This impression reinforced something else we already knew – there are many similar situations. It is a core problem with government advisors and experts, those people who effectively run things but we never get to vote for them.
Ordinary folk are able to browse the internet in search of sane advice and that is not a suggestion that the advice Boris Johnson had to follow was not sane. With hindsight it was grotesquely over-cautious and grossly patronising but not insane. Almost insane perhaps, but with that same hindsight the advice clearly came from ludicrously cautious officials and/or experts rather than wider and more flexible consultations.
Yet we ordinary web surfers do not have to accept such narrow limitations drawn from a patronising perspective. We examine stories, scenarios, examples, contrarian opinions, data and experiences to gain a multifaceted view of anything we choose. If we wish.
Boris was not in a position to seek out the best pandemic advice because he had to go with what seemed to be the politically safe consensus and stick with it. He was in effect powerless and made the mistake of showing it quite clearly in his TV briefings. In other words we vote for the actors, not the people who write the script, run the show and take the money. Again this is something we already knew, but Boris made it far too obvious.
He now comes across as a man hoping for a spot of good luck while trying to make the coronavirus mess seem like a necessary mess. It wasn’t but in our political system it was. It’s a problem for modern democracies. The days when political actors had a hand in their own scripts are gone and we don’t vote for the script writers.
5 comments:
It is, I think, evidence of the tension between two strands of political philosophy, and the question of who are the right people to rule us. Flanking Boris are the representatives of Plato, who said we need to be ruled by those who are experts. Technocrats who know what they are talking about, and who can help us reach our goals by means of their expertise. And Boris himself represents the conflicting democratic strand, the idea that we ourselves will govern ourselves, or (in this age of mass populations) we will choose people like us.
So there he is, having passed from lovable clownish toff, to determined Churchillian who will get Brexit done, to now something like a concerned office manager who doesn't know how to cope with a computer failure or a clerk having an epileptic seizure. Look to the experts, Boris, and then parrot what they say with a tone which suggests that we all know it makes sense once you have pointed it out to us.
We here, at 'The Turrets', feel that we're probably the better judges of the situation than politicians. They'll pander, waffle, poke their noses in and generally be unhelpful in situations like this, and civil serpents are quite willing to do feck all as usual.
The upshot is that normal people just do what they generally think is correct, although a minority of idiots going to gatherings doesn't look good in places like Leicester for obvious reasons.
Whatever happened to 'common sense'?
Pollies of all stripes employ the council getout clause I identified when I was involved in a PFI stitchup some years ago. The elected members have to accept the information provided by their technical officers while the technical officers must accept the wishes of the elected members. As a result, when it goes tits up as it so often does, YIPPEE!! nobody's to blame and we all get promoted!
This is what you get when very few of the elected MPs have had jobs outside the political bubble, the only ones tend to be lawyers and doctors both of whom have a safe retreat if they lose their seats and many carry on working during their tenure.
The rest, they are all products of a political stream via unions or university so given ministerial jobs they rely on Spads and others for direction, this of course is not what we voted for, because if they have no idea of the brief given to them why employ them at all.
Sam - well put, he does indeed come across as a "concerned office manager who doesn't know how to cope with a computer failure". He also seems to accept this as a valid role for PMs.
Scrobs - common sense seems to have become uncommon but maybe it isn't as important as it used to be.
Jannie - yes that seems to be how it works and if promotion isn't possible we all get a bonus via the appraisal system.
Wiggia - a partial solution would be to have a high minimum age for MPs, say 40 or 50, plus a maximum number of parliamentary terms. The minimum age for voters is also too low.
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