Simple answers

When I was a lad, there was a magic formula for the resolution of all the world’s problems. A simple mantra could be heard in all discussions of weighty topics that would settle the matter for those who were prepared to believe – “Send the SAS in, that’ll sort them out”. People with especially sharp minds would point out that by the time the public was aware of the problem the SAS was already working on it. But this didn’t seem to discourage us from repeating the mantra.

I realised the other day that I haven’t heard the mantra for a long time. Why? The last time I remember hearing it was just before the Gulf war in 1991, on a radio phone-in show. After the war came the book Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNab, I never read it; it wouldn’t interest me much. Anyway, my theory is that after this book was published the SAS lost some of its mystique, especially as it revealed that the mission was a failure (I think). Other books have come out since then to further explode the myth of the superhuman regiment. I don’t know what the effect of it was overseas. I think we were paranoid about the rest of the world learning the secrets of the regiment, which they all, of course, admired, feared and envied in equal measure. I suspect the rest of the world didn’t really notice, they were too busy admiring their own elite troops.

Now I find myself having similar expectations about Freddie Flintoff and Wayne Rooney when they take to their respective fields. There are times when these superstars seem able to do anything.

But I’m not here to write about sporting expectations. In the last year or so, I’ve noticed a new mantra that seems to go unchallenged whenever I here it aired, usually on Radio 5, because I listen all the time. (A big ‘hello’ to Rhod Sharp, in the extremely unlikely event that he’s reading) The new magic words are (drum roll please): Full public inquiry. (Or is that ‘enquiry’?)

Admittedly, a ‘full public inquiry’ doesn’t perform the same function as the SAS. But it seems that we have, somehow, taken those three magic words to heart as the means of getting to the bottom of whatever issue we’re confronted with. This is despite the fact that the ‘full public inquiry’ that brought ‘full public inquiries’ to the national consciousness (to mine, at least) was the Hutton Inquiry, with which many people were dissatisfied.

I wonder what it will take to shake our faith in the inquiry, and what will come next...