We Know We're Right

This week’s newspapers are understandably full of the arrogance of Truss and Kwarteng, who just know that their policies are right, so they don’t need any objective evidence to get in their way. They dismiss the old-fashioned assumption that nobody knows everything, that’s it’s helpful to look at someone else’s view before you take a crucial decision, that the OBR might have a role. .

That’s true of both of them personally, but it’s also been hardened into a principle of government. Sneaking under the radar is the less media-friendly figure of Therese Coffey, who’s another passionate believer in self-sufficiency, with an established track record of ignoring what other people know while she pursues what she wants to do anyway.

At DWP she pursued a vindictive policy of harassing claimants, in the belief that making their lives miserable and cutting off their money would result in more of them finding jobs. The Select Committee weren’t convinced that this was actually working, so they asked her to carry out a review of the policy’s effectiveness. She did, but she then refused to publish the results. At Health, one of her first actions has been to cancel a thorough, necessary enquiry into the impact of inequality on illness and treatment. If it helps to absorb the unpleasant implications of this approach in light verse, see The Blinkered Dormouse in www.paulfranciswrites.co.uk/poemsfromthenews