March 29

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Perhaps the only good thing about the Brexit delay, which seems to have been stitched up without a peep from the Brexiteers – I hope they’ve got some good ideas stashed away, but I’m not getting my hopes up – is that all the crowds of Leavers arriving in Westminster on the 29th can really have some impact.

Most people don’t yet understand that EU/international law is going to be taken by the government as trumping domestic law:

Hopefully the masses assembled at Westminster on March 29 will erupt when they realise this. But I suspect it’s going to be a fair accompli by then.

 

What is the staus of the extension?

Hector Drummond Posted on by

So supposedly the delay has been agreed. But we know nothing about the legal status of this, and the media has been hopeless in investigating it. Is it all signed off according to EU and international law? Has every country done all the consulting it needs to do with its Parliaments, and passed any necessary legislation? Do they need to? What exactly does Theresa May need to do to sign the extension and remain within UK law in doing so? How do all the conditions, and conditionals, affect the situation legally?

This — and I include the media in this — is a joke. Our PM, it seems, could sign us all into slavery by nodding her head and apparently it’s all legal and we can do nothing.

Which is worse? The WA or revoking Article 50?

Hector Drummond Posted on by

You know, I’d actually prefer a revocation of Article 50 to May’s WA. It’s May’s WA that I fear, because it’s so bad. Revoking Article 50 would be incredibly bad in its own way, of course, but it would have advantage that the country would erupt and the Conservatives and Labour and the civil service would have the shit kicked out of them. It would reveal the Establishment for what it is, and then the English lion really would awaken. And then Brexit would happen eventually anyway, this time a clean one.

I was right: May is going to use international law to delay, ignoring domestic law

Hector Drummond Posted on by

So it looks like I was right about the government taking the view that May can sign us up to an Article 50 extension despite whatever our domestic legislation says:

This needs to be challenged. If a deal with the EU has to go through Parliament, then so should any extension. Not just with a vote, not just with an SI to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act (2018), but with an Act of Parliament. May needs to be told that she has no authority to sign a delay. She has no authority from the people, or from Parliament. A legal challenge needs to happen quickly.

If May wanted a delay, that should have been sorted months ago. The problem has occurred, of course, because her deal arrived so late in the day. And that happened because she deliberately wanted it that way to frighten all the MPs who feared No Deal into voting for it. So she only has herself to blame.

 

Few have realised that May can sign us up to an extension regardless of what British law says

Hector Drummond Posted on by

A potentially nasty issue raises its head, which most people, including me, have had no clue about.

In the Hansard Society blog post I mentioned in my last post it is noted that we have two distinct exit dates in play. One is the exit date in the international treaty between the UK and the EU. The other is the exit day specified in the domestic European Union (Withdrawal) Act (EWA). But the Hansard Society post suggests that it’s the EU-UK treaty that really counts. That’s the international treaty, and international treaties take precedence over domestic law according to the Vienna Convention. Besides, the EWA is really just about making all sorts of legislative changes to UK law to allow the UK to operate independently of the EU after exit day. The dates in both of these things need to match exactly for it all to work smoothly, of course, but the two things, the UK-EU treaty and the domestic EWA, are distinct. And its the UK-EU agreement that sets the departure date, not the EWA.

Suppose then that it is not possible for Parliament to change the exit day in the EWA by 11pm on March 29, either because Parliament does not approve the relevant SI to change the date in the EWA, or because time runs out. We’ve all been assuming that that means that a No Deal Brexit happens. But does it? What if May has agreed an extension date with the EU before then? Might it be claimed that that this extension date is now, legally, the new exit day, regardless of what the EWA says? According to the Spectator, that is exactly what the government is quietly saying:

As we wait for the text of Theresa May’s letter requesting an Article 50 extension, it is worth remembering that once the UK government and the EU have agreed an extension then the UK will continue to be an EU member under international law—and international law trumps domestic law.

 

A Department for Exiting the European Union briefing note for ministers points out that the Vienna Convention declares:

 

‘”A party may not invoke the provision of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.” As a matter of EU law, it follows that in these circumstances we would remain a member state after 29 March, and the EU law consequences of that would continue to flow in the UK.’

 

What this means, in layman’s terms, is that even if parliament was prorogued or the statutory instrument trying to change the date was somehow defeated in parliament, the UK would still be regarded as an EU member under both EU and international law.

If this seems far-fetched, the Hansard Society agrees:

The date on which the UK leaves the EU is an international matter. Once the UK triggered Article 50 of the TEU, notifying the EU of its intention to leave, the date on which Brexit occurred would be determined within the UK-EU relationship and governed by the terms of Article 50.

Okay, so what are the relevant terms of Article 50?

Under TEU Article 50(3), “The (EU) Treaties shall cease to apply to the State (which has notified its intention to withdraw) … from the date of entry into force of the withdrawal agreement or, failing that, two years after the notification … unless the European Council, in agreement with the Member State concerned, unanimously decides to extend this period.” [My underlining.]

So the UK and the EU can agree to extend the period that UK stays in, by, er, agreeing just that.

In other words, the UK leaves the EU on 29 March 2019, two years after it notified the EU of its intention to leave, unless either:

  • a ratified and in-force Withdrawal Agreement with the EU provides for a coming-into-force date for itself other than 29 March; or
  • in the absence of a Withdrawal Agreement, the UK and the remaining 27 EU Member States agree that the EU Treaties will cease to apply to the UK on a date later than 29 March. [My underlining.]

Thus the extension comes into force simply by the UK and the EU agreeing it (and there being a definite end date to it rather than something open-ended).

So the key issue here is, what decides whether an agreement has been reached between the UK and the EU to extend the Article 50 process and thus keep Britain in for a longer period? What decides whether the UK has agreed an extension? Is it just Theresa May agreeing it at the EC meeting on Thursday? Or does the date have to be approved by the UK Parliament? I’m no expert on this, but past history tells us that the UK has signed up to all sorts of international treaties by the PM agreeing, without bothering to get agreement from Parliament about it.

So I have a horrible feeling that this is where the real stitch up may lie. Everyone’s attention is elsewhere: on Bercow’s intervention, how long a delay May will ask for, whether all the EC countries will agree an extension, and on whether the relevant SI can be passed by March 29. Few have noticed that May could (if this reasoning is correct) get an extension all by herself, regardless of what happens with domestic UK law, or Parliament (and assuming none of the EC countries disagree, not that that’s a given).

But, you may say, if that were true, then why couldn’t May just sign her Withdrawal Agreement with the EU without bothering to get it through Parliament? There is a difference with that, though, and that is that as British PM she is subject to British law, and the Gina Miller case resulted in the British courts saying that she can’t sign us up to that. But there’s no such British law preventing her from signing us up to an extension. So she could.

It may be that she wouldn’t actually sign on the dotted line with the EU until she had got approval from a Parliamentary vote. Maybe, but what Parliamentary vote would that be? As far as she’s concerned, she’s already been given permission by Parliament to get an extension with last week’s vote.

There is, of course, a vote scheduled next week on the SI to change the exit date in the EWA, and that may seem to everyone to be the relevant vote, but as I’ve been saying, the EWA does not set the exit day. The EWA only concerns getting our law to fall into place with the real exit day which is in reality determined by the UK-EU agreement. Don’t put it past May to pull out of her hat at the last minute the claim that the extension has already been agreed, and Parliament can’t now stop it. The quote from the Spectator suggests that this is the plan. It would be incredibly underhanded, of course, but that’s how May and her team have been playing for the last three years.

What needs to happen is that Cabinet, Parliament, and anyone with any power or influence needs to demand of May that she does not sign anything with the EU regarding an extension unless she can get Parliamentary approval for it next week. She can get an agreement in principle, subject to a Parliamentary vote in time, but she cannot sign anything. But it doesn’t look likely that this will happen, because hardly anyone realises that this threat exists.

Update: A short delay isn’t necessarily a problem, though:

Update: I think the idea is that in the scenario where the SI doesn’t pass by Friday 29th, but she’s signed the extension before then having got Cabinet or parliament ‘approval’, she’ll say the SI will just have to be passed late because the extension is already law.

Getting the SI through before March 29

Hector Drummond Posted on by

I’ve finally found something authoritative on the use of a Statutory Instrument (as opposed to a new Act of Parliament) to change the Brexit date. It’s from the Hansard Society blog. It’s all very complicated, but the short version seems to be that as long as all goes to plan and Parliament votes for it then the government should be able to get it through in time.

However, given the steps outlined above, the process could be accelerated. We see no insuperable procedural obstacle to proceedings on the ‘exit day’ SI being completed by 29 March if the draft SI were laid, for example, on Friday 22 or Monday 25 March.

But there are still possible banana skins, for example, if the EU cannot agree with May until after Monday 25th over when the exit date should be. Barnier, for instance, is warning May that there may be no extension without ‘more clarity’ (yes, that old one), but you don’t know how much of this is just theatre, or to give May an excuse to go for a long delay to kill off Brexit.

Another possible banana skin is this:

Getting a full Act, rather than an SI, through Parliament in five-six days seems unlikely, to say the least. It took six days just for the original European Union (Withdrawal) Act (EWA) to go from being approved by Parliament to getting Royal Assent and becoming law.

Anyway, legal action concerning this issue could possibly derail the process for long enough to prevent the SI getting through, although it seems a long shot at the moment.

Interestingly, the Hansard Society post notes that the EWA did allow for an SI to be used to adjust the date. That doesn’t mean for sure that an SI will do the job, though, as wider issues (such as those alluded to by Jackson) may mean that an Act is required. But it is interesting to note that this was an amendment to the Act made in response to machinations by one O. Letwin:

at committee stage during passage of the Bill in December 2017, the government successfully moved two amendments: …

 

one, moved as a compromise after an initiative from the government backbencher Sir Oliver Letwin MP, to give ministers a delegated power to use an SI to amend the definition of ‘exit day’ in the Act, “to ensure that the day and time specified in the definition are the day and time that the Treaties are to cease to apply to the United Kingdom” if “the day or time on or at which the Treaties are to cease to apply to the United Kingdom in accordance with Article 50(3) of the Treaty on European Union is different” from the definition of ‘exit day’ in the Act (i.e. 29 March at 11pm) (amendment 400, agreed without division, now Section 20(4) of the Act).

What a far-sighted and cunning Remainer that O. Letwin was.

Here comes a new tactic to stop Brexit

Hector Drummond Posted on by

This one is unbelievable. According to The Spectator:

As we wait for the text of Theresa May’s letter requesting an Article 50 extension, it is worth remembering that once the UK government and the EU have agreed an extension then the UK will continue to be an EU member under international law—and international law trumps domestic law.

 

A Department for Exiting the European Union briefing note for ministers points out that the Vienna Convention declares:

 

‘”A party may not invoke the provision of its internal law as justification for its failure to perform a treaty.” As a matter of EU law, it follows that in these circumstances we would remain a member state after 29 March, and the EU law consequences of that would continue to flow in the UK.’

 

What this means, in layman’s terms, is that even if parliament was prorogued or the statutory instrument trying to change the date was somehow defeated in parliament, the UK would still be regarded as an EU member under both EU and international law.

So a treaty is anything the government agrees with another country, even if what was agreed has no Act of Parliament behind it, not even a Parliamentary vote, and no public majority? Theresa May could sell every one of us into the white slave trade, and there’s nothing we can do about it?

They’ll use anything to stop Brexit, and will see the world burn before it happens.

I’ll be happy if it’s just the Conservative Party that burns. Burn the party to the ground.

The ‘direct vote for an early election’ option

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Further to my post this morning on whether No Deal will win by time-out, and the inability of a no-confidence vote to stop the government putting in a Statutory Instrument to delay Brexit, another option is a direct Parliamentary vote for an early election, which requires a two-thirds majority in Parliament. But I’m not sure the ERG could get the numbers for that. With 650 MPs they’d need to get 417 votes. Supposing all of Labour, the SNP, and the Lib Dems voted for it, and some but not all of the Independents and minor parties, they’d still need around 120 Conservative and DUP MPs to vote for it, and that seems unlikely.

Another problem is that according to this Parliamentary source (see p. 9), after such a vote passes, the Queen must set a date for the election, and Parliament is dissolved 25 days before that date. But I don’t know what decides when and how the Queen makes a date. If she takes a few days to make a decision – no doubt having her arm twisted by the government – then that gives May the opportunity to get the delay SI through. Or if the date is set more than 25 days in advance, that gives Parliament a few more days to vote the SI through before Parliament is dissolved.

Continuing to legislate on important matters of state after an early election has been called is, of course, hardly in the spirit of Parliament, but unfortunately the spirit of Parliament is now dead.

So this move is not really a solution.

Will No Deal win by time-out?

Hector Drummond Posted on by

So this is how it seems things stand to me. I’m not sure this is all completely right, so feel free to correct me, or take issue with any of it. (I don’t claim to be an expert on British Parliamentary procedure.)

The media, I note, have failed to do any serious research on this matter, even though the country’s future depends on it.

The European Union (Withdrawal) Act (EWA), passed in 2018, sets down in British law 11pm on March 29 as the time the UK leaves the EU. This ‘exit day’ cannot be changed by Parliament simply voting to change it. It cannot even be changed by the UK and the EU agreeing to extend the Article 50 process. It can only be changed, assuming the EU has agreed a delay with the UK, by a Statutory Instrument to modify the EWA that would have to go through the Commons and the Lords. (I don’t know if anything else is required on the EU side, but I’m assuming not.) An SI allows primary legislation – in this case the EWA mentioned above – to be modified, without having to go through all the procedures that primary legislation (the Act) requires.

There are currently nine possible sitting days left before 11pm on March 29. Is that enough time to pass the Statutory Instrument through both houses? I don’t know, but I’m presuming that won’t be easy. Apparently government lawyers have already started drafting it.

But as yet there is no agreement with the EU. Assuming that even the government isn’t going to try to pass legislation that changes the exit day to something open-ended before any agreement with the EU is reached, the relevant SI will have to wait until an agreement with the EU is reached. When would such an agreement happen? The EC (Tusk, Junker and the heads of state) is meeting this Thursday, the 21st, to discuss (amongst other matters) Brexit, so it’s possible that an agreement could be reached that day. That’s the suspicion amongst those who think that stitch-up is afoot.

That would leave six days to pass the SI and have the exit date legally changed, which would enable the delay. That doesn’t seem like a lot of time to get it through both Houses. But SI don’t need the sort of Royal Assent that Acts do. (It would really scupper things if it did – with the EWA there was six days between Parliament passing the Act and the Queen ratifying it.) I think the Queen possibly may have the power to do stop the SI if she really wanted to, but after a lifetime of her not ever getting involved in power, I don’t hold out much hope of that.

But the government only gets six days if a delay is agreed this Thursday (and assuming they can get then it to Parliament by Friday, which I don’t think they can actually do). But it’s not a foregone conclusion that an agreement will be reached on Thursday. Although I expect the EU countries will do what they’re told by Junker and Tusk – because the EU rules Europe now, not any of the national leaders – there might be some quibbling about it, which will take away some days. Every day of quibbling is one day less for the UK government to get its SI through.

One country might demand X, one might demand Y. The UK will have to consider whether to accept these, or stand firm. The EC may demand more clarity on why an extension is to be granted. There also may be a heavy financial price exacted by the EU for any delay, although they may now drop that if they’re desperate for it to happen. And also there may be some fighting over the length of the delay. Will all the EU really be okay with a long delay? As I said, I expect the EU commisars will call shotgun over the EU countries in regards to this, so if the EU wants a long delay, and assuming May is asking for a long delay (latest reports say she’ll ask for 9-12 months), then a long delay will be agreed. But unless the stitch-up is already in place, which it may well be, a few days could be lost, so the SI can only be presented next week.

It’s also possible that the EC will draw out the process before granting the extension in order that the extension won’t have time to pass in the British Parliament, so means that the EU can get shot of the UK (if that’s what they really want) without it seeming like they did that deliberately, and so they won’t get the blame for any No Deal problems for their counties that subsequently arise. They can reasonably blame the British for taking too long.

(There are also reports that Italy may vote against the extension, which would be great, but we can’t rely on that. But they may be able to drag out a few vital days for us with arguments.)

Presenting the SI next week is really cutting it fine. If the ERG can string out the process then time may well run out for the government, although Bercow will no doubt be doing his best to stop them (expect him to become the government’s friend again next week).

There is also the possibility of legal action against the government if they seek a long delay to Brexit, as there is no Act of Parliament authorizing May to ask for that. There hasn’t even been a Parliamentary vote on it — the vote last week said nothing about a long delay (and was mainly concerned with getting a delay if May’s WA passed in order for the necessary legislation enabling the WA to be enacted — it didn’t specify any other reason). However, in practice legal action is unlikely to slow things down, although it would be worth a try by any Brexiteer with deep pockets.

So let us assume that a vote goes ahead next week concerning the proposed long delay to the exit day. There is no guarantee that all of Labour will vote for that. Labour have mostly been keeping out of it and letting the Conservatives cop all the flak, making them and not Labour own the WA, but a crunch vote on a long delay will put them in the spotlight. Voting for a long delay will be seen, reasonably enough, as an attempt to stymie Brexit. And that’s not something the old Labour Eurosceptics in charge of the party want to be seen doing, or even want to do. It’s not something the Labour MPs in Leave-voting constituencies want to be seen doing, especially as an early election may well be looming.

So while there may be a majority of Remainers and anti-No Dealers in Parliament, getting a majority of MPs to vote for a long delay will not be easy. Both Labour and the Conservatives could be destroyed by voting for it. The country would erupt. An early election would probably be held, and those who voted for the delay would mostly lose their seats.

So while voting against a delay (which would basically be voting for No Deal) might seem like a tough ask for a lot of MPs who personally don’t want it, and who are frightened that the country is not ready for a WTO exit, voting for a long delay would be a nuclear option. Totally nuclear. Forget the vote last week against No Deal. That was non-binding, and in a different context, where the WA was still in play (which would have been the main reason for a delay), and it said nothing about a long delay, and those who voted for it knew that it was still ultimately up to the government to ask and negotiate a delay, which would deflect some of the flak from Parliament. But this vote would be the real thing. This would be a direct vote on the future of Brexit, and all the MPs will be horribly exposed by it.

Not that I’m confident that a long delay would be rejected by the Commons, but it’s no foregone conclusion. Although given the treachery displayed by MPs recently, most of whom are loyal the EU rather than the UK and its people, we’d be right to be worried.

You might think that the Lords are in an easier position, as they’re not subject to democratic votes and so can more easily ignore the people, but in fact the Lords would be in a very precarious position. If the House of Lords votes for a long delay it may have signed its own death warrant. At the very least it could see major reforms coming its way, and quite possibly total abolishment, and replacement by an elected upper chamber.

Another option open to Brexiteers is to vote with Labour in a no-confidence motion, or at least to abstain. Some ERG members have reportedly hinted at that. If the government loses a vote of no-confidence then there is 14 days in which MPs can try to find a majority grouping, otherwise an early election campaign will start after the 14 days.

However, while I previously thought that this was an option that would stop May in her tracks, I now find that this isn’t so:

The Act provides no guidance on what occurs during the 14-day period following an Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 no confidence motion being passed. As the Clerk of the House told us, what occurs during this period is a matter politics, and not of procedure. Evidence to this inquiry and the Cabinet Manual set out that the Prime Minister would be expected to continue in office unless someone else could command the confidence of the House. If someone else could command the confidence of the House, the Prime Minster would be expected to resign (p. 3).

So it looks like it isn’t the case that everything would be suspended for 14 days. The PM could still continue to operate during that time unless someone else wins another vote of confidence, and the only person who could possibly win such a vote would be Jeremy Corbyn, and who knows what he would do?

There are also reports that ERG members are threatening to stop voting for government legislation if the PM tried to get the EU to agree a long delay. So that’s another possible tactic.

The final piece of the jigsaw is the public. Will we see some of the threatened direct action, like a lorry blockade, take place, or is that just talk? The more of that sort of thing the better, because it will remind MPs of the anger that is out there at their now-blatant attempts to stop Brexit.

Update: According to Wikipedia there are committees who will look at Statutory Instruments, although I don’t know how much this will delay things for.

There’s also some more on SIs here at the UK Parliament website, but it doesn’t give me a sense of how quickly the government could get the Brexit delay SI through.

 

 

The Biscuit Factory Vol. I: Days of Wine and Cheese serialisation. Part 62

Hector Drummond Posted on by

2001-02

Semester 2

Week 7

Thursday

 

I should have taken my car, Ren thinks. I took the train because I wanted to work on a paper on the way to the conference. Which didn’t happen, because even though he was in the specially designated ‘quiet carriage’, there were still people loudly talking to each other, and shouting into mobile phones. There was, of course, no-one policing the quiet carriage, and even if he’d complained to the ticket inspector when he made one of his pass-throughs the likelihood was that the inspector would do nothing, or nothing more than say ‘Quiet please’, and Ren would have achieved nothing other than earning the enmity of the creeps making all the noise. Now he’s in the quiet carriage on the way back home from the conference, and the situation is much the same.

Sitting a noisy quiet carriage is so much worse than sitting in a noisy normal carriage, Ren thinks, because when you’re in a noisy normal carriage, although the noise might be annoying, you don’t feel that those making it are doing anything wrong, other than being impolite. But when you’re in a noisy quiet carriage, where there are people sitting next to ‘This is a quiet carriage’ signs and making a lot of noise despite that, you start having thoughts about boxing ears and flattening a few noses. ‘Makes my blood boil,’ he mouths to himself in a Cockney taxi-driving voice.

He’s been in this situation before. Asking the miscreants if they could please be quiet as this is a quiet carriage, no matter how politely you ask, only gets them angry. He’s been threatened before for this by a group of shell-suit-wearing chavs, straight out of central casting. (Central casting is pretty busy in Britain these days.) He reckoned at the time that he could have taken them all on, the sallow one, the weaselly one, the fat one, the even fatter shouty woman with dreadlocks, but he knew that CCTV footage of him brawling with trevs on a train would not be good for his career. So he has to sit there silently fuming. Quiet carriages may work in some of the more genteel parts of the country, assuming they are any of those places left. But in most of the the country they only make things worse.

And now they’re all stuck in the sidings and the freight yards. He’d been counting down the minutes until he could get away from these braying donkeys who broadcast every intricate detail of their trivial daily business, when the train started to get slower and slower as it came in towards the station. And now they’ve been trapped together for forty minutes, looking at the graffiti. And still the phone calls go on. One woman seems to have called every single person she knows to inform them that she is stuck just outside Grayvington Station. Unless she’s on her way to a big birthday party that all her friends have organised for her, Ren’s not sure why all of them need to know this. (And if they’re all going to the party, one phone call should suffice.) Ren has brought along Material Beings by van Inwagen, which was intended to be light reading that he doesn’t have to take too seriously, but he should have brought a novel, or some history, because he can’t concentrate well enough with all this noise to get anywhere with it.

He has a look through his briefcase for something else he can read that will require less concentration. He’s brought along a few philosophy papers from his ‘forever pile’ – that is, a pile of reading to do that’s gotten so big it can never be gotten through in one human lifetime – but he’s not in the mood for any of them. He’s also brought along some old copies of Sausage Gravy which he found in the library, but if he’s reading those then it will be even harder to get the noisy people to take him seriously. He decides it’s time to look at some of Lucius Birch’s social psych papers that he also brought, as he’s been meaning to read them as part of his investigation into Lucius’s work. He picks one out called ‘Dirt and Discrimination: Some Unconscious Biases That Drive Behaviour’, co-written with Tobias Woolley from Lilydale University. Ren remembers this paper being reported on in the national and international media at the time. He starts to read it, and is amused at the coincidence – the research takes place in the Grayvington Railway Station, the very station that his train is currently starting to inch towards.

In the article Lucius describes how he set up some experiments at the station. In the first stage of the experiments the station was put into a deliberately messy state: the floors were made dirty, litter was dumped around the place, and the windows had dirt smeared on them. Some of the signs were temporarily replaced with copies that had been broken. In the second stage the same experiments were carried out after the station had been put back to normal.

The studies involved volunteer participants being given a short murder mystery story to read. They were then asked to say who they think committed the murder. More people picked out the black character as the murderer when the station was dirty than when it was clean. The participants were then asked to rate the trustworthiness of various strangers in photos. When the station was unclean the perceived trustworthiness of all the black people in the photos went down compared to when the station was clean, and vice versa for the white people in the photos. This applied to almost every participant in the study, even the black people.

Lucius claimed that this study shows that in virtually every mind black people are unconsciously associated with dirt, crime and slovenliness, and thus that we are all unconsciously racist. This applies even to people who aren’t consciously racist. It even applies to black people themselves. The study also supposedly shows that when there is disorder we ‘fall back on’ stereotypes.

The article is noticeably thin. Not only is it short, it doesn’t have much argument backing up these claims, or much on the logic that supposedly links the claims. But, Ren concedes, that’s what non-philosophy papers are usually like. Under-argued. And poorly argued.

The response rate of the participants who were asked at the station to take part is eighty-five per cent, which seems abnormally high to Ren. You’d think it would be more like fifteen per cent. Would most train passengers getting off a train, most with places to get to, really agree to take part in a somewhat lengthy and involved study? He knows that thirty-five to forty per cent is considered a good response rate for a standard survey, so eighty-five per cent in this case seems very high. Still, he’s not a field psychologist, so maybe it’s not so unusual. In any case it’s no basis for thinking that Lucius has fiddled his data.

He also notices that there is a lot of simplistic talk of ‘stereotyping’, as though stereotyping is a one-dimensional, monolithic trait that can be dialled up or down as a whole. As though anyone who starts thinking that all capitalists are rapacious money-gougers will automatically start thinking of all musicians as drug-taking weirdos. There may be someone who thinks both these things, but there’s no guarantee that just because one stereotype gets cranked up, all the others follow. And different people will have different stereotypes in their head. (And how does a stereotype differ from a well-established generalisation anyway?) It’s very poor that a publication with World Science’s stellar reputation should have let Lucius get away with such cartoonish material. But then Ren’s science friends have been telling him for a while now that World Science is going downhill.

But none of this proves anything. Ren looks at the graphs, and looks at what data there is, but it’s pretty sparse. There’s not much there to be going on with. Maybe an experienced statistician could still find something dubious in there, but there’s nothing for him to work with.

There’s also no information at all about how these experiments were carried out, and no acknowledgement of those who helped run them. That’s not entirely surprising, because science journals as prestigious as World Science want to fit lots of articles into every issue, so they want their articles to be free of all excess, unnecessary material, so it’s hard to get that sort of thing in even if you want to. But it means that he doesn’t even know whether Lucius’s collaborator Tobias helped out with running the studies, or did them all, or whether he just did some analysis.

He can’t just ask the guy, because that might set alarm bells ringing prematurely. Is this other guy in on the fiddling, assuming there was fiddling? You might assume so, but then it would suit Lucius to find someone naive who has a spotless reputation to publish with, because that would help to deflect any suspicion. All Lucius would have to do is to say that he’ll run the study, and the other guy just has to help with the analysis. So the collaborator might have no clue as to what’s really going on – he’s a collaborator, but not in the French sense. Lucius need only nudge a few figures in the right direction, and then he can send them off to his patsy.

Ren can’t wait to get back to his office so he can get on the internet to look Tobias Woolley up. If only his attempt at creating a mobile internet connection had worked – he’d tried to create this by getting a laptop and jury-rigging a connection to his mobile phone, but the connection was too slow to even download his e-mail, let alone browse the internet. Browsing on the train is going to have to wait a few years.

Ten minutes later the train has finally arrived at the platform. As he’s walking through the gates he gets an idea – he could talk to the staff at the station about Lucius’s study, and pretend he’s going to do something similar. Then he can ask them about how Lucius did his study, and who was involved. He could say he’s doing ‘experimental philosophy’, something there’s been talk of recently.

He talks to one of the security guards, who takes him to the general manager’s office. After a ten-minute wait she shows him in.

‘Thanks for seeing me,’ he says. ‘I’m a lecturer at the University, and I was wondering whether the station would be interested in hosting another psychology-style experiment.’

The manager looks puzzled. ‘What do you mean, another experiment?’

‘The station hosted a psychology experiment done two to three years ago by Doctor, now Professor, Lucius Birch. He asked questions of volunteer subjects when the station was dirty, and then when it was clean.’

‘Dirty?’

‘The place was made dirty for some questions, then it was cleaned up for later questions.’

‘Nothing like that has ever taken place here.’

‘Perhaps you weren’t here at this point.’

‘I’ve been in charge for five years. You say this happened two to three years ago?’

‘Well, perhaps you were away at the time.’

‘Nothing like that would happen without me knowing about it. Is that the article? Let me see it.’

She has a scan through the paper that Ren passes her. ‘No way did this happen here. Has he changed the name of the station for some reason?’

‘No.’

‘Well, I don’t know what this about, but this just didn’t happen.’

‘Perhaps the studies happened more than five years ago, and Lucius sat on the data for a while before publishing it.’

‘No. If that had ever happened I would have heard about it.’

‘You’re definite about this.’

‘Absolutely definite. I don’t know what this guy is playing at, but this does not describe anything that took place at Grayvington Train Station.’

‘Right.’

‘Shouldn’t there be a date in there saying when the studies took place?’

‘There aren’t any dates listed.’

‘Really? This is supposed to be science, and there’s no date? Does it at least say the year?’

‘No, that’s not listed.’

‘Science must have changed since I was a girl. Then it was all about precision, and listing relevant factors. I liked all that. That’s why I’m good at running a train station. Dates and times are important here.’

‘Okay, well, what I should do then is go and see Lucius and ask him what’s going on.’

‘I think you should.’

‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time.’

‘Is this a psychology experiment you’re doing on me now?’

‘No, it isn’t.’

‘But you’d have to say that, wouldn’t you, if you were. How do I know you’re telling the truth?’

‘We’re not allowed to do things like that. There are ethics forms to fill in. Funding depends on it.’ According to Miles, anyway. ‘Any experiments that involve deception have to involve telling the subjects at the end of the experiment what has happened, and what was being tested.’

‘But what if this isn’t the end of the experiment?’

‘It is.’

‘You just said it wasn’t an experiment. Now you’re saying it is.’

‘No, I mean, if it was an experiment, this would be the end, where we part ways. I wouldn’t be allowed to pull the wool over your eyes at this point if it was an experiment.’

‘That’s if you’re telling the truth.’

‘You can go on the internet and look up psychology ethics. A department that did anything like that would be in big trouble and would risk getting its funding pulled.’

‘But what if all those webpages have been planted… It’s all right, I’m just yanking your chain. You go and have a word to your Professor, and ask him what’s he’s playing at. Perhaps he’s doing an experiment on you.’

‘Perhaps he’s doing an experiment on a lot of people. Anyway, thanks for your time.’

‘No problemo.’

On the bus home Ren digests what has just happened. He suspected that Lucius had been fiddling his data, but he never dreamed that he’d be so shameless as to just make whole studies up. But that looks like what he’s done. Is there an alternative, innocent explanation? He can’t assume at this point that there isn’t. Maybe a study was done, and the general manager somehow didn’t know about it. He can’t challenge Lucius at this stage. He’s an arrogant man, hungry for power and advancement. (Miles reckons he’s now angling for a Professorship at Oxford or Cambridge, or London.) If Ren asks him about the study he’ll try to brazen it out, and he may succeed. And then he’ll start covering his other tracks too. More evidence is needed before he goes blundering in making serious allegations.

Then something else strikes him, something that has been niggling at his unconscious but which he’s now in a position to see more clearly. A lot of Lucius’s papers involved studies that were done at Lancedown University, the place that Lucius was at before he came to Grayvington, even though at the time of these papers Lucius had been at Grayvington for a few years. So Lucius was going back to his old place to carry out his studies. That isn’t suspicious in itself, he’s presumably got good contacts there, and they’re presumably happy to have him come back to do some work, as it reflects well on them. But no-one from Lancedown University is listed on the papers as a co-author. He gets some papers out again to check. Yes, no-one from Lancedown is listed on any of the papers Lucius has where the studies were done at Lancedown University. That’s very strange. Some are by Lucius only, some by Lucius and Tobias, and one is by Lucius and someone else. But why would Lancedown let him come and use their facilities if none of their people were involved? Experimental facilities are usually in demand. Even empty rooms are in demand. Maybe he just hired the rooms out, for himself only. But none of the experiments described require anything much in the way of specialised facilities. He could easily have done them at Grayvington.

It’s hardly a smoking gun, and there are possible explanations. Maybe he has family in Lancedown, and he spends time there, and that makes it convenient to carry out some studies at the University. Maybe these results are all from very old studies he did at Lancedown before he moved, and he didn’t have time to analyse the data before he moved to Grayvington. There’s no dates on any of these papers listing when the studies were carried out – well done the station manager for bringing that point up. But for all he knows that’s standard practice in Psychology, although it’s pretty piss poor if it is.

Still, this aspect of Lucius’s work has increased Ren’s suspicions. If Lucius is faking studies then it’s very convenient for him that these ‘studies’ take place away from Grayvington, where no-one from Grayvington can notice that they never happened.

Bercow was a cancer deliberately placed at the heart of Parliament

Hector Drummond Posted on by

I have been worried about John Bercow for a long time. He was placed at the heart of Parliament by Labour and some Tory elitists precisely because he was a weapon for them. The power an activist Speaker wields, especially in a Parliament which doesn’t have a large majority, and especially when Parliament is full of non-democrats, is large.

He’s already corrupted the Brexit process, and will do so some more if he does not rule out May’s third vote on the grounds that it is no different to the last vote.

Second quote of the day

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Bloke on the M4 in the comments at Tim Worstall’s blog:

I want a delay because every day, every vote, the Conservatives are going to lose people who will never return. 2 years would be perfect. Give Farage a nice bit of breathing space to destroy Conservative councils up and down England and Wales. Really establish a new party of Brexit and subsequently, the right.

 

 

 

Quote of the day

Hector Drummond Posted on by

John Duckett in the comments:

Parliament rules because we give it consent through the electoral process. We gave quite clear instructions that the UK was to leave the EU. If they cannot or will not comply with those instructions then we must withdraw our consent to be governed by them. I am not advocating violence, tempting as it may seem, but a campaign of bloody mindedness and awkwardness.