an unfortunate jogging of elbows (updated)

Meet the Cabinet Office Behavioural Insight team, otherwise known as the Nudge Unit:

We can all cite instances in which we know that we should act differently in our own self interest or in the wider interest, but for one reason or another do not. The traditional tools of Government have proven to be less successful in addressing these behavioural problems. We need to think about ways of supplementing the more traditional tools of government, with policy that helps to encourage behaviour change of this kind.

The Behavioural Insights Team has been established to do just that. Its aim is to help the UK Government develop and apply lessons from behavioural economics and behavioural science to public policy making. In short, it supports Government departments in designing policy that better reflects how people really behave, not how they are assumed to behave.

The nudge unit reports to Francis Maude as Cabinet Office Minister (you can read him justifying its work here). If we take ‘behavioural science’ seriously for a moment, we’re left with the question of whether actual panic was the objective here, rather than this being a standard political diversion trick that got out of hand. After all, if an outcome is predictable, it becomes reasonable to consider that it was intended, especially when performed by a confirmed nudger.

UPDATE: This:

But now that I have heard the Conservatives’ private explanation, which is being handed down to constituency associations by MPs, I begin to feel angry.

The private message is as follows. “This is our Thatcher moment. In order to defeat the coming miners’ strike, she stockpiled coal. When the strike came, she weathered it, and the Labour Party, tarred by the strike, was humiliated. In order to defeat the coming fuel drivers’ strike, we want supplies of petrol stockpiled. Then, if the strike comes, we will weather it, and Labour, in hock to the Unite union, will be blamed.”

 

Comments

[Charlie W]

Second part of the plan: fuel tanker drivers are to fall asleep at the wheel while playing catch-up.

[Guano]

I vote for "a standard political diversion trick that got out of hand".

The point being that the background narrative is so lousy that the diversions have to be very smelly red herrings. My view is that Raise the police horse was a diversion, even though in itself it was an expression of the corrupt relationship between politics, the media and the police.

[skidmarx]

Winkers all.

[Cian]

apply lessons from behavioural economics and behavioural science to public policy making.

I find the slippage from psychology (which is where this stuff originated) to behavioural interesting. Behaviourism was a theory which basically assumed away free will/consciousness, and there seems to be something similar going on here.

[Phil]

A commenter at Stumbling & Mumbling points out that panic-bought petrol will figure in the first quarter's GDP, & might make a big enough difference to push year-on-year economic growth from negative into positive - hence 'proving' that we're not in a recession. It's very neat, but I think it attributes far too much intelligence to the Tories.

[Richard J]

I do have to say that the private note does seem rather like an arse-covering gesture - if the plan was as Machievellian as that, you'd have thought they'd have made sure to get the right wing press, and for that matter, the petrol retailers association on side first.

It's a bit, well, [insert WW2 reference of choice here]

[CMcM]

Oh, fanjabulous day. Charles Moore notices the existence of class, and uses it against the Cameroonies in an inner-party factional battle.

I think I'm going off to stick a stamp to a pasty in celebration...

[jamie]

Richard: Yes, it's a bit after the fact and I'm not sure it actually makes sense either. How much petrol are people actually expected to keep in their homes? But |I dod lean to the idea that the govt wanted, if not panic, public anxiety and inconvenience to blame on the Unions.

[Charlie W]

They can fill their baths with petrol.

[jamie]

Mrs Treasure made a good point when we were talking about this earlier. If this really was a matter of emergency planning or even forward planning, governments would have thought of the country as a collectivity and actually done some planning; emergency services, food supply etc. Instead, it just stampeded the punters down to the petrol station. Either this is deeply cynical or they've just internalised the 'there is no such thing as society' idea to a frightening degree.