Foxes, hedgehogs and 42 days
at 1:26pm on Thursday, 5th June 2008
Yesterday on PolitcsHome Andrew Rawnsley suggested that the Government had now offered enough compromises over its contentious anti-terror legislation to get it through the Commons. This was the verdict, he said, of Britain's most authoritative survey of inside and expert political opinion.
This seemed to fit with many reports on and off the record that the Home Secretary’s speech to the Labour PLP had hit the spot and convinced some MPs to back the Bill. But I still think don’t think we should believe the current hype for two reasons.
First, and in contrast to the 90 days debacle (and the perception that the Police were being used by Ministers to influence MPs) the Government’s current approach has the hallmarks of an exceptionally well-managed communication plan – but we should be cynical in a Government claiming victory before the result is known. More to the point we should be sceptical about expert political opinion on the matter.
I’ve just finished reading an excellent book by Philip Tetlock, Mitchell Professor of Leadership at the University of California on Expert Political Judgement. For the last 20 years Tetlock has tracked expert performance against explicit benchmarks of accuracy and rigour. His central argument is that what experts think matters far less than how they think.
If we want realistic odds on what will happen next we are better off turning to experts who embody the intellectual traits of Isiah Berlin’s prototypical fox – those who know many little things rather than hedgehogs who know one big thing.
Asking a group of political experts whether concessions to MPs will mean a greater likelihood of the Bill getting through the Commons strikes me as highly subjective and answers are sure to be influenced and reinforced by internal and external events. Asking the PH panel the question on the day the media carried positive news about the Bills progress therefore strikes me as rather limp evidence of the Government's probable success. And while we can’t predict what MPs will do next week we would do well to take a more objective view of events leading up to the vote next week and cast around for a different set of opinions rather than those trapped in the everyday politics of Westminster - after all groupthink often creates the illusion of unanimity.
This seemed to fit with many reports on and off the record that the Home Secretary’s speech to the Labour PLP had hit the spot and convinced some MPs to back the Bill. But I still think don’t think we should believe the current hype for two reasons.
First, and in contrast to the 90 days debacle (and the perception that the Police were being used by Ministers to influence MPs) the Government’s current approach has the hallmarks of an exceptionally well-managed communication plan – but we should be cynical in a Government claiming victory before the result is known. More to the point we should be sceptical about expert political opinion on the matter.
I’ve just finished reading an excellent book by Philip Tetlock, Mitchell Professor of Leadership at the University of California on Expert Political Judgement. For the last 20 years Tetlock has tracked expert performance against explicit benchmarks of accuracy and rigour. His central argument is that what experts think matters far less than how they think.
If we want realistic odds on what will happen next we are better off turning to experts who embody the intellectual traits of Isiah Berlin’s prototypical fox – those who know many little things rather than hedgehogs who know one big thing.
Asking a group of political experts whether concessions to MPs will mean a greater likelihood of the Bill getting through the Commons strikes me as highly subjective and answers are sure to be influenced and reinforced by internal and external events. Asking the PH panel the question on the day the media carried positive news about the Bills progress therefore strikes me as rather limp evidence of the Government's probable success. And while we can’t predict what MPs will do next week we would do well to take a more objective view of events leading up to the vote next week and cast around for a different set of opinions rather than those trapped in the everyday politics of Westminster - after all groupthink often creates the illusion of unanimity.
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