By Tony Curzon Price
When Mr Bucknell, my maths teacher as an 11 year-old, introduced me to my first paradox of induction, he may not have realised that I would still be puzzling about it 30 years later. Here is the paradox:
Dr Fisher, the Latin teacher, announces that, before the end of term next Friday (it is Monday), he will pounce an unexpected exam on the class. "Unexpected" means that the evening before, you do not know that it will occur.
Some clever clogs says: "But Sir, that is impossible. You cannot give us the exam on Friday, because on Thursday night we would know it would have to be then; you cannot give it to us on Thursday, because - since it cannot be on Friday - we would know on Wednesday night that it cannot be on Thursday and still be unexpected ... etc ... This proves you cannot give us an unexpected exam.
If you find the answer, tell not only me, but also Tony Blair, who has suffered from exactly the same reductio. He has tried to say: "I will leave before the end of my term; I need to make it unexpected, because if I don't, I become a lame duck."
So Gordon knew he could not leave the day before the election; but then not the day before that either, for he would then have taken the surprise out of it, and lame-duckness awaits; nor the day before that- the lame duck is contagious. And the induction has caught up with the present like the fuse on a cartoon stick of dynamite: the only question was whether the resolution would be that he never goes or that he goes NOW.
My money is now on NOW - or thereabouts: the world sometimes moves more slowly than logic, but rarely in a different direction from such a powerful effect.
Elsewhere: Blair's departure: what the Bloggers say.
