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| Three little words so hard to say | Three little words so hard to say |
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| Riding a wave of trust, but would Barack Obama admit "I don't know"?There are three words you will hardly ever hear a person in power use - "I don't know." Why is doubt, which most of us experience every day, virtually unheard of in politics, asks Michael Blastland. | Riding a wave of trust, but would Barack Obama admit "I don't know"?There are three words you will hardly ever hear a person in power use - "I don't know." Why is doubt, which most of us experience every day, virtually unheard of in politics, asks Michael Blastland. |
| Gloria Laycock was a senior civil servant in the Home Office. One evening, she says, she answered the phone to a minister's private office, asking if the crime prevention scheme, Neighbourhood Watch, worked. | Gloria Laycock was a senior civil servant in the Home Office. One evening, she says, she answered the phone to a minister's private office, asking if the crime prevention scheme, Neighbourhood Watch, worked. |
| "The answer is it depends." "No, no, no, no, no, does it or doesn't it?" "Well it really does depend because I mean..." | |
| The conversation continued in this vein for several minutes, by which time the caller was screaming: "I don't care, just tell me does it or doesn't it?" | The conversation continued in this vein for several minutes, by which time the caller was screaming: "I don't care, just tell me does it or doesn't it?" |
| "So I said, 'Yes. But I would have been shredded by a criminologist, and they'd have had a point.'" FIND OUT MORE... Analysis: Dead Cert is on Radio 4 at 2300 GMT on Thursday 6 November and repeated on Sunday at 2130 GMTOr catch up later with the BBC iPlayer | |
| Doubt seems a dangerous thing in politics. If possible, you don't admit it. Not about your values, nor your analysis, nor the policies that will magically bring about the change that you are certain is needed. | Doubt seems a dangerous thing in politics. If possible, you don't admit it. Not about your values, nor your analysis, nor the policies that will magically bring about the change that you are certain is needed. |
| One response to the economic upheaval of the past few months might be to conclude that we know far less than we think we know, and pretending otherwise is rash and damaging. Yet while economic confidence evaporates, another kind of confidence still thrives - confidence in the power of our own analysis, of who is to blame and why, the strident confidence of politicians or business people in their preferred remedies. | One response to the economic upheaval of the past few months might be to conclude that we know far less than we think we know, and pretending otherwise is rash and damaging. Yet while economic confidence evaporates, another kind of confidence still thrives - confidence in the power of our own analysis, of who is to blame and why, the strident confidence of politicians or business people in their preferred remedies. |
| Wood for the trees | Wood for the trees |
| Is this a general, but dangerous habit - that those in public life often drift through events of which no-one is the master, all the while pretending to a false confidence, or even certainty? Are our leaders incapable of saying what all should surely now admit, that often they don't know? Perhaps the wreckage from the past is all the evidence we need, for didn't they speak with certainty then too? When you're actually in the smoke and the roar of the cannons, even the generals have no idea what's happening Paul Seabright | Is this a general, but dangerous habit - that those in public life often drift through events of which no-one is the master, all the while pretending to a false confidence, or even certainty? Are our leaders incapable of saying what all should surely now admit, that often they don't know? Perhaps the wreckage from the past is all the evidence we need, for didn't they speak with certainty then too? When you're actually in the smoke and the roar of the cannons, even the generals have no idea what's happening Paul Seabright |
| Paul Seabright, an economist at Toulouse University, says it's a feature of all modern societies that we know little about what's going on. | Paul Seabright, an economist at Toulouse University, says it's a feature of all modern societies that we know little about what's going on. |
| "If you read Tolstoy's War and Peace, he has some wonderful descriptions about how battles which look very clear to military historians never seem that way to the people involved in them, that when you're actually in the smoke and the roar of the cannons, you have no idea what's happening. Even the generals have no idea what's happening." | "If you read Tolstoy's War and Peace, he has some wonderful descriptions about how battles which look very clear to military historians never seem that way to the people involved in them, that when you're actually in the smoke and the roar of the cannons, you have no idea what's happening. Even the generals have no idea what's happening." |
| Tolstoy intended these passages as a parable of society as a whole, to show there's no vantage point from which to get the big picture. | Tolstoy intended these passages as a parable of society as a whole, to show there's no vantage point from which to get the big picture. |
| This also holds for the complicated financial systems currently under the spotlight worldwide. | This also holds for the complicated financial systems currently under the spotlight worldwide. |
| "We had become a little too confident that we thought we could see the big picture, and now the big picture has come back and hit us rather hard where it hurts." We know in our heart that it's not black and white, it's not 100% one policy and no percent another policy Estelle Morris | "We had become a little too confident that we thought we could see the big picture, and now the big picture has come back and hit us rather hard where it hurts." We know in our heart that it's not black and white, it's not 100% one policy and no percent another policy Estelle Morris |
| Former Education Secretary Estelle Morris believes politicians are hooked on certainty - forgivable in the case of their political values, but not about the benefits of any given policy. | Former Education Secretary Estelle Morris believes politicians are hooked on certainty - forgivable in the case of their political values, but not about the benefits of any given policy. |
| This distinction is easily blurred, she says. During her time in the Cabinet, she believes policies on league tables, homework, streaming and how to teach reading, were oversold. That's quite a list, though she insists these policies were not bad, just dogmatic, when the evidence for one policy rather than another was often far less clear-cut. | This distinction is easily blurred, she says. During her time in the Cabinet, she believes policies on league tables, homework, streaming and how to teach reading, were oversold. That's quite a list, though she insists these policies were not bad, just dogmatic, when the evidence for one policy rather than another was often far less clear-cut. |
| "That's where politicians make a huge error," she says. "Because life's not like that and people know that. We know in our heart that it's not black and white, that it's not 100% one policy and no percent another policy. | "That's where politicians make a huge error," she says. "Because life's not like that and people know that. We know in our heart that it's not black and white, that it's not 100% one policy and no percent another policy. |
| "We know that and yet we pretend with the public that it's absolutely this policy and it will deliver what we want. Politics needs to change in that respect." | "We know that and yet we pretend with the public that it's absolutely this policy and it will deliver what we want. Politics needs to change in that respect." |
| Speak in certainties | Speak in certainties |
| But will it? Is it imaginable that a prime minister could stand up one day and say: "Look, I think this will work, and I'm going to give it a try, but frankly, I'm not sure." Estelle Morris admits to overselling polices such as how to teach reading | But will it? Is it imaginable that a prime minister could stand up one day and say: "Look, I think this will work, and I'm going to give it a try, but frankly, I'm not sure." Estelle Morris admits to overselling polices such as how to teach reading |
| Gloria Laycock suggests there is a tendency in government to demand that everything should be simple and emphatic, sometimes to the point of absurdity. | Gloria Laycock suggests there is a tendency in government to demand that everything should be simple and emphatic, sometimes to the point of absurdity. |
| Many years ago her department worked on repeat victimisation - how just a fraction of victims account for almost half of all crime, and how protecting victims can reduce crime. | Many years ago her department worked on repeat victimisation - how just a fraction of victims account for almost half of all crime, and how protecting victims can reduce crime. |
| "I, in the early days, was trying to persuade a minister this was a really important public policy. He said, 'Do you know what? Repeat victimisation's got too many syllables. Can't you think of something with fewer syllables? Could we call it repeat offending?'" | "I, in the early days, was trying to persuade a minister this was a really important public policy. He said, 'Do you know what? Repeat victimisation's got too many syllables. Can't you think of something with fewer syllables? Could we call it repeat offending?'" |
| No - because it isn't the same thing at all. | No - because it isn't the same thing at all. |
| It's a strange world where even the complexity of words is frowned on, to the extent that a politician would rather use another even if it meant something quite different. | It's a strange world where even the complexity of words is frowned on, to the extent that a politician would rather use another even if it meant something quite different. |
| Some parts of public life also function, less noisily, with subtlety and honesty about the real dilemmas. But we tend to hear less of them than the trumpet blasts of self-assurance. Is it the public that demands certainty, craving bedtime stories to help us sleep soundly rather than face up to the rather obvious fact that the future - and to some extent the present - is unknown? Or is it the fault of journalists who would rip into any minister who confessed to being unsure? | Some parts of public life also function, less noisily, with subtlety and honesty about the real dilemmas. But we tend to hear less of them than the trumpet blasts of self-assurance. Is it the public that demands certainty, craving bedtime stories to help us sleep soundly rather than face up to the rather obvious fact that the future - and to some extent the present - is unknown? Or is it the fault of journalists who would rip into any minister who confessed to being unsure? |
| Some years ago, the former Archbishop of York John Hapgood suggested - with one eye on the politics of the time - that the lust for certainty could be a sin. | Some years ago, the former Archbishop of York John Hapgood suggested - with one eye on the politics of the time - that the lust for certainty could be a sin. |
| Is it? Answers by e-mail please, in not too many syllables. | Is it? Answers by e-mail please, in not too many syllables. |
| Add your comments on this story, using the form below. | Add your comments on this story, using the form below. |