It isn't exactly an outright victory. The judge ordered Chris Grayling to come up with a report on the state of the franchise within a fortnight, or to face a full-scale judicial review.
It is an important step forward, though not yet a solution. But then one element of their failure to solve the underlying problem is ministers inability to set out honestly what it is. It is so much easier just to blame the unions.
This failure is infuriating in itself. Almost - strange this - more enraging than the failure of the Southern franchise.
This is why I've been thinking about official untruths.
It seems to be a symptom of the endtime of the
bundle of economic and political ideas that have dominated for the past four
decades, but those in government are forced to lie that much more.
It isn’t necessarily their fault individually.
It is just what happens when the bundle of ideas which are supposed to drive
the engine of government run dry.
They need to do so to maintain an increasingly
stressful façade that everything is fine – that the economy is fuelled by more
than debt, that austerity continues to boost the economy, or that a hard Brexit
is a pretty neat idea.
It is increasingly difficult to accept in
public these small details, which threaten to unravel the big lies they tell
each other in government just to get by.
So I thought it might make sense to collect
some of the official untruths together. These are in my top ten. What are
yours?
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