Where The Back Stops

Britain lacks a getout-of-jail-free card for its vote on the Brexit deal.

- Andrew Anthony

Back in the 1950s, someone at the RAND Corporation in the United States called a particular game theory the Prisoner’s Dilemma. In this game, two prisoners are offered the chance to inform on each other or remain silent. If neither speaks, they both go down for a year. If one snitches, he goes free and the other gets three years. And if both snitch, they each serve two years.

It’s used as a model in many real-life situations that involve co-operation and conflict, partly because, like real life, it contains a series of fiendishly uncertain options involving notoriously unpredictable human motivations. The dilemma is that in going after what you want – freedom – you might end up with the very worst outcome.

Seldom has this model seemed more apposite than in the political dilemma in which the British Parliament is imprisoned. By December 12 in New Zealand, we’ll know which way bluffing, double-bluffing and triple bluffing politicians decided to play the game.