Rishi Sunak has dramatically announced the cancellation of a series of policies intended to get the UK to Net Zero by 2050, including taxes on eating meat and compulsory car sharing, that neither the government nor the Labour opposition had ever adopted or proposed. There’s a name for this: the Scheisskopf Strategy.
Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (1961), pp.343-4 in my paperback edition. The useless, parade-obsessed Colonel Scheisskopf has just been transferred to Special Services in Rome, and is being questioned by his new commander, General Peckem.
He began to wonder with genuine concern just what sort of shithead the Pentagon had foisted on him. “What do you know about?” he asked acidly.
“Parades,” answered Colonel Scheisskopf eagerly. “Will I be able to send out memos about parades?”
“As long as you don’t schedule any.” General Peckem returned to his chair still wearing a frown. […]
“Can I schedule parades and then call them off?”
General Peckem brightened instantly. “Why, that’s a wonderful idea! But just send out weekly announcements postponing the parades. Don’t even bother to schedule them. That would be infinitely more disconcerting.” General Peckem was blossoming spryly with cordiality again. “Yes, Scheisskopf,” he said, “I think you’ve really hit on something. After all, what combat commander could possibly quarrel with us for notifying his men that there won’t be a parade that coming Sunday? We’d be merely stating a widely known fact. But the implication is beautiful. Yes, positively beautiful. We’re implying that we could schedule a parade if we chose to.”
If life were fair, this should really be called the Peckem Strategy, but, just as Peckham’s scheme to be promoted to head of combat operations comes to fruition just as his other scheme to have combat operations subordinated to Special Services comes to fruition, leaving Scheisskopf as the overall commander, so The Scheisskopt Strategy it is.
Backing down on an unpopular policy looks weak, and at best removes some grounds for dislike rather than anything more positive, so it’s scarcely surprising that most politicians avoid doing it if they can, and do their best to attribute the original policy to someone else. Announcing the cancellation of a policy that never existed looks like a net gain, implying that they could have done this but chose not to, winning gratitude for paying attention to ‘the concerns of ordinary people’ and admiration for pragmatism without having had to take the hit to popularity from introducing it in the first place.
Further, the idea that this could have been introduced but wasn’t carries the further implication that Others, less concerned with the concerns of ordinary people and less pragmatic, might indeed do it – regardless of whether the Labour Party would have contemplated it for a moment (this current iteration? not a chance), they are forced into denials, and subtly tarred with continuing suspicion by a right-wing media that has been deploying a variant of the Scheisskopf Strategy for years, battling to save Christmas and Easter Eggs and the Last Night of the Proms from entirely imaginary cancellation threats.
It’s not a new phenomenon, but it’s time it had a decent name…
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