The Sketch: How ministers deploy the entire range of ambiguities
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Your support makes all the difference.If there are seven types of ambiguity in English literature there are probably more in Parliament. Here are six types; contributions for more are welcome and the best will be published.
1) The day before yesterday, the Prime Minister answered a question on Trident. Gordon Prentice had demanded a vote in Parliament on whether to proceed with the multibillion-pound undertaking. The Prime Minister seemed to agree. He said: "The decision will be taken in this parliament." When you listen more carefully, you realise he hasn't said the decision will be taken by this Parliament. "In this parliament" means "in this parliamentary term".
2) Peter Viggers asked Jack Straw what the Chancellor had meant in his speech that seemed to contradict what the Prime Minister had seemed to say about Trident. The Leader of the House said the Chancellor was merely restating the party's election manifesto. Was he? Treasury aides, apparently, had briefed a different story. Are they right? Is Jack Straw right? The ambiguity is essential for the Chancellor to keep his options open.
3) Thus Jack Straw can respond to it all by using the Third Type of Ambiguity, the closest thing to an actual lie: "No decision has been taken yet." We heard this throughout the run up to the Iraq war. The Commons Leader also said the Trident decision will be taken "with the proper respect for this House". Or, in other words, none.
4) The Liveability minister got another outing yesterday. David Heath pointed out that the Prime Minister described the Liveability brief to be keeping communities free from crime and fear, something for which the Home Secretary had hitherto been responsible. Jack Straw confirmed that the Home Secretary was still responsible for crime. The entire post and position is therefore ambiguous. The Liveability minister may be responsible for headlines about terrified, crime-ridden communities being free from the fear of crime.
5) When ministers don't know what to say they can call upon the Fifth Type of Ambiguity. That is, the use of an oligarchical language so hermetic that no one can know what it means. When a sentence starts with the words "regional spatial strategies" you can be fairly confident that what follows won't mean anything at all. But only fairly confident.
6) Then there is the forced ambiguity that depends on what the meaning of the word "is" is. A Tory minister once told a committee "the Prime Minister wants a different solution". When controversy broke, the fellow explained that he'd used the word "wants" as meaning "lacks". The Prime Minister didn't have any other solution and therefore was going ahead entirely happily with the solution everyone had happily and consensually agreed.
I'm sure you have your own favourites. I look forward to seeing them.
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