{"id":3265,"date":"2026-08-18T16:22:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T15:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/?p=3265"},"modified":"2026-08-18T16:22:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T15:22:46","slug":"banging-the-triangle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/?p=3265","title":{"rendered":"Banging the triangle"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Source: https:\/\/muppet.fandom.com\/wiki\/The_Grand_High_Triangle_Lover?file=3171f.jpg<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Triangulation was about the only nearly plausible justification given at school for learning trigonometry. You can estimate the height of that tree without actually climbing the tree and dropping a tape measure, you just need the distance to the tree and the angle the top of the tree makes from where you’re standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Triangulation with satnavs (measuring your distance from three satellites) narrows your position down to two points, although the one you’re using probably uses more like 10 to increase accuracy and be robust against rogue measurements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, according to Verywellmind.com<\/a><\/em>, triangulation in psychology means:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…a manipulation technique where one person involves a third party in a conflict to gain control or create division. This tactic is common in toxic relationships and among those with certain personality disorders, like narcissism and borderline personality disorder. Recognizing the signs and setting boundaries can help you protect yourself from its harmful effects.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which is where it enters our political, business and personal lives of course. In politics, former US President Bill Clinton is most closely associated with triangulation. As Nesmith and Quirk have said in their book Inside the Presidency of Bill Clinton<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this strategy, Clinton would stand firm on partisan Democratic positions when they were popular. On issues where Republican positions were more popular, however, Clinton would take advantage of the current Republican Congress\u2019s tendency to overreach: he would make major concessions from conventional Democratic policies and adopt centrist positions that would have broader support than the Republicans\u2019 offerings. By such systematic, instrumental positioning, Clinton hoped to win politically on most issues, no matter which party had the initial advantage in public opinion.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This approach was then adopted by Tony Blair with New Labour and has become pretty mainstream in politics ever since. Keir Starmer perhaps took it to new extremes with his Ming Vase strategy<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ming Vase strategy\u2019s underlying premise was that, at least in matters of high political salience, policy-making should be above all driven by perceived electoral advantage. The metaphor was that Labour should treat its prospects as precarious and fragile, and that the utmost caution and prudence must be exercised in developing policy. As the term is used here, the Ming Vase strategy can be encapsulated in terms of two broad principle, opinion alignment and power accommodation. The former held that on issues which figure prominently on the public\u2019s agenda (which of course excludes policy in many areas) policies must be adapted as closely as possible to voters\u2019 perceptions and preferences as these can be culled from focus groups. The latter stipulated eschewing as far as possible policy options that were likely to antagonise or estrange the major constellations of power in society, those organised interests which had the capacity both to influence mass opinion and to affect the capacity of a government to deliver its policies\u2014most notably the City and major corporations. The two arms of the strategy tended to be mutually reinforcing, in that both emphasised the need for circumspection, the avoidance of controversial and ambitious policies, and an accent on reassurance. We are not claiming that the Ming Vase strategy, as an operational code, was the sole determinant of decision-making behaviour, but rather that it was the weightiest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And when opinion alignment and power accommodation (ie public opinion and the views of, say, powerful business lobbies) are in conflict? Well you have to pretend to be doing one thing while doing another. And there were a whole succession of examples of Starmer not acting as most of his backbenchers had been led to expect a Labour prime minister to act and putting it down to the fiscal rules they were operating under until Andy Burnham finally put him out of his misery. But the fiscal rules have remained.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These sorts of strategies ultimately tend to come unstuck because they underestimate the voters. Most people understand that our problems aren’t easy to solve, but if you make grand pronouncements about transforming politics while constraining your room for manoeuvre within fiscal rules set to appease particular interests which you don’t come clean about, then ultimately you will be regarded as untrustworthy. As you will also fail if you pin all of societies ills<\/a> on desperate people taking their lives in their hands on small boats in the English Channel, and then find that none of those problems have disappeared but you now also have something resembling Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) patrolling the seas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Grand High Triangle Lover from Sesame Street <\/em>is always accompanied by Norman, who bangs a triangle to get the crowd’s attention for his boss. Think of Norman as a lobby journalist. The Grand High Triangle Lover likes to tell the story of how he became The Grand High Triangle Lover by managing to pull sticks from a stone and making them into a triangle. However Norman broke the big scoop that in fact his boss just found a hat with triangles on it one day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It sounds like a normal day in our politics, but these are muppets. Recognise the signs and set boundaries. Let’s not let them assume the rest of us are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Triangulation was about the only nearly plausible justification given at school for learning trigonometry. You can estimate the height of that tree without actually climbing the tree and dropping a tape measure, you just need the distance to the tree and the angle the top of the tree makes from where you’re standing. Triangulation with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3265"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3265\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3270,"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3265\/revisions\/3270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}