My husband tells a lovely story about his bleak nights clubbing in 1980s Peterborough. A group of lads in suits with a bottle of 20/20 in their top pocket would go out looking for a laugh, and women if they were lucky. They generally were not. My husband tells of a famous scene when one of their number saw a group of still unclaimed women in the corner. The club lights were coming on and everyone was forlornly trooping home. One optimistic mate locked eyes with one of the women, pushed his hands through his hair and made to stride across the dancefloor for a 2.30am attempt at seduction. He’d made no more than two steps when the woman swiftly raised her hand and shouted: “NO!” The optimist turned on his heel, rejoined his useless mates. The savage rejection scene became the stuff of lad legend.
I propose we adopt this wise woman’s approach to clearly unhinged public policy ideas. No consultations, no trials, no soft launches, no debates. When a drunk new policy makes a swaggering step onto the public stage we all just shout a loud and clear: “NO!”
No doubt you are as fed up as I am at the uselessly late newspaper columns suggesting the transing children / lockdown / furlough / extension of usual vicissitudes of life into mental health conditions / open borders / concrete tower blocks etc. may not have been such wise ideas after all. I’m thinking here of Matthew Syed (on the false compassion of an over-generous benefits system), Kirsty Allsop on trans, Rishi Sunak endlessly lying about trying to control immigration. It is all far too late. The damage has been done.
I have no doubt Matthew Syed, Kirsty Allsop and Rishi all knew instinctively and immediately that the various policies they helped to champion and tacitly supported by not speaking out against them were grade one stinking bullshit, but they were not brave enough to raise their hands and shout “NO!” until years after the event.
Imagine for a moment if that over-optimistic nightclub chancer was a public policy. The clear-sighted young woman would have been encouraged to override her instincts and listen to his sales pitch. Perhaps she would be encouraged to take him in for a ‘trial’ period. And if she didn’t like him, experts would have swung by to say, that actually, she needed to keep him because the evidence suggested he would eventually make an economic contribution to society. When it turned out he was indeed a desperate no-hoper, as the young woman had instinctively known, those advising her to take him on will first insult her, then disappear. Perhaps years later they might bravely emerge to suggest accepting a staggering drunk loser at 2.30am was not a good idea. They will write that lessons will be learned and leave her alone to pick up the pieces of her spoiled life.
As a society we all need to adopt the original and correct attitude of this astute young woman in the 1980s Peterborough nightclub. She could just see with one glance that the man in question was not to be entertained. We must follow her example and loudly shout “NO!” at whatever lunacy is next offered to us as an innovative public policy.
Think of these policies as a 1980s lad in a Peterborough nightclub, making an audacious stride across the dancefloor to some unsuspecting public. First taking to the dancefloor with a flick of the pink hair is: “Just stop oil.” No eminent meteorologists or examination of the charts of ice-core records are required for us to know immediately that just stopping oil is civilisational suicide. We raise our hands and shout all together: “NO!”
It’s an easy game to play, another public policy has a go. This time a gangly ugly fellow approaches the dance floor looking for pastures new. Onshore wind farms? They look horrible and don’t blow when it’s not windy: “NO!”
A cadaverous chap holding a sickle: euthanasia? “NO!”
A big fat sweaty bastard: even higher taxes for highest earners: “NO!”
Decriminalisation of abortion up to birth: “NO!”
Solar panels on farmland: “NO!”
Gender self ID: “NO!”
Lib Dem plan to make pensions ‘green’: “NO!”
Tony Blair’s return to Government under Starmer: “NO!”
Oh jeepers, he’s got across the dance floor…Tony Blair’s plans for Labour to forge closer ties with the EU: “NO!”
Penny Mordant as Tory leader: “NO!”
Legalisation of cannabis: “NO!”
Cloud seeding: “NO!”
Another Scottish referendum: “NO!”
Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence mentor.
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