Second thoughts can be good. Or not.

“I have always found that the man whose second thoughts are good is worth watching,” the character Charles Venables, a British Cabinet Minister, tells us in J. M. Barrie’s play What Every Woman knows.

Well, there’s merit in the thought. Some of the greatest politicians I’ve come across are ready to recognise their errors and correct them fast. Why, it was the case of the man I regard as the outstanding politician of all time, Abraham Lincoln, over the Trent affair, as I’ve described before.

The problem is that, if the initial thought was bad enough, the second one can be better without being good. We’ve had a great illustration of that just this week. I’m referring, of course, to the political gymnastics of the British Chancellor of the Exchequer (Minister of Finance), Kwasi Kwarteng, perfectly nicknamed by John Crace in the Guardian as ‘Kamikwasi’. 

Kamikwasi Kwarteng, a remarkable Chancellor of the Exchequer
with Librium Liz, record-breaking opinion poll sinker

It's fascinating to see how he, and his political allies, have reacted to the economic tsunami that followed his recent proposals on tax and assistance with energy bills. Skyrocketing interest rates and a collapsing pound were, they claimed, entirely coincidental, caused by Putin’s war or the US Reserve Bank’s interest rate hike. They were entirely unrelated to the Chancellor’s actions, and only by accident occurred immediately after he’d announced them. 

What was clear from Kwarteng’s proposals is that they were entirely aimed at supporting the very wealthiest. One measure was strikingly so: the elimination of the higher band of income tax, of 45 pence in the pound, on salaries of over £150,000 a year (the median salary for all workers in the UK is just under £26,000, barely over a sixth of that level). Also eye-watering was the proposal to remove the ceiling on bonuses paid to bankers.

These two measures were largely symbolic in effect. The higher rate of tax only generated about £2 billion a year for the government, about 1.4% of total government spending. And the limit on bankers’ bonuses simply pushed up their basic income. But both measures said an awful lot about government attitudes towards society, specifically the way they favour the wealthy over the poor.

Much more serious was the fact that the measures were unfunded. In the past, Conservative politicians have been hugely critical of government initiatives without proper financing. They scream about Labour governments taking initiatives based entirely on borrowing.

“You’re piling up a colossal debt,” they wail, “for future generations to pay.”

And yet here they are doing exactly that. With no necessity to do so. Much of the spending was to protect consumers from excessive energy prices, protection that could have been funded by taxing the excessive profits energy companies are making as a result of those excessive prices. That, it seems, was a proposal the government couldn’t even begin to consider.

“We’re happy to pile up a colossal debt,” they seemed to be thinking, though they would never admit it in public, “for future generations to pay.”

The impact of the measures shows all the signs of botched policy worked out in far too much of a hurry. The painful consequences weren’t just the ones affecting the economy, however cataclysmic those may have been (the Bank of England had to spend £65 billion to prevent pension funds going bust). They were political too. It’s common for a new Prime Minister to enjoy an opinion poll boost when they first take office. Certainly, there has been a colossal bounce in the polls on this occasion as on others. The innovative feature of this bounce is that it hasn’t benefited the government, but the Labour opposition.

Liz Truss’s extraordinary opinion poll bounce.
Spectacular. But for the other side

I’ve often worried about the leader of Labour, Keir Starmer, not doing enough to win positive support for him and for the party. He seemed to be relying far too much on the Conservatives making a mess of things. Well, right now it looks like he might have been absolutely right, and I’d underestimated the Conservative capacity for fouling up. 

Certainly, after enjoying a good but hardly overwhelming lead for some months, today Labour has a lead which could be massively election-winning, if it can hold on to it. If Kamikwasi was too quick with his budget, his boss, the Prime Minister Liz Truss, dubbed Librium Liz by John Crace for her apparent inability ever to show any enthusiasm for anything, has also set a new speed record. She has exhausted any early popularity she may have enjoyed more quickly than any other Prime Minister. 

In particular, the anger over abolishing the top rate of tax turned out to be irresistible. Even Conservative MPs publicly criticised their leader’s decision to do away with it. Why, in Spain, where I now live, we were entertained by the spectacle of politicians from the Popular Party, the equivalent of Britain’s Conservatives, falling over each other to explain that their own proposals for tax reductions had nothing in common with those adopted in Britain. 

So Kamikwasi decided he had to think again. At the Conservative Party conference, which is taking place this very week, he announced that he’d been listening to people and had decided to cancel the abolition of the 45p rate. A better second thought than the first.

But only barely. Because the rest stays in place. The unfunded initiatives remain. And the attack on the poor continues.

Librium Liz was asked in a BBC interview whether she intended to honour the commitment, made by her predecessor Boris Johnson, to upgrade benefits in line with inflation. She simply refused to say. Bad news, I’d say, is coming down the track for the very poorest in society.

To add to the ugly spectacle Liz and Kwasi were laying on for us, she announced that the initiative to back down on the top rate tax proposal had come entirely from the him. Kwarteng, in the meantime, was claiming that it came from her, as Prime Minister. Later he declared it to be a joint decision.

Neither, it seems, is prepared to own it, and both are happy to throw the blame for a humiliating about-turn on the other – or, at best, to share it. Not the most edifying of sights. But then, why would we expect edification from this lot?

Oh, well. Somehow Britain has ended up with obsessive ideologues in power, sure that they know the truth. Truss has said it herself: she has to do what she believes is right. That’s true enough, but it would be good if she decided what was right after proper consultation with those who know more about the subject than she does.

Maybe she’s a suitable recipient for Oliver Cromwell’s plea, to “think it possible that you may be mistaken”.

That, though, takes a much bigger person than either of these two, with far more courage, and above all far more brains.

People like Lincoln, in fact, whose first ideas are often good, and when they’re not, quickly adopt second thoughts that are.