ARichTeaBiscuit: Decisions should be based on facts, but ignoring emotional factors is folly

Throughout the past few weeks and across quite a few political debates I have found myself being accused of appealing to emotion as if as legislatures we are only supposed to deal in rather cold hard facts and logic and disregard everything else as irrelevant, the phrase facts don't care about your feelings springing to mind, but should we really expect our politicians to take such an emotionless approach to politics?

I am of the opinion that it is quite impossible to expect politicians to reliably detach emotions from their decision-making process, not just because we are humans and expecting us to act like emotionless robots is harmful to our own mental health and wellbeing but because this emotion gives vibrancy and passion to statistics and facts that we should welcome into the political process.

An example of this can be seen over the single-use plastic bill introduced by the current Home Secretary. Now we understand the statistics that have been given to us over the years detailing the harmful impact that plastic pollution has had on our ecosystem over the decades, including the formation of these alarming trash islands in the ocean. But it was the shocking and rather distressing images of animals suffering on our TV screens that spurred the British people to demand change, and indeed that rallying call was one of the reasons that this bill was submitted in the first place.

Another showcase of this was during the debate surrounding B999, a piece of legislation put forward by those in the LPUK and outwardly designed to undermine the support given to cooperative businesses in the most recent budget, however, as B999 was so poorly written it was a rather simple affair to attack it from the cold area of facts, as not only did it attempt to bind future parliaments but it was written in a manner that could put roadblocks in the path of the construction of HS2 or the planned expansion of Heathrow Airport, it could prevent the short-term nationalisation of business as seen in the case of Rolls-Royce in the 1970s and it could risk future attempts to help British industry by preventing a buy British scheme during future infrastructure projects such as Crossrail for the North.

In the course of this parliament debate and afterwards in the press I focused on the factual argument against B999, namely that the short-term nationalisation of Rolls-Royce allowed them to continue the development of the Rolls-Royce RB211 engine which not only led to thousands of jobs being saved but also resulted in Rolls-Royce and the United Kingdom becoming a world leader in the aviation sector, a title that it continues to hold today.

Yet we shouldn't also be afraid to delve into the emotional side of the argument here. As I pointed out earlier the decision to nationalise Rolls-Royce led to thousands of jobs being saved. Just how many households across the country were saved because they didn't lose out on a vital breadwinner during a rather turbulent time in our history? Just how many aspiring engineers that would've been discouraged from studying the field of engineering or would've found it incredibly hard to find employment in their sector are now at the forefront of our engineering sector today, and how many people have been inspired to start their own engineering journey because our aviation sector is still strong?

While it is rather easy for us to calculate the positive impact that the continued survival of Rolls-Royce has had on the aviation sector in the United Kingdom and the wider economy, as we are now a world leader in the world of aviation, it is harder to quantify the emotional impact that this decision has had on history, from the direct joy of those that found their job was secured when it looked like it could be lost or through the inspiration that our engineering sector has given people to study the field and become engineers themselves, but that doesn't mean that we should discount it from our political process, as without emotion we lost part of what makes us human, and in these times we need more empathy in parliament not less.

ARichTeaBiscuit is the Leader of the Opposition.