Cheesemakers

It took me a little time to appreciate what a good chess player means by "the truth of a position". Chess is completely open, there is no hidden information. What you see on the board is surely always "true". Of course, the players are struggling with what they understand to be their future potential in the game. Or more likely, how screwed they actually are.

When The Master Game was aired in the 80s, it famously introduced player commentary to a televised chess game. As the commentary was added afterwards, it usually took the form of an internal monologue based on whatever was going through the mind of the player at the time. In the case of top Grandmasters this was often rapid move combinations, or fairly elliptical stuff to us average players.

But the reason the commentary was added was ultimately because the producers knew that humans need a narrative to understand fluid situations. That narrative doesn't have to be strictly true, and indeed can be better as fiction. But we seem to link events together best through stories.

In theory politicans tell us what they think, and we get to measure their actions later to examine any "truth". But most analysis is being replaced by journalistic narrative.

By example, take Andrew Rawnsley and his claim that Gordon Brown was a bully. He had a book to sell, and this looked like the hottest issue. The media were onto it immediately.

Almost every cabinet minister or member of Brown's team when interviewed, whether partisan or not, flatly denied he was a bully. Some thought the accusation foolish, others just refuted it plainly. Rawnsley continued to back up his own narrative with observations like "Brown is a hulking figure" as if that would change the facts.

Indeed, Brown is pretty big, and is not visually pleasing. He clearly didn't get into power by schmoozing. There were regular accusations that he put his weight about in a political sense, and Blair confirmed he was extremely difficult to work with at times - but this does not segue into stealing lunch money.

So many people were asked to verify whether he was a bully or not that eventually they simply stopped worrying about the question and just added to the narrative. "No he wasn't a bully, but once he accidentally brushed me aside in the hallway", replied one colleague.

Brown was perceived as a somewhat tragic figure, and Rawnsley's narrative helped us to understand a complex person - through a fictitious device. This is after all what satire has done from Private Eye to Spitting Images. But usually satire tries to focus on the politically relevant.

Made up narrative gets us even further down the path of politics reduced to a story about leaders. And finally just stories about stories. We have recently seen a party leader immersed in a narrative about brotherly feuds. The coalition government has already earned comparisons with a gay cowboy art house film.

Many of the stories seem Biblical in nature - or at least fairly primal. Maybe if a man or woman can be linked with a character from the good book, then what they do or think can be ignored. However boring politics actually is, "Blessed are the cheesemakers" will not help improve public understanding of governance. It just moves Parliament deeper into irrelevance.