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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Catherine Bennett

The price of failure: a moat for Johnson, jobs for Osborne and globetrotting for Truss

Liz Truss holds a press conference during her visit to Taipei this month.
Liz Truss holds a press conference during her visit to Taipei this month. Photograph: Wiktor Dąbkowski/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Not to deny the appeal of books and podcasts in which successful people talk inspirationally about failure, but a new, quite different school of anecdotal evidence proposes an alternative approach. What if the most effective way to deal with failure is to deny it ever happened? Or – supposing something outwardly catastrophic is perceived definitely to have occurred – to explain how this narrative merely confirms the harsh challenges confronting the targeted idealist/saviour/innocent workhorse?

“When the herd moves, it moves.” (Boris Johnson)

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