Tom Tugendhat: belief

Transcript context

…Now, in your earlier role as security minister and other posts, you’ve had access to a lot of classified information. Of course, we wouldn’t ask you to share that with us, but could you give us a sense, how much has that changed your view of the world? Is it like you learn all those things and then you say, “Oh my God, this is how the world works, I never figured that,” or do you just make marginal adjustments based on what you’ve learned? I won’t tell you any secrets, but I suppose the one secret that I can tell you that some people just won’t believe me is: Conspiracies are unbelievably difficult, and I just don’t believe in them anymore. I believe in cock-up. I believe there’s huge numbers of mistakes that happen, and people are constantly misjudging things. That, I believe in, and that leads to very, very unpredictable outcomes in some circumstances. But the conspiracies, I’m afraid, I don’t believe in them. Taiwan and South Korea rose in per capita income. They became democratic. They’re very healthy vital democracies. China did not. Many people thought it would. What’s the difference?…

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