Recently on Tom’s Curiosity Shop, I’ve reflected on the quality of political commentary, arguing that much analysis is misleading. Though media evaluation of policy agendas and the conduct of politicians tends to be better, analysis of policy effects and the role of parties is very poor, even in the ‘quality’ press. When assessing policy records, commentators tend to mistake noise for the effects of policy interventions, research suggesting that performance metrics are mostly outside the control of politicians. For example, it’s very difficult to evaluate the economic policy records of governments; most variables which influence economic development are outside government control!

Why is so much commentary misleading? What are the implications of this? I had the pleasure of discussing these issues with Anand Menon, professor at King’s College London and Director of the UK in a Changing Europe thinktank. Anand is one of the UK’s best known academic commentators, regularly appearing in the UK media. As Director of UK in a Changing Europe, he is famous for his rigorous and impartial analysis of Brexit.

Given his experience as an academic and commentator, Anand was the perfect guest! I hope that you enjoy our conversation. If you do, please think about subscribing to Tom’s Curiosity Shop – it’s free!

You can listen to the podcast or a transcript is below.

Tom: Hello Anand, it’s great to have you with us today. Could I start by asking whether you think that analysts and voters can accurately evaluate the effects of government policies?

Anand: With great difficulty, I think. One of the reasons it's particularly difficult at the moment is there's just so much going on. So, if you take the obvious example from a UK perspective, we left the European Union. There had been a long, quite boring debate for four years before then about the economic impact this would have. And of course, when we finally did leave, then COVID struck.

So, untangling the macro-economic impacts of Brexit from those of COVID is virtually impossible. Even at the best of times, it's hard because politics and economics are very complicated and there's a lot going on at any given time. But at the moment, it’s particularly so. I think Brexit is still the best example. People are talking about whether Brexit is impacting on the economy and it is.

But discerning what is Brexit and what is Ukraine and what is a hangover from lockdown is hideously difficult. The other thing which applies to the media but particularly to voters is that there’s quite a lot of evidence around what we call "motivated reasoning." People will interpret evidence through their own ideological lenses. So, one of the striking things, again, with regard to Brexit, though U.S. listeners will recognize this from their own politics, is that people who back Leave think the economy is doing better than people who back Remain, even when confronted with exactly the same economic data. So, there is an element of bias to our interpretation as well.

Tom: But in recent years, there’s been a quite of lot of commentary which simplifies things greatly. Rather than evaluating the influences which you identified, such commentators might attempt to blame specific events on processes like Brexit or politicians like Joe Biden or Boris Johnson. Would you therefore say that lots of commentary is misleading?Anand: I think a lot of commentary is misleading. A lot of commentary is explicitly partisan and it's important to know who you're listening to at any given moment. I remember being with a friend of mine in the United States around the time of the Democratic convention in 2016, and we were watching the commentary on Fox.

My friend turned to me and said, "My God, these people really don't like the Clintons" because Bill Clinton was in the audience and you sometimes don’t appreciate, that in the U.S., you have very partisan media where even the news commentators are sort of biased.

UK in a Changing Europe is strange, in that we're a bunch of academics who try and play the role of a think tank. My experience is, people really appreciate it if you're in a debate and say “I don't know” or "actually, we can't really tell that now." So, there is a space, I think, for doubt. But I think the reality of the media environment nowadays is certainty and clarity. It tends to get more clicks than honest lack of knowledge.

Tom: So would you say that this is what’s driving this? The desire for clicks and subscriptions?

Anand: Yeah, I think so. And I think there’s the danger of echo chambers. That if you're on the left, for example, and you produce headlines that appeal to left-wingers, they'll click on it because it's what they already think. The trick to effective commentary, I think, is to be able to bridge those divides so that both sides will listen to you. I would like to think that when members of UK in a Changing Europe go on the media, people genuinely don't know what they're about to say. I think one of the problems with public debate is, all too often, you know exactly what someone's going to say. In the U.S., there are the big partisan debates around guns or abortion or things like that. But in the UK, we have Brexit; and if you get someone on from a particular side talking about Brexit, you're pretty certain what they're going to say. And so, the debate just becomes very parochial and awfully predictable.

Tom: As an academic who does lots of media work, is it easy to get drawn into simplistic arguments and explanations?Anand: There are certain basic steps we would take to avoid it. If the BBC ring up and say, "Can you come into the studio to talk about X?", your first question is, "Is there anyone else going to be there, too?". We will always say no to being the second person in the debate. We will insist on either being the only person, as in here’s someone who's an academic who's going to comment impartially, or being the third person.

So, during the Brexit referendum, we were often the third person and the presenter would come to us and say, "Actually, is that right? Does that make sense?" There are certain tricks you can learn to avoid being forced into a corner. I mean, sometimes you get a pugnacious interviewer who will try and wrong foot you. A very, very common question that was posed to us on air during the referendum was, "How are you going to vote? or afterwards, "How did you vote?". So, you need to learn different tricks for sidestepping that one, but there are ways around it.

I suppose that the importance of politics depends on context. By context, what I mean is there are moments when you get the windows of opportunity which academics call critical junctures. In the United Kingdom, I’m pretty convinced that we're living through one of those moments. Lots of things that were inconceivable a few years ago are no longer inconceivable. For example, this morning I dug out a Financial Times editorial from just before the election of 2015. It very grudgingly said, "Yeah, you should probably vote for the coalition. We need the continuation of the same government. Not because we think they're great, but because we think Ed Miliband is obsessed with inequality."

Since then, UK political debate has become obsessed with inequality. And we're doing things that were condemned in 2015 as Marxist, when they were proposed by Ed Miliband. So, the windows of the possible have opened far, far wider than they were then. At times like that, politicians can be absolutely central to shaping outcomes and the direction of public policy. Now, that's not to deny for a moment that in the process of making a policy, experts, civil servants play a key role in some of the detailed stuff. For example, with the cost-of-living crisis, the Treasury will have off-the-shelf things that it wants to try to address.

But the decisions about whether we do it via capping prices, whether we have to tax people more to do it, whether it's a long-term mortgage on the British taxpayer, that's a political decision. And so, the broad outlines are shaped by politics, I think, particularly at times of flux like this when the traditional way of doing things is seen as bad. But equally, in periods where things are calmer and there's less change, I think there's less room for manoeuvre. Actually, one of the things we saw pre 2010 is the gap between the two political parties narrowed a lot. In terms of policy alternatives, there wasn't a lot to choose between the two.

Tom: Recently, we’ve heard a lot about Liz Truss being a Thatcherite. But looking at this from another angle, the Truss energy plan is one of the biggest government interventions in recent history! How much of a dissonance between commentary and reality do you think that there is? In lots of cases, it seems that analysts are just evaluating noise?

Anand: To an extent, and I think we're partly confronting a phenomenon that will be very recognizable to your American listeners, which is we've had a Tories leadership contest in which Liz Truss was trying to get the votes of Conservative members, and in a broad sense that's like a primary. You're talking to the party and the party tend to be, in the case of the Conservatives, to the right of the British population. Now, the question is whether, as in many American elections, a right-wing politician tacks back towards the ce...

A podcast with Anand Menon - Why is so much political commentary misleading?