This glorious term is how Ipsos head honcho describes the ability of voters to hold two contradictory opinions ("We're all going to die as a result of global warming" v "If you make me recycle I'll never vote for you again" etc) without feeling any discomfort, let alone dissonance. He was speaking at the (excellent) BBC World At One Fringe meeting yesterday evening, chaired by Franz Ferdinand's favourite interviewer, Martha Kearney, on "Is the Conservative Party in tune with voters", alongside Matthew Taylor and Oliver Letwin. The answer seemed to be "Most of them some of the time". Oliver Letwin at his best I thought, resisting the temptation to pander to the demands of the wide range of single-issue groups who dominate the audience question and answer session, including, this time, a frighteningly serious representative of some youth group or other, who warbled plaintively that young people are the solution, not the problem, so why wouldn't the Tories give her organisation lots of money (I'm paraphrasing a little).
It's always good to learn a phrase which offers respectability to what one had hitherto labelled as nothing more than yet another personal failing. I'm not sloppy in my thinking, or congenitally incapable of making up my mind, doctor - it's this cognitive polyphasia you know. Is there a pill for it? I shall certainly require some counselling.
I wonder if Conservatives are more prone to this disorder than other political adherents, given that, generally speaking, we're driven less by ideology than by a vague desire that nice things should happen to good people. If we had a set text, we would reconcile disparate views by reference to that work. I suppose that's what socialists do, or did, and it didn't make them either happier or more successful, did it? I suspect that people who demand pure intellectual coherence are the sort who imagine that human interaction can be ruled by a mechanistic algorithm governed by a faceless bureaucracy.
On the other hand, Matthew Parris argued eloquently the other day in favour of some more ideology in politics, as a check against the creeping illiberalism of the age. He convinced me while I read the article, but now I'm not so sure. In two minds, actually.
