The Institute for Governments's director Bronwen Maddox gave her 2019 annual lecture the other day and you can see a transcript HERE. The IfG are sceptical, to say the least, that the government can get all the legislation through in time for the end of March, which I've already covered, but the lecture gave what I thought was a fascinating insight into the mysterious birthing process of Unicorns.
These fabled creatures spring to life when everything else has failed and you can see how it might have occurred in what is known as the 'maximum facilitation' model to unravel the Irish border knot using yet to be invented technology. Ms Maddox told her audience:
"The second question is whether, far from saying No, Prime Minister, senior officials indulged Theresa May too much in pursuit of what it’s now fashionable to call 'unicorns'. For instance, the notion that technology not yet designed could easily solve the Irish border problem. That unicorn started prancing all over Parliament Square again last night.
"If you put this to senior civil servants, they do offer a riposte. They say, for one: 'we did advise the Prime Minister not to trigger Article 50 at that point.' They clearly have a case that she was trying bridge deep political divisions and they were trying to find solutions. But the results are still regrettable. One civil servant said to me: 'We really didn’t think there was a solution to coming out of the customs union without border checks. But we were under a lot of pressure to give one. So we finally did something, really on the back of a fag packet and sent it over. Tell me – just tell me – how that became Plan A.' "
Unicorns are born when underlings are put under pressure to come up with a solution that doesn't exist. But this is just one pre-condition. The other is that the person (the overling I suppose) seeking the solution has made absolutely firm and unshakeable commitments that are quite impossible to fulfill and has eventually realised there is no answer. The Unicorn comes to life in order to save the career of the overling, so he or she can later blame the lack of a practical solution on the lowly civil servant and escape relatively scot free.
So, the back of a fag packet idea has returned as Plan C or the Malthouse compromise. Alas, this unicorn will soon disappear never to be seen again.
