The Tinkerbell theory: I wish politicians would stop blaming their failures on my lack of belief

Who knew Peter Pan would become one of the key political texts of the twenty-first century?

Jonn Elledge in The New Statesman

The moment you doubt whether you can fly,” J M Barrie once wrote, "You cease for ever to be able to do it.” Elsewhere in the same book he was blunter, still: “Whenever a child says, ‘I don’t believe in fairies’, there’s a little fairy somewhere that falls right down dead.”
I would never have expected that Peter Pan would become one of the key political texts of the twenty-first century, if I’m honest. But predictions are not my strongpoint, and over the last few years, what one might term the Tinkerbell Theory of Politics has played an increasingly prominent role in national debate. The doubters’ lack of faith, we are told, is one of the biggest barriers to flight for everything from Jeremy Corbyn’s poll ratings to Brexit. Because we don’t believe, they can’t achieve.

It was in run up to the Scottish referendum that I first spotted Tinkerbell in the wild. Reports suggesting that RBS would consider relocating from Edinburgh, should independence lead to a significant rise in business costs – a statement of the bloody obvious, I’d have thought – were dismissed by then-First Minister Alex Salmond as merely “talking down Scotland”. Over the next few months, the same phrase was deployed by the SNP and its outriders whenever anyone questioned the Yes campaign’s optimistic estimates of future North Sea oil revenues.

The implications of all this were pretty clear: any practical problems apparently arising from independence were mere phantasms. The real threat to Scotland was the erosion of animal spirits caused by the faithlessness of unpatriotic unionists, who’d happily slaughter every fairy in the land before they risked an independent Scotland.

All this seemed pretty obnoxious to me, but at the time of the referendum it also all seemed to be a reassuringly long way away. Little did I realise that Salmond and co were just ahead of their time, because today, Tinkerbell-ism is bloody inescapable.

On Monday, Sir John Major made a wonkish speech laying out his concerns about Brexit. He talked about the threat to the Northern Ireland peace process, the way it would isolate Britain diplomatically, the difficulty of negotiating highly complicated trade deals on the timetable imposed by Article 50. He wanted, he said, to “warn against an over-optimism that – if unachieved – will sow further distrust between politics and the public, at a time when trust needs to be re-built”.

And how did Britain’s foreign secretary respond? “I think it’s very important that as we set out in this journey we are positive about the outcome for the very good reason the outcome will be fantastic for this country,” Boris said, probably imagining himself to be a bit like Cicero.

The problem, in other words, is not the government’s lack of a plan; the problem is its critics’ lack of faith. In a familiar phrase, the Telegraph headlined its report: “Boris Johnson criticises John Major for talking down UK’s post-Brexit prospects”.

The left is no better. In any discussion of the failings of Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour party, it won’t be long before someone blames the polls, or the by-election results, on either the lack of support from the parliamentary Labour party, or the hostility of a media that never liked him in the first place. “Of course he’s struggling,” the implication runs. “Your lack of belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy.” Dead fairies, everywhere you turn.

It’s easy to see why the Tinkerbell strategy would be such an attractive line of argument for those who deploy it - one that places responsibility for their own f*ck-ups squarely on their critics, thus rendering them impervious to attack. Corbyn’s failure becomes the fault of the Blairites. A bad Brexit becomes the fault of Remoaners, and not those who were dim enough to believe it would easy to begin with. Best of all, the more right your critics turn out to be, the more you have to blame them for.

But being impervious to criticism is not the same as being right, and to think this strategy is a recipe for good government is to mistake a closed loop of true believers for objective reality. Jeremy Corbyn is unlikely to start winning elections, no matter how hard the faithful believe. However much you talk up Scotland, that oil is still going to run out

And whatever the right-wing press do to convince themselves that Boris Johnson is right, and John Major is wrong, it is unlikely to affect the negotiating position of the 27 other states in the slightest. At the end of the day, our faith matters a lot less than the facts on the ground. There is no such things as fairies.

The true value of money – or why you can't fart a crashing plane back into the sky

Banknotes aren't worth the paper they're printed on. The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief

• 
• • Charlie Brooker
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 12 February 2012

I'm no financial expert. I scarcely know what a coin is. Ask me to explain what a credit default swap is and I'll emit an unbroken 10-minute "um" through the clueless face of a broken puppet. You might as well ask a pantomime horse. But even an idiot such as me can see that money, as a whole, doesn't really seem to be working any more.

Money is broken, and until we admit that, any attempts to fix the economy seem doomed to fail. We're like passengers on a nosediving plane thinking if we all fart hard enough, we can lift it back into the sky. So should we be storming the cockpit or hunting for parachutes instead? I don't know: I ran out of metaphor after the fart gag. You're on your own from hereon in.

Banknotes aren't worth the paper they're printed on. If they were, they'd all have identical value. Money's only worth what the City thinks it's worth. Or, perhaps more accurately, hopes it's worth. Coins should really be called "wish-discs" instead. That name alone would give a truer sense of their value than the speculative number embossed on them.

The entire economy relies on the suspension of disbelief. So does a fairy story, or an animated cartoon. This means that no matter how soberly the financial experts dress, no matter how dry their language, the economy they worship can only ever be as plausible as an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. It's certainly nowhere near as well thought-out and executed.

No one really understands how it all works: if they did, we wouldn't be in this mess. Banking, as far as I can tell, seems to be almost as precise a science as using a slot machine. You either blindly hope for the best, delude yourself into thinking you've worked out a system, or open it up when no one's looking and rig the settings so it'll pay out illegally.

The chief difference is that slot machines are more familiar and graspable to most of us. When you hear a jackpot being paid out to a gambler, the robotic clunk-clunk-clunk of coin-on-tray, you're aware that he had to go to some kind of effort to get his reward. You know he stood there pushing buttons for hours. You can picture that.

The recent outrage over City bonuses stems from a combination of two factors: the sheer size of the numbers involved coupled with a lack of respect for the work involved in earning them. Like bankers, top footballers are massively overpaid, but at least you comprehend what they're doing for the money. If Wayne Rooney was paid millions to play lacrosse in a closed room in pitch darkness, people would begrudge him his millions far more than they already do. Instead there he is, on live television: he's skilled, no doubt about it.

Similarly, it may be tasteless when a rapper pops up on MTV wearing so much bling he might as well have dipped himself in glue and jumped into a treasure chest full of vajazzling crystals, but at least you understand how he earned it.

RBS boss Stephen Hester, meanwhile, earns more than a million pounds for performing enigmatic actions behind the scenes at a publicly owned bank. And on top of his huge wage, he was in line for a massive bonus. To most people, that's downright cheeky: like a man getting a blowjob from your spouse while asking you to make him a cup of tea.

But Hester earned his wage, we're told, because he does an incredibly difficult job. And maybe he does. Trouble is, no one outside the City understands what his job actually consists of. I find it almost impossible to picture a day in Hester's life, and I once wrote a short story about a pint-sized toy Womble that ran around killing dogs with its dick, so I know I don't lack imagination. Class, yes: imagination, no. If I strain my mind's eye, I can just about picture Hester arriving at work, picture him thanking his driver, picture the receptionist saying "Hello, Mr Hester", and picture him striding confidently into his office – but the moment the door shuts, my feed breaks up and goes fuzzy. What does he do in there? Pull levers? Chase numbers round the room with a broom? God knows.

Maybe if all bankers were forced to work in public, on the pavement, it would help us understand what they actually do. Of course, you'd have to encase them in a Perspex box so they wouldn't be attacked. In fact, if the experience of David Blaine is anything to go by, you'd have to quickly move that Perspex box to somewhere impossibly high up, where people can't pelt it with golf balls and tangerines. On top of the Gherkin, say. If Hester did his job inside a Perspex box on top of the Gherkin for a year, this entire argument might never have happened.

The row over bonuses has led some to mutter darkly about mob rule and the rise of anti-business sentiment. Complain about mobs all you like, but you can't control gut reactions, and you can't dictate the mood. And when you try to fart a crashing plane back into the sky, you only succeed in making the atmosphere unpleasant for everyone. And spoiling the in-flight movie. And making the stewardess cry. Looks like I'm all out of metaphor again. Time to end the article. Article ends.