Outdated maps

The problem of politicians not updating their world view

Tony Blair’s recent intervention on the state of the Labour Party has launched plenty of responses. This is, thankfully, not one of those. But one point of his prompted a broader thought about how failing to update our mental models of the world undermines our politics. It exposed how a combination of motivated reasoning, cognitive dissonance, and frankly intellectual laziness conditions us to persist in certain views of the world. Failure to accept what has changed leaves us making decisions that are not informed by the present and therefore inadequate for it. It is a fundamental failure mode in our politics.

For Blair, this was obviously apparent when talking about the US. He urged Starmer to cleave closer to Trump, framing the current disputes as a “reckoning” rather than a “rupture”. In doing so, Blair seemed blind to the obvious realities. He skipped over Trump’s threats to Greenland and Canada, or his softness on Russia or disdain towards Ukraine. He paid no heed to the administration’s expressed desire to undermine liberal democracy in Europe in favour of the populist right. These arguments were not refuted or rebutted – but simply unacknowledged.

It makes sense for Blair to approach it this way. He ultimately staked his entire political reputation on Anglo-American relations, a bet that he has already lost in the court of public opinion. For America to be an unreliable ally, perhaps even an agitator, would show it all – his own legacy, the deaths of British soldiers, the damage to Iraq and the wider Middle East, to have all been for nought. It is a failure almost too weighty to contemplate, so he doesn’t. Instead, he holds to a worldview that is no longer supported by the facts.