Bitcoin should not have any leadership, which is why the development needs to become more distributed.
Do not be confused: The fact that most of the dozens of developers choose to collaborate to build a stronger and better Bitcoin implementation than we could build alone does not make development non-distributed.
I have tried explaining that to him several times, I guess I failed at that. The fact that developers choose to cooperate the way they are doing today is not only quite rational, but also it's their free choice.