We all know how slippery politicians can be when we try to pin them down to a commitment or ask them how something went wrong. Previous red-line, 'no-ifs-or-buts' commitments turn into 'aspirations that were not met'.
The master of this was Michael Howard in his famous not-answering-the-question with Jeremy Paxman. Whoever's fault it was, it certainly was not his.
Successive Ministers have learned the technique and adopt it instinctively.
The Coalition government blamed the previous Labour government for the recession as though the American sub-prime market had not existed, and we swallowed the lie. No wonder Ministers went on and on. They were high on the drug.
Under investment in schools, the NHS, transport, housing or employment were automatically blamed on others. Schools fail to perform? Blame the teachers and try to turn the schools into academies. The NHS waiting lists getting longer? Blame the doctors and adminstrators, and make them work harder. Housing failing to deliver? Blame the local councils for holding up planning applications. And so it went on.
The really easy person to blame was Europe, those supposedly faceless bureaucrats. It was always a soft option to ignore the fact that the UK government had agreed with the majority of environmental and other standards introduced by Brussels and to blame Europe. The public would never know the difference.
We reap what we sow. Successive governments have shrugged off responsibility for under-investment in our own country and shifted the blamed onto Europe wherever possible. Is it surprising, after such a narrative, that the public turned on the apparently easy targets and ignored the beam in the government's own eye: its complete lack of honesty over who was really to blame?
