If you think politics has gone crazy lately, you’re not alone. But don’t worry, there is a political solution on the horizon, a magic spell that will make all tensions and compromises disappear in a puff of smoke. All we need is a little good old fashioned common sense.
That was the gist of Kemi Badenoch’s speech earlier this week. The Tory leader was addressing issues raised by the horrific murder of Henry Nowak and the shockingly inadequate police response that has sparked civil unrest across the country. Much has been written about the tragedy itself, as well as the shameless exploitation of the family’s grief by political actors with their own agendas and gun misinformation. There are complex questions to discuss about police training and guidance, from the assumptions emergency responders make about 999 calls to how suspects are handled in high-stress situations. But that wasn’t the real problem, according to Badenoch. No, the real problem was that “common sense has gone out the window” – and could be solved by simply turning it around.
They say that good artists copy, but great artists steal. Badenoch, who mentioned “common sense” seven times in her speech, was following a well-worn path forged by predecessors in her party. Not so long ago, the Tories had an entire parliamentary faction dedicated to the cause, the far-right group Common Sense, chaired by Tory great John Hayes. that he told me once he rejected liberalism because men are “sinners,” that he maintained his belief in the divine right of kings, and that he always carried a small ornamental hedgehog with him.
As well as targeting all things ‘woke’, CSG was unapologetically pro-Brexit – a cause which relied heavily on the notion of ‘common sense’ when it rallied voters to support Leave in 2016. As Michael Gove said a decade ago, ‘this country has had enough pundits’. The common sense of the everyday man and woman, the kind of common sense that Badenoch believes will govern the British police, was enough to conclude that Brexit was sure to be a resounding success, despite warnings of a blow to our economy. And just look how it turned out.
But the undisputed champion of the notion has to be Esther McVey, who was made unofficial minister for common sense by Rishi Sunak in late 2023. There’s a lot we can learn about what those two little words mean from her speech on the subjectdelivered nine days before Sunak called a general election, he was doomed to lose disastrously. The causes she was tasked with as a minister are illuminating: pushing back on “gender ideology”, reversing net zero, scrapping HS2, turning back illegal immigration with Rwanda’s ill-fated plan, treating benefits as a “lifestyle choice” and crusading against civil servants wearing rainbow lanyards.
Depending on your personal policy, you may disagree with some of these priorities. Or you might notice that they seem eerily related to the reactionary talking points endlessly repeated in right-wing media spaces like GB News or Elon Musk’s curated X-algorithms. What they are clearly not – not now, not in May 2024 – are the “everyday concerns of ordinary people”. These would be the cost of living crisis and the state of the NHS. Rainbow ropes are pretty low on the list.
And even where the issues align with voter sentiment, it’s far from clear that the policy proposals pushed by McVey and her ideological allies fit the definition of “common sense.” The legal and ethical minefield that was the Rwandan plan, for example, cost taxpayers £700 million and displaced a total of four people, all of whom were volunteers.
But it doesn’t matter! The genius of the common sense device is that politicians don’t need to spell out exactly what they’re planning to do, let alone argue for it – because everyone likes to think they’re reasonable, so the reasonable answer must, by definition, be the one they agree with. It’s a nice sponge, suggesting a degree of ease and consensus that is often completely lacking in the political debate at hand.
Ancient philosophers might have a thing or two to say about that. The common sense view of what common sense actually means IS is itself up for debate. It dates back to Aristotle (name checked in McVey’s speech, well done), who saw it as a kind of basic innate instinct, the sixth sense that joins our other five senses and enables us to accurately perceive the world around us. This differs from the Roman notion of “communis sensus”, which is about the widespread views of the community – more universal opinion than common sense.
Neither concept fits well with today’s political quagmire. Positions that politicians often like to describe as “common sense” – whether on immigration, gender identity, the environment or policing – are far from universally held. Often, in fact, they are quite controversial. Waving the common sense stick is a shortcut, a way of dismissing inappropriate objection without actually confronting the arguments.
As for the basic definition of common sense instinct, it is comforting to think that we may have an innate power that enables us to overlook difficult questions where there are obvious trade-offs or lack of information, and simply smelt our way to the right answer. But if we could, if it were really that easy, we wouldn’t need politicians at all.
Scratch below the service of common sense solutions and you’ll often find a whole load of factors, nuances and unintended consequences that don’t fit the narrative. Badenoch has said it is reasonable for police to use stop and search powers more often on black youths in order to reduce knife crime because black men are more likely to carry knives. This may sound reasonable, but it ignores the risk of damaging trust between ethnic minority communities and police forces, which could lead to less cooperation and have a negative impact on crime reduction. The “common reason” approach to how the police should deal with disruptive protests appears to vary greatly depending on whether the protests in question are pro-Palestinian or anti-immigration.
As for the case that prompted Badenoch’s speech in the first place, it bears repeating: while it is fair to examine possible inconsistencies in the law and police guidelines, attitudes toward “identity politics” had no bearing on the killing of Henry Nowak; the officers at the scene could not have saved his life even if they had realized the situation they arrived at sooner and their confusion owes more to being lied to in a 999 call and two witnesses providing a false version of events than the race or religion of any of the people involved. The “common sense” narrative of what this tragic case is about isn’t just distorted—it’s factually incorrect. Politicians and demonstrators are reacting to how they feel about the case, rather than what actually happened. Aristotle would have thoughts.
Needless to say, the next time the common sense brigade tries to sell a solution to a political nuisance that is so blindingly obvious, only those who have no sense at all would ever challenge it, beware. Common sense politics is not about finding viable paths forward and making the case to win over their opponents. It’s a lazy polemic for people who don’t want to think too much – and I hope you won’t either.
(Further reading: John Healey’s resignation spells the end for Keir Starmer)
