Relax. Only a week to go. The Winter Olympics will come to and end, and we will have another four peaceful years in which curling is something some people do to their hair.
But perhaps not this time. For it has been an uncommonly good Winter Olympics for team GB. A first gold on snow and two in the skeleton. The latter is, of course, in the British sporting sweet spot. It doesn’t involve standing up (cf. rowing) and it does involve carbon fibre and wind tunnels (cf. F1 and cycling). The surprise is less that we are good at it, but that we aren’t good at the luge and bobsleigh.
But if it is a uniquely British winter sport, it is also uniquely Buddhist. A bad start means a slow time. Getting out of shape messes up the airflow and means a slow time. Banging the wall scrubs of speed and means a slow time. Every mistake has to be paid for at the finishing line. It is karma on ice.
Success breeds imitation. Across the land, countless moppets have, no doubt, decided to spend their half terms sliding down the stairs on a tea-tray. You’ve got to start them early. But, unusually, the government has found itself ahead of the curve.
Consider the past two weeks.
It started with the government fire-fighting allegations about Lord Mandelson. Embarrassing because he was a Labour peer, damaging because the present government had appointed him Ambassador to the U.S. It continued with the government fire-fighting an attempt by the Opposition to compel the publication of the government documents about Lord Mandelson and, specifically, his appointment. This failed.
Any respite was brief as further revelations meant that the government had to fire-fight allegations about Lord Doyle. Embarrassing because he was a Labour peer, damaging because they had appointed him to the Lords. The weekend saw them fire-fighting the departure of the Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, the following day, fire-fighting the departure of his chief spin doctor.
Understandably perturbed that these problems were interfering with his attempts to become First Minister (he is currently polling 4th), the Labour Leader in Scotland, decided to announce that he thought the Prime Minister should resign. This required a further round of fire-fighting as the Cabinet were corralled publicly into disagreeing with him.
That little local difficulty dealt with, the government then had to fire-fight the departure of the Cabinet Secretary, just a year after the Prime Minister had appointed him, and fire-fight to protect the assumed front runner to succeed him after a former Civil Servant went on the national news to knife her.
At the time of writing, the government is currently fire-fighting to save a minister after the group he used to lead (which was seen as being connected to the Prime Minister) was found to have prepared dossiers about journalists deemed unhelpful.
Like the sort of skeleton pilot who doesn’t make it to the Olympics, each time the government has touched the walls, it has veered off to the other side of the track and had to take ever more extreme action to get back on its course. Not a smooth, arrow-like trajectory, but an ever slower zig-zag from side-to-side, its numbers growing ever redder as speed gets scrubbed off with each touch of the walls. The push-off was slow, the early corners ragged, and they are suffering near the bottom of the course.
Given the events of the past weeks, it is hard to believe that there has been much time left for governing. Fire-fighting takes time. To those of my persuasion, this may not be a bad thing. If a government is habitually wrong, it is probably best for it to do as little governing as possible. And there is a little illicit pleasure in seeing the biter bit.
That is, perhaps, a minority view. But it cannot, surely, be in the national interest for the slide of state to wobble its way down the track, banging into every corner it meets. Unless, of course, the other members of the squad are worse. They won’t have his karma, but they will have their own.
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He is now also on Substack, where you are welcome to follow him.
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