I wonder how noisy backbenchers would cope in the hot seat

With imperfect information, the government is having to delay choices that impact our lives without being able to give the public the full workings out, writes Salma Shah

Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s motivations are being questioned (Getty)

Once we have shelter, running water and a consistent food supply, the thing we humans need most is certainty. We have spent millennia endlessly trying to form our world into predictable patterns of behaviour that we can manage and understand. The alternative would be to acknowledge the extreme chaos of the universe in which we are born. This is too much for our little human brains to comprehend, so we create narratives, rules and practices to tame what is a deeply uncertain world.

It’s one of the reasons cabinet indecision this week about further Christmas Covid restrictions is so infuriating. Many of us have been left to endlessly doom scroll on social media in order to regain a sense of control, despite it being completely counterproductive. Instead of gaining certainty, we are ingesting a diet of unchecked opinion, misinformation and agenda-driven content – a maddening combination even in normal times – that is sending us spiralling.

The government has rightly had its fair share of criticism in recent weeks. Self-inflicted incompetence is the worst kind, especially when it breaks the contract of trust with the public, but there is something that we need to understand about the current situation: no government can confidently make a definitive decision on anything. Action or indeed inaction, as is the case now, is all based on probability, which is imperfect and uncertain.