I THINK it’s fair to say that if, um, you communicate in a hesitant and, er, stuttering way with lots of “ums” and “ers”, it generally undermines confidence in what it is that you, um, are trying to say. Especially if, er, you happen to be Prime Minister.
The thing is, though, Boris Johnson is only just discovering this. For a long time, he cultivated the image of the loveable bumbler. He ummed and erred because he wasn’t on top of his brief. But he also realised that some people warmed to the idea that the ums and ers were because he wasn’t like other politicians: he was un-slick and was apparently thinking as he went along rather than parroting a party line. So he ummed and erred all the more.
But the tactic has its limits. It was perfectly fine and amusing on Have I Got News For You, but did you see the documentary the BBC made when he was foreign secretary? Remember the despair of his advisors? They were definitely not amused by his lack of preparation, and it was obvious that amusing “ums” and “ers” and absent-minded ruffling of the hair wasn’t going to cover it up.
And then he became Prime Minister. And then the coronavirus crisis happened. And then he was asked to explain the restrictions on meeting people from other households in the north-east of England. He ummed and erred and got it wrong and later apologised for having “mis-spoke”.
But what’s really going on here? Yes, the Prime Minister should be on top of his brief, and Boris Johnson – as journalist, columnist, and politician – has often done the least he thinks he can get away with. But I wonder if his behaviour and the bumbling mis-explanation of the coronavirus rules actually have deeper roots? Johnson didn’t only behave the way he did because of his shallow grasp of the brief – he behaved the way he did because it’s what we’ve come to expect of politicians.
What I mean by that is the fear of “I don’t know”. You see it over and over again and it’s getting worse. A politician is asked a question. They don’t know the answer. But instead of saying ‘I don’t know’, they resort to one of two tactics. A) they try to avoid answering the question or B) they pretend they know the answer anyway. In the case of the covid cock-up, the Prime Minister resorted to B.
Many other politicians have done the same thing. You may remember the former education minister Stephen Byers being asked to multiply eight by seven and saying 54. Or Diane Abbott being asked how much Labour’s plans for 10,000 police officers would cost and saying first £300,000, then £80million. Or indeed Boris Johnson being asked what the social restrictions were in the north-east and saying it was OK for households to meet outside.
All those politicians behaved the way they did because they thought they had to. They’ve come to believe that leaders and ministers must be seen to know the answers to all the questions; they, and us, have also come to believe that quick, confident answers are a sign of good leadership and that gaps in our knowledge must be hidden at all costs. It can, and does, end in disaster.
The obvious solution is for politicians who don’t know something to admit it and it’s interesting that Nicola Sturgeon has used the tactic in First Minister’s Questions and the political briefings on the BBC – she sometimes says “I don’t know” instead of trying to bluff her way out and, significantly, her reputation hasn’t suffered because of it. Politicians sometimes don’t know the answer. Big deal.
But if other politicians are to do the same, we need to change the approach. On the same day the PM was asked about the coronavirus restrictions, the education minister Gillian Keegan was asked pretty much the same question on Radio 4 and, although in the video you can see her apparently looking to an advisor for help, in the end, she had no choice. She said: “I don’t know the answer to that question.”
What matters is how we feel and react to that. The radio presenter Michelle Hussain clearly thought she’d got a “hit” and smugly rubbed it in. The minister’s performance was also nothing to be proud of. But we shouldn’t be so afraid of “I don’t know”. What’s more embarrassing? Pretending you know something and being found out, or being honest and saying I’m not sure? We should be able to admit the gaps. We should be able to say “I don’t know”. It’s not a sign of weakness. It’s a sign of being normal.
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