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My first job in politics was as local government policy adviser to Ed Davey. Most of our time was spent campaigning to replace Council Tax with Local Income Tax (a thread... about coronavirus regulations)
Chief geek Ed and Minion geek me thought our policy was the bomb. Sure : people tried to pick holes. But we had answers to every question that had ever been asked. How would the policy apply to nurses living in caravans with students? We knew.
In fact, our Q&A on the policy - circulated to all candidates and staff under the title Local Income Tax: Your Questions Answered - ran to 37 pages
Then along came the 2005 manifesto launch. Charles Kennedy had been off for a couple of days; his son Donald was born during the campaign and the manifesto had been delayed.
Charles fluffed his answers to the questions on Local Income Tax. Badly. We spent the whole day in a flurry of stress, me and @MarkJLittlewood on the phone to every journalist in the land trying to correct the mistakes and update their information.
We - the party - knew the answer to the question. But Charles didn’t. It was immediately apparent that 37 pages was not too little information. It was far too much. Only super human obsessives (me and Ed) could possibly remember it all.
Politicians - good ones, kind ones, bad ones, all of them - make mistakes. I’m not angry at Boris Johnson or Gillian Keegan or any minister who can’t remember the details of every line of their ferociously complex regulations. In the heat of an interview of course they forget.
The problem is failing to recognise that the 37 page briefing *you* can’t remember is also the 37 page briefing you’re asking other people to remember.
If it’s too complicated for you, it’s too complicated for us.
