Was David Cameron happy with his forestry policy? He wasn't; and now he has ditched it.
The Latin language distinguishes between questions expecting the answer yes, which are prefaced by "nonne", and those expecting the answer no, which begin with a "num". In the House of Commons on Wednesday Ed Miliband asked a textbook "nonne" question only to find, to his astonishment and almost everyone else's, that the answer he got was a no. Was David Cameron happy with his forestry policy? He wasn't; and now he has ditched it. Immediately headline writers all over the land reached for the time-honoured formula: government U-turn. It was, of course, but the phrase gives no hint of the elegant sweep with which the prime minister, in one fluid motion, disarmed the opposition and sliced off his environment secretary at the knees. It is time for a new phrase that conveys at least some of the elegant feint of Wednesday's almost insouciant answer. This is not about the substance of the policy, which was wrong, but merely a small footnote of admiration for the style with which it was abandoned. And a plea for some less pejorative way of describing the moment when a government realises it has got something catastrophically wrong. Mature second thoughts should never – or at least not automatically – be an occasion for shame and popular obloquy. Let us always remember the wise admonition of Emerson: "A foolish consistency," he pronounced, "is the hobgoblin of little minds." Though he may, of course, have reconsidered that later.