BY STEWART SLATER

Modelled on Jay Nordlinger’s “Impromptus” in National Review, I’ve written a piece (each month for the last months) which is a series of paras on various ideas:

• Twitter (X, if you’re reading this, Elon) spats follow a pattern. A says something, B fires back and A tells them to “read a book” or impugns their intelligence. This schema appears to apply no matter one’s place in the pecking order, J.D. Vance saying of the political entertainer Rory Stewart, “he has an IQ of 110 and thinks he has an IQ of 130. This…drives so much of elite failure over the last 40 years.” The Veep, I think, makes two mistakes. Rory and I overlapped decades ago at the Oxford college which sees itself as the University’s undergraduate Top Gun and even in that environment, he was seen as clever. More importantly, he assumes a direct correlation between IQ and quality of decisions. Like a lightbulb, he implies, it is either off or working at full strength. In reality, it is a measure of potential, like the top speed of a car. A Porsche can outrun a Mini, but it will not if kept in first gear or stuck in traffic.
• IQ tests are a series of independent questions, like a series of interlinked events, each answer priming us for the next. Consistency and coherence can be more important than correctness, and intelligence employed to protect them. To those who have decided Trump is a fascist, everything he does must be fascist, even not notably fascist policies such as shrinking the government. If we must pour him into a mould (and we shouldn’t), that of gangster might fit better. Canada and Mexico were told, “That’s a lovely economy you’ve got there, it would be a shame if anything happened to it”. Ukraine is treated like a shop-owner behind on his payments. Time to turn off Rise of the Nazis and put on The Godfather.
• An old boss had a useful way of circumventing this trap. At the start of the month, he would take a sheet of paper from the printer and write down his forty favourite stocks. If there was one in the list but not the portfolio, he bought it, if in the portfolio but not the list, he sold it. He knew the map was not the territory, and when it stopped working, he threw it away.
• For all the pearl-clutching that has ensued, there is nothing new in a leader acting as a don (Don?). Ancient Athens used its navy to offer “protection” at a fee to smaller states – that’s a lovely island you’ve got there…After a while, their treasure was moved to the island of Delos – just for extra security you understand- then to Athens itself. You can’t be too safe, can you? There it was used to reconstruct the Acropolis. What to you is a symbol of freedom and democracy would, to many of its contemporaries, have represented extortion and oppression.
• Vance’s thinking is seductive though. Those who think themselves clever think they should be in charge (no-one who claims to be motivated by “public service” ever decides that aim might best be realised by them being a hospital porter) and they can best use their talents by doing things. Sometimes, however, the best thing to do is to do nothing. Napoleon fought on with fatal consequences during the Russian winter because he was bored, Drake finished his game of bowls because, familiar with the tides and winds, he knew the Spanish weren’t going anywhere.
• Politicians struggle to do nothing. Action flatters their sense of purpose, and intervention signals virtue. Hence Yvette Cooper’s push to ban online knife sales—not just punishing crime, but pre-empting it, as if governance were a form of childproofing. Cupboards locked, hazards padded, every risk managed in advance. We call this paternalism, but it looks far more like maternalism.
• “Our isms are wasms” said Lord Hannan in a beautifully phrased piece of common sense, a description we of course only ascribe to ideas we agree with…
• Calling out the mistakes of others is all well and good, but I must admit, I do not do so from any Olympian heights. My chess rating follows the old market adage – it climbs the stairs and falls down the lift shaft, weeks of patient, grinding gains undone by periods when I know how to play chess, I just don’t know how to win at it. At first these were an annoyance, then a curiosity, now they just appear to be a feature. I have come to realise that sometimes, I stop thinking about my opponent and think only about my own plans. Why I do that, however, is a mystery.
• Sudoku is more amenable. Done right, by the time you reach the last square, you know enough about its structure that the whole puzzle just falls apart. Millennia ago, the story goes, a Chinese lord saw his cook carve an ox with balletic precision. Demanding an explanation, he was told that initially, his employee had thought of the animal as one hunk of muscle and had hacked away at it. Then he understood it had groups of muscle and had carved around them. Eventually he realised that there were tiny gaps between these groups and, if he slid his knife into them, the animal would just come apart. At first, he had to change his knife once a month, then just once a year. It was seventeen years since he had finally seen things for what they are, and he had never needed to change his knife once.
• Without occasional originality, tradition becomes tired. So, to keep things fresh, we shall have our first Reflections competition. One of the paragraphs above was written by ChatGPT. A prize (by which I mean a minor glow of satisfaction) to those who can spot it. Answer next month.
• Too much originality, of course, and a tradition stops being a tradition. So herewith a closing quote. From St Exupery this time: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

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Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.