦敦：Routledge），以了解真实的领导力，其中真实性被理解为在有争议的社会和政治背景下做出的一系列歧义性和竞争性话语归属。