Let’s appoint a Ministry of Scandalous Ideas

My children have a phrase called ‘fomo’ — which stands for ‘fear of missing out’. It is a constant, mildly paranoid anxiety, exacerbated by social media, that all your friends are having a much better time than you are.

There is a related problem in government, I suspect, called FODM — or ‘fear of Daily Mail’. The effect of FODM is to limit the range of political discussion and opinion to a narrow range of predictable, non–controversial possibilities for fear anything more interesting might allow the media to manufacture a scandal.

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Matthew Parris

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This is where, unexpectedly, I sympathise with Russell Brand. In fact it was from a Brand podcast that I first heard the phrase ‘Overton window’. This defines the narrow scope of political ideas which can be entertained at any one time without career-threatening consequences. One reason for the rise of Ukip is the disappearance from mainstream politics of a caste of oddballs and nut-jobs (Benn, Rhodes Boyson, Willie Hamilton, Nicholas Fairbairn, etc); these people were extraordinarily valuable, not because you would want anyone to enact their ideas, but because their views gave everyone else the licence to entertain mildly odd ideas which seemed sane in comparison. They enlarged the Overton window. Today, when you can lose your job with a tweet, the window has practically become a peephole.

Yet almost all interesting ideas arouse hostility for a long period before they become adopted (google the ‘Semmelweis Reflex’, for example, or read Thomas Kuhn). I’d go further: no idea can be considered worthwhile unless it creates horrified comment in at least three national papers and is denounced by leading economists.

So my solution is to create a Ministry of Scandalous Ideas (perhaps under Michael Fabricant), its aim being to increase the level of bravery elsewhere in Whitehall through the power of comparison, and to deflect media attention from all other government activities.