The Enantiodromia Trick (or How Politicians Turn Outcomes Into ‘You Got It Wrong’ Stories)

There is a staggeringly simple logic behind the world of action. The world of action is a world in which men, women, you, me, seek to attain things, or achieve them, or prevent the achievement of them, by acting. There is wish or want, and there is act. Between the want and the act is a mire, a marsh, a march, a mountain, a meandering river, lots of mud and misery, and the mob or multitude of many others acting in favour of their own wants. So either we succeed or we fail.

The logic I speak of concerns this. There are two simple sides to this logic. Let me write them out, as no one does.

We want something: we attain it.

We want something: we do not attain it: in fact, we attain the opposite.

The first is called success.

The second is called failure. It is not only failure though. It is, logically, reversal. Instead of one thing, we get the other. Instead of black, we get white. Instead of heaven, we get hell. In plain English, we eat dirt.

Now, politics is full of men and women seeking to be successful but mostly experiencing failure. Failure, when it is clear: mere frustration, when it is not.

You know, Burnham wants to win Makerfield; become an MP; generate a coalition within the Labour party; overawe the Unions; and displace Starmer; then meet Trump, Merz, etc, and have his photograph taken with Zelensky. (Standing Shoulder to Shoulder with Zelensky, a thousand page collection of photographs of two people, one always clad in black or olive green, is due to be published by Thames and Hudson in 2030.) Let’s see whether Burnham succeeds. It hardly matters: that’s the up part. The down part will be a public spending review, increased public spending nonetheless, more borrowing, eventual sense of betrayal. People will say, “The King of the North, er, went South, didn’t he?”

The language of success and failure runs throughout politics. Nowadays we call success ‘delivery’, absurdly, as if politics is a matter of packages.

Now, I have just written an academic article, which I have sent somewhere. Chances are it will be rejected in the next few days. In it I talk about enantiodromia. You should all know this word. It is Greek. It is in Diogenes Laertes’s account of Heraclitus in Lives of Eminent Philosophers. It caught the attention of a few psychologists and literary scholars in the 20th Century because Carl Gustav Jung used it in his Psychological Types. In Heraclitus it just meant something like “the clash of opposing currents” (that’s the Loeb translation). But Jung interpreted it in a different way. He defined it as “conversion into the opposite”. In other words, Jung was suggesting that in a conflict of opposites it was possible for things to become their opposites.

History is full of this.

Blair was originally the hubris of the Labour Party. Now, after writing 5,700 words of criticism of the Labour party in 2026, he is its nemesis.

Britain went to war in 1939 to fight Hitler. It ended up allied to Stalin.

We fought to stop Germany dominating Europe. Ho hum.

The sun never used to set on the British Empire. Now the sun never rises on it.

Etc.

I frivol, slightly. But read any history book. Or read the Bible. God saw that it was good. But it went bad. The Israelites did not want kings. Then they did. All very ironic. People used to learn all about historical ironies from Rome. Twists and turns from 1. kings to 2. consuls to 3. imperator, but then Tacitus on empire (“theft they call empire, sowing the ground with salt they call peace“), and then Gibbon, also Guy de la Bédoyère, on further ironies of Rome.

But my point in this piece is not that: it is not the fact of historical irony, not the fact of things becoming their opposites, not the fact of apparent success leading to actual failure.

Nay. My point is one step further on than that. My point is that politicians talk about the world in these terms. They simplify political events until they come into accord with the very simple logics of success or failure. But now it matters which side you are on. We wanted it: we got it. (Success.) But they wanted it: and they got something else, the fools, frauds and fakers. (Failure.)

Consider Mark Carney, who is quoted on BBC News as follows:

Prime Minister Mark Carney has called the upcoming Alberta referendum on separation from Canada a “dangerous bluff”, comparing it to the Brexit vote that saw the UK leave the European Union.

Carney, who led the Bank of England during Brexit, said that 10 years on from the referendum the UK was “trying to undo what people didn’t think they were voting for, but what they ended up having”.

Carney is using what I am going to call the ‘enantiodromia trick‘. This is where you say, “Haha, you wanted x, but you got y.” Or: “Historical irony, the great goddess Eironeia, swallowed you up, and spat you out and you came out looking small, saliva-tormented and a bit stupid.”

NB Again, this trick is not about this actually happening. No, it is about saying it has happened.

Usually it depends on making a (false) claim about what (the other) people wanted. You know, apparently supporters of Brexit wanted manna from heaven, zero inflation, no debt repayment, infinite free trade, the UK as No. 1 Nation, Daniel Hannan’s clean and noble visage on hoardings all over the land, etc. and, hahaha, they got Boris Johnson, Tommy Robinson, Sarah Mullally, Zarah Sultana and John Bercow in descending order.

So, if you are a politician, you say, “Hahaha, my enemies wanted white, and they got black.”

Here is the remarkably runic and thorny Þorgerður (that’s her first name: Thorgerthur, to you and me) Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, the Foreign Minister of Iceland, playing the same trick. She is talking about whether Iceland should continue accession talks with the EU. And she serves the same balls as Carney.

“I am fearing that we will face a Brexit moment,” she told the Guardian. “That would be, from my point of view, a rather dangerous path because… there were all kinds of lies put forward by the Brexiteers.” She cited disputed figures used by the leave campaign over how much money the UK sent to the EU. Þorgerður said Brexit “should be an example of how not to run a campaign” rather than something to be emulated. “Nothing of what they promised has actually been activated or realised,” she said.

Yes, but this is the enantiodromia trick again, Þorgerður. You claim that your enemies wanted x, but got y, where x was sweet wine and y was sour grapes. “Nothing of what they promised?”

I dislike this way of talking about Brexit. Brexit, I thought, was simply, Exiting the European Union. And, apart from the fact that it is tricky (Peter Hitchens: the EU is Hotel California, etc. you can check out but never leave), it was achieved. They wanted ‘Leave’ and, well, dear Carneyman and Þorgerðurlady, in so far as they didn’t get it, well, that is down to people like you, opposing and obstructing them, and decorating your discourse by playing the enantiodromia trick.

The enantiodromia trick is a bore. Here I am just trying to explain it, so you know why you are so bored or irritated when you read certain sorts of utterance by politicians.

But there is always some truth in it. For enantiodromia is part of the logic of all the world. We wanted to take back control. Sadly, we didn’t take it back. Etc.

Of course, our historical understanding of all politics benefits from our recognising the frustration of purposes. But we should be wary of how politicians use this simple logic as a rhetorical trick to redescribe reality in a way that favours their own politics.

James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.

PS I just receive notice of a new book by my old colleague Michael Sonenscher. He is a fine historian, difficult to read. He has written a book on the French Revolution. I laughed when I saw the blurb:

This is history about what was expected, but did not happen, and what was unexpected, but really did.

Aye, all history, of no matter what era, indicates the same truth. As usual. They wanted x, they got y. So Michael Sonenscher is an Enantiodromian too.