We all lament the ideological biases we see in governments and people. Yet ideology is the inescapable perspective through which we interpret the world. But not all perspectives are equal, and the more you can occupy and test out, the better, writes Alexis Papazoglou.

“The government’s actions are guided by ideology” is often said in a tone indicating this is an objection. The implicit meaning being “ideology is a bad guide”, so that once ideology is detected as informing a government’s actions, that’s seen as a knockdown argument. The government is acting ideologically, therefore wrongly.  This type of complaint became particularly fashionable since the start of the Covid-pandemic. The reassurances of governments around the world that they were “following the science” were met with the rebuttal that it was in fact political ideology that they were led by. Baffled by its decision to end all legal restrictions to do with Covid-19 in England, some are again accusing the U.K. government of being ideological, following the libertarian instincts of prime minister Boris Johnson, while disregarding the science.