Duncan O'Leary
Duncan works on projects looking at public services, skills and work.
Lots of talk of U-turns in the news today. Yesterday’s news on the 10p tax rate, Jim Knight insisting there will be ‘no U-turn’ over teachers pay. Which begs the question, would politics be better or worse without U-turns? Leaving aside these specific examples, I think U-turns (and U-turners) can be underrated.
When we make a decision we tend to suffer from cognitive biases that make us surer and surer that our decision was the right one– partly because we look for information that confirms our judgements rather than challenges them. For example, once you place a bet, you become more and more convinced that your horse is going to win. When you buy something you weren’t sure about in the shop, you’ve convinced yourself it was the right thing to do by the time you get home.
We seem to be disposed to like consistency rather than dissonance - which Both Blair and Thatcher made a virtue of as leaders. But that can get in the way of rectifying things that are going wrong. Yes mistakes are bad. Yes caving in to pressure is bad. But some U-turns show real leadership: if you get it wrong, it’s weak, not strong to ignore that.
LOGIN to add comments
Comments
Even if there is an agreed-upon, fixed social objective function and policymakers know the timing and magnitude of the effects of their actions, discretionary policy, namely, the selection of that decision which is best, given the current situation and a correct evaluation of the end-of-period position, does not result in the social objective function being maximized.
You get the general idea. All of which, from a different perspective, might lead one to suspect that the a priori opposition to U-Turns that you highlight is actually a sort of neoliberal attack on the right of politicians to act at all, except with very long time horizons. In this respect, the abolition of child poverty target is far less worrying to Wall Street traders than a more market-oriented, but short-termist policy, such as an unexpected tax cut or subsidy.
(Feel free to 'correct' this response...)