From time to time and when the tech has decided to stop co-operating, you can just try turning the blasted thing off and on again. Amazingly, that tends to work. Sadly, this approach to suboptimal performance has also become the go-to solution for the political classes. Anything from a badly run election campaign all the way through to this country’s relationship with the EU, failures big and small can now be remedied with the aid of a magic word: “reset”.
The faith now placed in this idea is, on one level, quite worrying. Entire premierships are frequently said to be undergoing a reset, as prime ministers desperately try to present themselves as looking a bit more in control of things.
But with the new year upon us, it’s time to borrow a bit of the pomposity that comes with such talk, because sometimes it’s a good idea to reboot the bits of life that haven’t been running all that smoothly. To reach for the on/off button and start again. Let’s enjoy playacting the role of our own spin-doctor as we self-govern our way to some fresh starts.