OK, I make no pretenses of knowing what life is all about. But I have spent a enough time on this spinning blue ball to tell you what it is not:Life is not Cake or Death.There are nuances, shades of gray, degrees of risk, sides of a story, and more than one way to skin a cat.But try to talk to people about politics, and it always gets resolved to either “Cake or Death”.Try to talk to a politician about policy, and it always gets resolved to either “Cake or Death”.Try to talk to a Preacher about religion and our place in the Cosmos, and it always, as sure as Buddha rose on the third day and saw his shadow, gets resolved to either “Cake or Death”.And God help you if you ever have to talk money with a bean counter, because “Cake or Death” is the motto of every MBA program on the effing earth.Not following this? Fine, let me ‘splain it. Not every decision can be made so effing lead pipe simple that the only choice is a beacon to the blind, a symphony to the deaf, or hot fiery awful death. There is no intelligence in “Cake or death”. Monkeys could make the call and be a damned sight quicker about it. Offer a spider monkey some delicious bundt cake, and a ball of vipers, and see what happens. That’s right, the cake is gone and the snakes get an aversion complex. Maybe they would like some cake until they get over it?If I am forced to walk this earth surrounded by only cake picking monkeys, than so be it. Monkeys are fairly entertaining, or at least they are when you tease them. But Noooo! I have to drag this earthly bondage along to God knows what end surrounded by people that claim to be intelligent, and whose only response to a complex issue is to ask “can you give me the Cake or Death version?” AUUUUGGGGGHHHH!Hey, I like a rigged game as much as the next guy. You know, “heads I get cake, tails you lose your cake to me”. Go ahead, flip a coin. Be daring. Sport.I curse the life that is “Cake or Death”, and all that sail in her.
Johnson’s technique for dealing with problems is to let them run out of control, building to a point of sufficient crisis that delay is no longer viable. That way the choice becomes perversely easier because there are fewer options left. Wait long enough and there might be only one.That is how he has dealt with Brexit. He imagines that brinkmanship is a negotiating strategy to wring concessions out of Brussels, but in reality it is just a way to simplify the decision by eliminating options that needed time to develop. He lets procrastination do the heavy lifting. He can then tell himself (and his audience) that the final outcome, while not perfect, is the best available solution. And maybe it is. But only because it is so late in the day and all the better solutions have long since expired.It is a chaotic way to run anything: leaving it all to the last minute, relying on a critical mass of external pressure to get motivated. As a way of governing in a pandemic it is disastrous because there is no slack time between deadlines. The moment to make the tough choices is always now. The rate at which good options decay is exponential. The virus thrives on indecision. Johnson’s method is effective for one thing, though: it guarantees a sustained pitch of political drama, with the figure of the prime minister lit centre stage. It forces the nation to hang on his word, waiting for him to act, while the consequences of his inaction play out. That bathes him in an aura of power, but it is not leadership.
