You’ve probably heard the joke about the two hikers facing an angry bear. One changes into his running shoes, telling his confused friend: ‘I don’t need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun you.’
The gag captures the importance of differentiating between the relative and the absolute. Knowing that a tree is taller than the other trees in the forest doesn’t tell you how tall that tree is – or how big the forest is. Learning that a company is more profitable than others in its market doesn’t tell you if that company is actually doing well – they could all be failing.
This is largely how I view the first prime ministerial candidates’ debate on Channel Four on the key issue of the day: energy bills and the cost of living. None of them won. None of them have an answer good enough or big enough to meet the scale of the financial and political crisis the country is just starting to hit.
I say this as a friend of Tom Tugendhat whose performance vindicated my prediction earlier this week that the more the country sees of him, the more voters would like him. I told you so, etc etc.
But doing better than the other four candidates on the stage is relative success. Almost all the analysis and commentary about those candidates’ performance will be about the trees, not the wood.
That’s right and proper, of course. The identity of our next prime minister depends on whose results and answers are relatively better than those of their rivals. One of them just needs to outrun the bear that is the Tory membership while it mauls the other four, and the prize is theirs.
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