Barker argues that in England under New Labour, school leaders and teachers have been "bastardised" and suggests that the situation in 2010, with a general election afforded an opportunity in education policy for the "pendulum to swing". In this article, the key points about "bastard Leadership" are briefly summarised. The article then develops a view of schools as sites of complexity and "wickedity" as an alternative to the linear reductionist approaches of managerialists. These two perspectives present the extremes of a spectrum against which the trajectory of school leadership can be viewed as it emerges from the New Labour years and is now being developed by the Coalition Government. Evidence from ministerial speeches and the Coalition Government's flagship White Paper, "The Importance of Teaching", are used to examine key issues of freedom and trust, reducing bureaucracy and increasing autonomy for schools as ways of exploring the extent to which the new government's policies on school leadership are, or are not, moving away from those of their New Labour predecessors. (Contains 2 tables and 47 footnotes.)