why do so many people seem to have a hierarchy allergy round these Western leftist parts
There is a big difference between an individual giving orders (and having the power to) in a tense moment, and an individual being the one who gives orders about everything all the time.
The ones who arrange the battles and the ones who arrange the councils are not the same, nor should they be. That equivalence is a flaw of Western civilization going back to classical Greece or even earlier.