2022-01-30
Some would say that the "Nudge Unit" has achieved a level of notoriety over the last two years.
The campaign of fear waged at huge public expense through the media with the objective of scaring us all into compliance with some highly questionable pandemic measures will go down in history as propaganda of the worst kind.
So it is with some surprise that I feature an article in Unherd by Simon Ruda, who claims to be a "co-founder and leading figure" of the Behavioural Insights Team (or Nudge Unit). I salute his willingness to put his experiences forward for public approbation (or brick-batting if you prefer). I hope that we can all learn from his openness.
It's an interesting article which makes many good points and that gives us some much-needed insight into the behaviours and thinking of those elites in government and the civil service who would control our way of living (for our own good of course).
Obviously you will want to make up your own mind about all that, but the one comment that I do want to make is that nowhere in this article does the word "transparency" appear.
He talks about "seeing the world through the eyes of the citizen", but without transparency, how did he propose to do that?
If there is a place in democratic government for a "Nudge Unit" (and there must be - nudging will be done openly or covertly, well or badly, but it will inevitably be done) then transparency must be the key concept upon which it is founded, otherwise there can be no democratic oversight and no democratic acceptance.
The fact that a co-founder can write a whole article on ten years of Nudge Unit history without once mentioning the word "transparency" speaks volumes.
The fact that it was all set up as the "Prime Minister's Strategy Unit" tells us that the highest office in the land either didn't appreciate the necessity for transparency in our democracy (!) or was prepared to consign our democratic accountability to the bin.
That tells me that our politics is so far gone that it is likely irretrievable in its present form.
We the people need to take it by the scruff and re-imagine it from the ground up.
2022-02-02
Laura Dodsworth on Substack publishes her letter to Mr William Wragg, MP, Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
Well worth perusing.
