That Russian Report, in full, in brief

We hear no evidence of Russian interference. We discuss no evidence of Russian interference. We see no evidence of Russian interference.

Dominic Cummings

Dominic Cummings is a stupid person's clever person.

That's it. That's the tweet.

The long version is, he's a stupid person's clever person because he has read some popular science and juvenile edgy libertarian blogs and can regurgitate great soundbites that impress people who have no clue what he is talking about, nor how science or technology works. 

Unfortunately, such people are in positions of power, meaning that they listen to him and think he's really great. Your average senior civil servant is also probably quite clever, but a history or PPE degree doesn't equip them to deal with him. I know he's a history graduate himself, and that makes his interests unusual. But there's no evidence that he understands enough about what he speaks (and blogs, at length) to really make use of it. His wish for more technical ability in government is quite possibly correct, but weirdos and misfits aren't the best choices here. These people would need the ability to interface with politicians and the real world beyond the wild imagination of their (typically wrong or impractical) theories. There are very many talented scientist with great technical skills, creativity, originality of thought and social skills to inform, explain, and persuade. I think that most of them would run a mile from the prospect of working in a policy unit in Whitehall. Though there are of course channels for scientific advice to inform on policy.

Actually, I really can't be bothered writing any more about this. Tedious, tedious, tedious. But I wanted to get it out there. If Cummings is the answer, then someone asked the wrong question.

I know I haven't backed up any of this with references. So sue me.

no comment

BlueSkiesResearch.org.uk: Mina olen Eesti e-resident! 🇪🇪

I believe the title of the post proclaims me to be an Estonian e-resident. jules likewise. This marks the culmination of a very straightforward on-line process which was remarkably painless right up to the moment that we had to attend the Estonian Embassy in London to pick up our identity cards in person, at which point we had to brave Britain’s creaking rail network.

The point of establishing e-residency is to be able to set up a business there, which will enable Blue Skies Research to remain seamlessly in the EU in the event of the UK ever managing to leave. Not that the latter looks very likely, but in order to collaborate on any long-term project based on EU funding we need to be able to prove that there’s a plan in place to cover the theoretical possibility. This must be one of these “Brexit bonus” things that the tories have been promising us for the past few years. Though “bonus” would usually imply some sort of gain rather than added costs and bureaucracy, not to mention the losses in corporation tax which will henceforth be paid in Estonia rather than the UK. Even for our part-time hobby business, that is likely to be several thousands, perhaps up to ten thousand pounds, per year lost to the UK indefinitely into the future. Our combined share of EU membership fees is probably under a hundred quid per year. Even the bare cost of health insurance for when we visit our colleagues there will cost more than that when we lose the EHIC. But we will apparently get blue passports and we may eventually get a new 50p piece too when they have worked out the design. Apparently they had almost finalised that a while back, but hadn't worked out what to do about the border. Boom tish. Of course they still haven't, so Bonson is just lying through his teeth every time he opens his mouth, and the same old tory voters will just lap it up cos he's such a cheeky chappy with those clever latin bons mots.

We did managed to arrange another couple of things during the two-day trip, so it wasn’t a total waste of time. And it was cheaper than expected too, due to three of the four train trips being significantly delayed to such an extent we can reclaim half of the travel costs.

My latest brexit prediction

Thought I'd better make a prediction before tomorrow's verdict: the Supreme Court will rule the matter justiciable, it will furthermore conclude that Johnson lied to the Queen, but it will not demand a specific solution such as reopening parliament or declaring that the prorogation was null and void. This option was not even discussed on the "Talking Politics" podcast I listened to over the weekend, and since they've reliably got everything else wrong about brexit for the past three years, it's a slam dunk.

No, honestly, though I do think it's a plausible outcome I wouldn't attach a very high probability to being right on this. The story of brexit has been one of unpredictable twists and turns, even if the final outcome is amply summed up in this pie chart:

And here's some more twitter fun:

They lied to you pic.twitter.com/LN5eunkjIc

— Brexit Bin 🇪🇺 🇬🇧 #FBPE #RevokeRemain (@BrexitBin) September 21, 2019

Probably takes a click to make the gifs/videos play. [Oh, the second one doesn't seem to work. That's a shame. Well, it was just a long list of brexiters pretending everything was going to be great a couple of years ago, and now pretending that they never claimed it was going to be great. Just the usual lying liars lying.]

Oh how I long for the days when a PM syphoning off 100k of public money to one of their mistresses qualified as a proper scandal. These days it barely rates a mention on the BBC, and only then after people have baited them for a day over why they haven't covered it.

Meanwhile the Labour party conference has managed to create an outcome that is even worse than anyone imagined possible, not merely sitting on the implausible brexit unicorn fence but choosing to do so through a show-of-hands vote that many think was called the wrong way or at least too close to call without a proper count. What a shambles.

At least the LibDems have got there finally. I can snark at how long it took them to get there but they are still well ahead of the other two parties.

Bracing for brexit

So, the Govt has decided to splash £100m of our money on telling us to do what it has signally failed to do for the last 3 years - get ready for brexit. Of course the main aim of this marketing campaign is really to soften up the population for the supposed inevitability of brexit at the end of October, and hoodwink them into thinking that if it "happens" then that would be the end of the matter, rather than the start of decades of negotiation, argument and recrimination over the subsequent arrangements.

I had a look at the govt site, and for a small and simple company such as BlueSkiesResearch, there are pages and pages of vague verbiage that mostly miss the point and nothing that explains whether or not we would be able to travel to the rest of the EU to work there as we did in Hamburg and Stockholm over the last few years. Probably the best strategy will be to just lie and pretend it's a holiday. Of course there's no guidance for that either but we can be fairly confident that this would be sorted out in time for our next trip (probably the EGU meeting in Vienna if any Austrian immigration officials are reading).

More consequentially, I've also applied for - and received - Estonian e-residency (jules has also applied, but a bit later so hers has not come through yet). This will enable us to establish a business over there within the EU and hopefully allow easy participation in such things as Horizon2020 and its successor funding programmes. I know the govt had promised to support existing grants but the point is to be able to apply in the future.

Of course an inevitable consequence of this - on top of the time and money wasted, which will amount to a few hundred pounds by the time it's done and dusted - is that our company will be paying corporation tax in Estonia rather than the UK. Just one more bit of pointless self-harm by the idealogues.

I've still got to go to London to pick up the id card, that's more time and money down the drain. Perhaps after visiting the Estonian Embassy I'll take a stroll along Downing Street and chuck a few petrol bombs at No 10. Only joking, I'll probably take a milkshake.

Of course the most likely outcome - as I have said consistently for over three years now - is that we actually remain in the EU after all, when this colossally stupid act of self-humiliation collapses under its own dishonesty and idiocy. In the meantime, the damage mounts up and whatever happens now, the harm will take decades to recover from.

The sociopaths have taken over the asylum

Just in case anyone was in any doubt about the nature of the swivel-eyed loons who will shortly be picking our new PM....

More Brexit

Stoat has called for another Brexit comment. I actually don't have a whole lot to add to what I said last time. It is clearly a mug's game to try to predict the day to day rollercoaster - it has been amusing to listen to podcasts which are hopelessly out of date within 24h as some previously unimaginable option is proposed or the Govt reneges on yet another promise. It has on occasion been headline news when the Govt merely reaffirms something it has already announced. And the Parliament channel has probably never before had such a large audience.

The basic reason for the short-term unpredictability is that there are 650 MPs and any number of SPADs etc forming their own alliances and opinions and making tactical decisions based on what they think may happen...no-one is voting on the direct basis of a rational preference ordering but maybe on the basis of what they think may increase the ultimate chances of the outcome they prefer, or perhaps just what will curry favour with their pals. And in some cases this may have more to do with seeing May win/lose than in anything to do with Brexit itself. Brexiters aren't even trying to be honest any more, whether in media interviews or even the House of Commons - perhaps the most impressive example (at time of writing!) of which was Brexit Secretary Steven Barclay closing Thursday's debate by imploring the House to vote for the Govt motion "in the national interest" before walking straight into the Noes lobby to vote against it. So trying to predict the short-term tactics, when motions are being won and lost by as few as 2 votes, and amendments are tricksily worded and edited and withdrawn on backroom discussions, is a bit futile.

There are lots of analogies with climate change which can be useful - we can't predict the detailed weather (though we can for about a week which is rather longer than parliament right now) but we can predict that summer will be warmer than winter and the 2050s will be hotter than the current decade. There are also lots of lying liars in the climate change debate, and most of them are on the brexit side too, which could be helpful if it wasn't obvious enough already. But there are also underlying truths that are not affected by what people say. We are warming the climate, and it still remains the case that there is no brexit that has majority support, in fact quite probably none of the brexit options would even have substantial minority support if all the potential brexits were to be considered in a multi-way vote. Debatably, remaining in the EU just about has majority support overall, it's certainly the most popular single option and quite likely more popular than any other single choice in a head-to-head vote. It seems quite plausible that we will be testing that proposition in the future. 

Parliament revoking A50 immediately is of course the best action, but on that basis it's unlikely to happen any time soon. Of the options under regular discussion, a long delay would be my pref as it gives more time for people to come round to #nobrexitatall which remains the only sensible final state of the Galton board we are currently rattling our way down. That said, another lesson to be drawn from climate change is that few people ever change their minds due to evidence. While I'm not a fan of another ref ratifying May's deal I do think it's a plausible compromise and while I've already said it's a bit pointless to predict what will happen, it does seem (today!) to be a reasonably likely pathway. I'm not very confident about which way a referendum would go - I'm sure that many people will think that May's withdrawal agreement is "getting it over with" rather than in reality just starting an indefinite period of negotiation over a future trade deal, all the while being subject to EU rules while losing all influence over them. On the other hand, so many have sworn to oppose May's deal, for all sorts of reasons, that it would be the mother of all u-turns for them to vote for it.

One advantage a referendum does have is that it would force the "I voted brexit but not for this brexit" crowd to take ownership of their decision. Also the "oh of course I voted remain but think we should leave" group would no longer be able to hide behind someone else's decision. You brexit, you own it. We'll get to see how many people actually want to leave the EU, rather than just live off the betrayal narrative. 

One of the highlights of recent days has been the abject failure of Farage's Gammonball Run aka "March to Leave".

Day two of the #MarchToLeave. 77 people including photographers. @Nigel_farage should apologise to those marchers for this farce. But of course he’s disappeared. Shameful. pic.twitter.com/I2MRNsAOR1

— Led By Donkeys (@ByDonkeys) March 17, 2019

It's truly remarkable that anyone with Farage's supposed politics skills could come up with such a guaranteed stinker of a plan. Whoever thought there would be mass support for trudging down the east coast of England for 10-20 miles per day in March, paying 50 quid for the dubious privilege of watching Farage say a few words before driving away in his bus, needs their head examined. If you want a short-term prediction from my blog, it is that this march is called off for some hastily-made-up and implausible reason before it gets to London. The optics of a small rabble of shouty old men yelling abuse at everyone they encounter, versus the good-humoured million person march of all types who will be in London next Saturday, could prove more than a little damaging to their image. Quite why the media is still in thrall to this rump of angry ignorant bigots remains a mystery to me. The BBC actually sent a reporter and cameraman for the start of the march, and put it on national TV. Perhaps they were doing auditions for the Question Time audience next week.

If May's withdrawal agreement does get through at the 3rd or 4th time of asking (because hey, MPs are allowed to change their minds on a daily basis, but the common people should know their place even if they were too young to vote back in 2016) then we will of course have a longer-term future of internecine warring within the Tories as they bicker firstly over their new leader and then in subsequent years (as the "transition" gets extended over and over again) over what sort of relationship we should have with the EU. That should take us up to, oooh, about 2030 or thereabouts, by which time most of those still around will be wondering what on earth this was all about and hopefully by then (maybe sooner with luck) we'll be ready to apply for proper EU membership, as a poorer and smaller nation, and under substantially worse conditions.

And all those who voted for this shitshow will blame someone else.

Predictions

Tim Harford says that the act of making predictions makes for better people (based on this paper). I've always enjoyed making predictions so I suppose I should be pretty wonderful by now. Hmmm...well in fairness he was only suggesting an association not a guarantee. In the hope of improving myself a little further, I offer the following:

1. Brexit won't happen (p=0.95).
2. I will run a time (just!) under 2:45 at Manchester marathon (p=0.6).
3. Jules and I will finish off the rather delayed work with Thorsten and Bjorn (p=0.95).
4. We will also submit a highly impactful paper in collaboration with many others (p=0.85).
5. 2019 will be warmer than most years this century so far (p=0.75 - not the result of any real analysis).
6. The level of CO2 in the atmosphere will increase (p=0.999).

The failure of brexit

This post is long overdue, I thought I should at least write it down before the vote on Tuesday. And now this post has been overtaken by events during its gestation, and it looks like we won't even have that vote. No matter. This isn't really going to be about the failure of the brexit process, that would be too easy. OK, just a few words about that first. It failed because the 52% who voted to leave were all promised such ridiculous and contradictory things, ranging from the Bangladeshi Caterers Associating being conned into believing they might find it easier to recruit curry house chefs by none other than Priti Patel (see how well that turned out), to Scottish fishermen believing we'd get all "our" fish back (hint: a large proportion of them have to be sold into the EU anyway as they are not eaten in the UK), the lies about more money for the NHS, the forthcoming trade deal being the "easiest in human history", to the general fabulists promising three-quarters of the Single Market (but none of those pesky foreigners) and unlimited free trade with no Customs Union, and by the way let's pretend the Irish problem doesn't exist. It was obvious from the outset that there never was an actual real brexit that would be supported by a majority, either in the country or in parliament. Moreover, there was no way we were going to build the necessary infrastructure in the time available for things that would be required by a "real" brexit like customs checkpoints, let alone replicating all the other functions that the EU currently performs for us (EURATOM being one notable example), this would be a humungous planning exercise and expense that would probably take a decade to achieve even if the govt pulled its finger out and went full steam ahead on it.

Therefore, by the time I'd had my breakfast on the morning of the 24th June 2016 I had worked out that brexit probably wasn't going to happen, and I was feeling a bit stupid that I hadn't actually realised this before the vote. I think the first time I actually wrote this on the blog was June 2017 but I'd already bored Stoat in the pub on the topic rather earlier (must have been August 2016?), and a few others besides. I shouldn't big myself up too much: I have never been 100% certain that brexit was not going to happen, and indeed there are still some mechanisms by which it could happen, but I was always quite confident that it was unlikely. Once the fantasies unraveled, the reality was never going to be attractive, and as long as there's still a way out at that point, we will probably take it.

What I'm really interested in, for the purposes of this blog post, is how and why the rest of the country hasn't allowed itself to work this out: why have we failed to analyse and understand the brexit process adequately?

Since that fateful day in 2016, there has been a rapidly growing cottage industry of experts pontificating on "which brexit" and "consequences of brexit" and "types of brexit" and "routes to brexit". Journalists have breathlessly interviewed any number of talking heads who have come out with their vacuous slogans of "brexit means brexit" and "red, white and blue brexit" and "jobs-first brexit" and...it's all just hot air. It really does seem like they have all been so firmly embedded in their own little self-referential bubble of groupthink that none of them ever stopped to consider...is this really going to happen? There has been an utter failure of the journalistic principle of holding power to account, and also an utter failure of academic research to explore possibilities, to test the boundaries of our knowledge. Instead there has been little more than non-stop regurgitation of the drivel that "brexit means brexit" and that the govt is going to "deliver a successful brexit". I wonder if, to a journalist or political scientist, the new landscape of a post-brexit world is so enticing and exciting that they have wished themselves there already?

The BBC had an official policy of "don't talk about no brexit", right up to and beyond the million-person march in London at the end of October. Humphries enjoyed sneering about the "ludicrous Peoples' Vote" when forced to mention it, though of course he sneers about most things these days. Note that the last time so many people marched together London, it was in opposition to the Iraq war. There could be a lesson there, if anyone was prepared to think about it...

Theresa May of all people took everyone by surprise when she was the first person in any position of authority to utter the words "no brexit at all" earlier this year. At which point at least half the country issued a huge sigh of relief, even though it was only intended as a scare tactic to bring the brexiters into line. Amusingly, even many of them agreed that her threatened no brexit at all was actually better than the dog's dinner she was in the process of negotiating.

And how about the academics and think-tanks? Of course some of these are nakedly political and cannot be taken seriously, but some are suppose to be independent and authoritative. Such as "The UK in a Changing Europe". (Disclaimer: I was at university with Anand Menon, who was a clever and interesting person back then too, so I'm sure he won't mind a bit of gentle criticism.) 

Watch this short video, which was published to widespread acclaim just 6 weeks ago at the end of September. In it, Anand promises that he will tell you "everything you need to know" about brexit. He even emphasises the "everything". And then proceeds to talk about different types of brexit and how they might arise. What is telling here is that he didn't discuss the possibility of Article 50 being revoked and the UK staying in the EU - this outcome simply was not in the scope of possible outcomes for him as recently as September! An impressive failure of foresight. (Even those who don't yet think it is the front-runner must surely agree it is now reasonably plausible.) If academics are not able to think the unthinkable and explore the range of possible outcomes, then I have to wonder what they are actually for. It is the political equivalent of a world in which climate scientists had determinedly ignored the possibility that CO2 might be an influence on climate, and had instead devoted themselves to arguing fruitlessly over whether the observed warming was due to the sun, or aerosols instead.

So here's my real point, and the reason for my rant. Journalists and academics, by studiously avoiding speaking truth to power and colluding with this false brexit certainty, have done a great disservice to the British public. Their unwillingness to challenge politicians on both sides has permitted an entirely fake debate about a blue Tory unicorn brexit on one side, and a red Labour unicorn brexit on the other. As a result, the miserable deal that May has produced - pretty much the only one possible, if you insist that keeping out foreigners is the top priority - seems shockingly poor to everyone. We were promised sunlit uplands, and jokers like Johnson and Rees-Mogg are still promising sunlit uplands to all and sundry with no fear of an intelligent challenge from a journalist. (Note how affronted Peter Lilley was recently when the BBC actually did produce a "fact-checker" to opine on his interview.) Meanwhile Labour promises to do the same only better, just because.  The entire Govt policy over the last two years has been nothing more than "let's get through the week and see what turns up". And when the plan falls down and we end up staying, roughly half the country will be shocked and feel betrayed, because they were told their vote would be acted on, and have been told for the past two years that their votes were being acted on, and everyone pretended that things were going full steam ahead when in fact there never was a plan, or a plausible way forward.

Well, the public were told lots of things, many of them were lies, and this was enabled by the journalists and academics not doing their jobs. Whether it is collusion, group-think, cowardice or stupidity, it has greatly damaged the country, and we will all have to suffer the consequences. I like to think that lessons may be learnt, but in all probability they will all pat each other on the back and utter meaningless aphorisms: "prediction is difficult: especially about the future". Maybe so, but I predicted it, and I was not alone in doing so.

Better post this before it's overtaken by events again :-)

The Verdict

I'm probably supposed to be doing some climate science, but that's not been top priority recently (might be different if someone was paying me to do it). Actually there is some slow progress and there will probably be something to report eventually. But it's all gone a bit boring in advance of the next CMIP experiments and IPCC report.

So, this is more politics. After the arbitration, the verdict. Not mine, but the country's. Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger. I greatly enjoyed Thursday night, starting with the exit poll that no-one really believed until the results came in more or less confirming it. The local constituency went as expected, though at least the Green candidate saved his deposit with one of the best results they obtained around the country. The adjacent LibDem fared little better. The surprises were elsewhere.

To be fair, May did warn us that if she didn't get a majority we'd face a coalition of chaos propped up with terrorist sympathisers. The only point she forgot to mention was that she'd be leading it. It seems pretty much an ideal situation, a humiliated and ineffectual Tory govt limping on for a few months until the inevitable failure of the brexit process finally puts them out of their misery. Their eagerness to jump into bed with stone age bigots really does tell us (anyone who was still wondering) what sort of people they are, and is especially poignant after having been dealt such a spanking by an increased progressive vote from the 18-24 age group. That's one way to not learn a lesson.

Most people on the mainland are pretty uninterested in NI politics, myself included, but when they start to realise quite how unpleasant the DUP are, there may be significant opposition to any alliance. It's not just a matter of being effectively the political wing of the UDA and UVF. They are also reactionary creationist homophobic climate change deniers. In fact they are so toxic that the Scottish Tories have already threatened to break away if the DUP are allowed to influence Govt policy. And if they are not, then what exactly is the nature of their alliance? It will hardly reduce tensions in NI either, where the power-sharing structures are currently struggling to survive due to an ongoing scandal that the DUP are up to their necks in. If the UK govt so blatantly allies itself to one side and re-imposes direct rule there's likely to be unrest to put it mildly. May is of course completely tone deaf to any and all concerns, as her “carry on regardless” approach shows, though she won't be able to escape from reality indefinitely. We've already seen that she can't even reshuffle her ministers.

I'm not sure that a Labour govt would have been preferable really, since then they'd have had to carry the can for brexit and the Tories would then have been able to argue that they would have made more of a success of things. Of course they cannot, the unspoken truth which has poisoned the whole political process over the last couple of years is that brexit cannot possibly succeed. It is the Kobayashi Maru of modern politics: a test that has no positive outcome, the only way to win is not to play:

“The objective of the test is not for the cadet to outfight or outplan the opponent but rather to force the cadet into a no-win situation and simply observe how he or she reacts.”

The Leave campaign was allowed to get away with saying different (and contradictory) things to different people but as soon as anyone tries to put together a coherent strategy, it is obvious that there's no good outcome. The DUP has a particularly brilliant strategy of simultaneously demanding both no special deal for NI and no hard border with the Republic. Easy to say in a manifesto, not so easy to work out what it actually means in concrete terms. So far, no-one has exactly covered themselves in glory over brexit plans - perhaps the LibDems and Greens are the closest to having a rational response - but we must remember it was the Tories, and those who voted for brexit, who created this situation. They broke it, they own it.

The desperate scramble to put together this Maydup Coalition in time for the brexit negotiations is the icing on the cake: the timing of the election is entirely the responsibility of the Tories who forced through the invocation of Article 50 immediately before calling it. They can't even replace May, there's no way they can afford the time for a leadership election now and any new leader would face the inevitable (and accurate) criticism that they had no mandate for their views. With their election campaign having been so focussed on May as the “strong and stable” leader, they seem to be stuck with her for the time being at least. Though it's obvious enough that the plots are well underway, it is only a matter of choosing the first available moment to plunge the knife.

In another installation of “what has the EU done for us” (and returning briefly to science again), they are pushing hard for all research outputs to be open access by 2020. Hooray, we (supposedly) won't be EU members by then so can hide our research behind paywalls. 

Arbitration

My reader is probably waiting with bated breath for my views on the forthcoming election. In the blue corner, Teresa “strong and stable” May (or should that be “u-turn when you want to”). In the red, Jeremy “don't mention the brother” Corbyn. In the ignored corner, Nutter and Failing and a few others.

Of course, it's all about brexit, so there hasn't been any sort of meaningful debate about this. Both tories and labour are rushing headlong for the most catastrophic outcome they can possibly engineer, and there isn't a fag-paper of difference between them on anything substantive. Corbyn promises better employment protection and May less red tape but these are not really issues of how and why we leave the EU, rather what we do afterwards. The Labour vision may be marginally more attractive but that's basically a question of what colour deck-chairs you prefer on the “Titanic Success”.

It's important to realise, there is no such thing as  a “good brexit”. The only reasonable brexit would be something functionally indistinguishable from the status quo, which both sides have ruled out. The choice is between a bad brexit, a worse brexit and a catastrophic brexit, with all the smart money on the latter. All competent experts have repeatedly pointed out the huge problems that brexit will bring, including but not limited to our European flights (there's no agreement for anything post 2019 and timetables will have to be designed well in advance of that), the operation of our nuclear industry (including such details as medical isotopes), the huge customs problem at Dover/Calais for which the infrastructure does not exist and simply cannot be built in time, the Northern Irish border which will likely spark off unification violence, the harm to our financial industry, the fact that we aren't even normal WTO members in our own right and negotiating that will take agreement from the other 162, the 759 separate agreements with 168 countries that need to be renegotiated in the remaining 661 days etc. The whole thing is idiotic nonsense and the failure of most of our politicians to say as much in plain terms is a gross dereliction of their duty.

In my opinion, the most likely outcome by some way remains a year or so of increasingly acrimonious negotiations or rather arguments, followed by a collapse of the process and long period of recrimination. This national humiliation will come at great cost of course, not just economically but also politically, culturally and socially, as we are already starting to see. Lots of people are starting to bleat about the entirely predictable consequences. I'm intensely relaxed about the poor farmers, since just about every field round here had a “Vote Leave” placard this time last year. They of all people should realise that they will reap what they have sown!

And all for what? Even though it was all about “taking back control”, no-one is prepared to make any promises about immigration anyway. For while the EU was always the convenient excuse for the large-scale immigration that govts of all stripes have encouraged over recent years, it was never actually anything more than that. They could have reduced immigration substantially had they wanted to, but they saw the obvious economic benefits of it and rather than arguing honestly in favour, passed the buck on to the EU. That is no longer possible, so we get vague ambitions which are quite clearly meant as nothing more than a dog-whistle to UKIP voters who are presumably thought to be too stupid to realise that there isn't a plan to actually do anything.

I've been enjoying the way the Tory campaign has been falling apart. “Strong and stable” has been laughed out of existence, it doesn't seem such a clever idea now to base the campaign on May's personality when it is obviously so brittle and unpleasant. Amusingly, the local election leaflet which eventually plopped through the letter box just a couple of days ago features May more centrally than the candidate himself, which should lose him some votes but I'm sure won't affect the result. As for the central conceit of May being the only person capable of negotiating brexit, if anyone seriously thinks she'll actually be PM on the day we leave the EU, I feel a wager coming on.

The only mainstream party with anything approaching a sane policy on brexit is the LibDems, so I'll be supporting them. Or rather, I would be, but they have agreed a local pact with the Greens in a neighbouring constituency (Harrogate and Knaresborough) that they won't stand here and the greens won't stand there. Think they've got the better of that bargain as H&K is at least a possible LibDem seat though not one of their top targets. So I'll be voting Green instead, the candidate seems to have made a very good impression locally (though we missed the local hustings, being in Hamburg at the time). The Greens have a very similar policy to the LibDems anyway and it wouldn't matter who stood here, the local “pig in a blue rosette” is guaranteed to be re-elected even though he was a staunch remainer this time last year.

“stop this ridiculous Brexit nonsense ever from happening”

How times have changed. It's hard to imagine anyone saying this on Any Questions 5 months ago and being met with strong applause. Is there finally some light at the end of the tunnel?

Brexishambles

So on Tuesday we will learn whether the USA is going to take the UK's crown as having the World's Most Stupid Electorate. Predictions are apparently quite close, with fivethirtyeight.com putting the odds around 2:1 at the time of writing. Colorado is a particularly close state, not that you'd know it from Boulder of course. I ran past a Trump poster on Sunday, and someone in the group I was with mentioned it was only the second one they had seen.

I've written about brexit before, and it's shocking to see how little progress has been made in the intervening 4+ months. Perhaps the most significant change is that brexit is now an official word in the Collins English dictionary, so I can use it without embarassment (I mean, without embarassment about the word - embarassment about the shambles itself is less easily cast aside).

Apart from that, we've got the unedifying and dangerous spectacle of those who called for the sovereignty of British Parliament, now denouncing this sovereignty as anti-democratic - and worse, labelling judges who upheld it with the chilling Nazi-era “Enemies of the people” slogan.

Great to see the Telegraph get in on the act too, patriotic poppy and all. And rather than supporting the independence of the judiciary, the govt response was to issue mealy-mouthed evasions about the importance of  a free press. So much for the so-called Party of Law and Order.

It's blatantly obvious that the reason May doesn't want to reveal her cunning plan to parliament is that there is no plan. What is more puzzling is how those who are supposed to be among the brightest and best minds in the country haven't yet worked out the problem, which is quite simply that there is no “good brexit”; there is no sensible way though the process of cutting ourselves off from our largest trading partners and source of much-needed labour. Yet the Three Brexiteers are still blethering on with their idiot fantasies about how we can pick and choose exactly what we want from the EU27, and they will just roll over and accept it. Economics isn't everything and no doubt there are quite a number of xenophobes who would think a recession is a price well worth paying to reduce the number of young europeans coming here, studying in our universities and/or working and paying taxes. What's more troublesome from my own point of view is the growth of anti-rational populism fed by deliberately malicious and dishonest politicians and the media.

Of course the question is not even whether brexit is a good idea or not. Brexit isn't an idea at all, it's an incoherent mishmash of contradictory ideas, connected only in that they involve some change from the status quo. The vote for brexit is the logical equivalent of voting to go out for dinner - we might all agree that my cooking isn't great but if one person thinks they've been promised a curry, another is wanting to go to a French restaurant and a third is expecting fish and chips - and all have been promised that it will be completely free, in fact they'll be paid to eat it - then there is likely to be disappointment and disagreement as a result. As the chant goes: “What do we want? Well if you didn't know why did you vote leave?” At least, that's how it should go.

Jules says (quite rightly) that I shouldn't just criticise without coming up with a solution. What would I do? Well, nothing has change my previous opinion that the only reasonable solution is to abandon the process. This will take a lot of backtracking now that May has backed herself into a corner so firmly, but the reality of the situation is that there is no plausible brexit that will actually satisfy the British public, and all options for change are substantially worse than the status quo in basically all aspects. Will this actually happen? I don't know, the betting odds give about 70% probability to article 50 being invoked next year, 30% probability to 2018 or later or not at all.

Still, at least we can all rely on the BBC to do its patriotic duty and bend over backwards when some reactionary bigot demands that they play the national anthem at every opportunity:

The Europound

Received in the post yesterday, the new currency of europounds:

It's been introduced as a means of converting us to the euro permanently, once they have converged to the same value. Which shouldn't be too long now.

(Actually, it's the tenner I won off Nick Barnes for predicting correctly that Cameron would not invoke Article 50 within a week of the referendum. Suggestions for suitable purchases are welcome in the comments.)

Oddly enough

Maybe not all that odd. 

Various bookies are taking bets on the timing of our departure from the EU. First time I checked, you could get 7/2 on Article 50 not being invoked before 2018 (ie the "2018 or later or not at all" option. Then it firmed to 3/1, then 5/2. Now 15/8. At this rate, it will soon be odds-on favourite.

We're out of Europe!

No, not a football post, nor even politics really, it's a science one for a change.

While people are debating the options for our departure from the EU over the next few years, British science is already proving itself to be well ahead of the game. We're already being widely excluded from EU grant applications, because no-one sane wants to take the risk of setting up a multi-year collaboration with a UK partner, when this partner may be pulled out at any time (and no-one would fund such a proposal when safer alternatives exist). It's all over twitter so far, and not just 3rd hand rumours of rumours - I actually know Paul who's not far away in Lancaster.

MP tells me UK academics being asked to take name off funding applications for joint research grants by European colleagues post Brexit ...

— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) June 28, 2016

Yes, have heard examples of this too. Academia hit particularly hard by this https://t.co/RBrwgX0IJ2

— Paul Young (@pjyng) June 28, 2016

Here's a beauty I can share with you: a European grant application on terrorist forensics, in which UK leads, 'derisked' by removing Brits

— Rokewood (@Rokewood) June 28, 2016

Science is one area where the UK gets a lot out of the EU - more than any other country, and far more money than we put in. Well, up to now, anyway.

We're less than a week past the vote, with no plan, no govt, no opposition, no way out, (and no prospect for any of these in the next few months) and the real impacts have already started. Well done Brexit.

Oh, sorry, it was politics after all.

Let them eat principles

Oh dear. Just had a lovely week away in the Highlands, for the first time in 20 years. Unfortunately, recent events have rather pushed that out of my mind, but hopefully jules will provide some pictures in the near future.

Before that, however, the referendum. I can't avoid the conclusion that it's a massive problem and many people have made a huge mistake in voting Leave.

Most glaringly, there is no exit plan. That was, of course, fairly obvious before the vote itself, but the full extent of the problem was perhaps not sufficiently clear to all the electorate. Various factions have suggested that we might be able to negotiate some sort of associate membership a la Norway - i.e. still pay a fee and obey the rules including freedom of movement, in exchange for access to the single market. But have no say in the rules. That's clearly a worse option than where we were before last Thursday. Alternatively, we could simply terminate the relationship, and suffer WTO trade tariffs. Like, say, Japan, or the USA, or China. It's hard to see the UK being considered a viable base for international Europe-focussed financial or manufacturing industry under those conditions, as it is presently. Some banks are already planning to move jobs.

The Irish question hasn't been addressed at all, as far as I can tell. It seems near-inevitable that Brexit will rip up the Good Friday Agreement, since that is underpinned by free movement over the border and the primacy of the European Convention on Human Rights. Sinn Feinn are already agitating for reunification, and I can't blame them at all. Even a prominent Unionist politician is openly encouraging Northern Irish to apply for Eire passports (another outcome of the GF agreement) and the Belfast PO quickly ran out of forms. The Good Friday Agreement, which successfully drew a line under 100 years of terrorism and violence in Northern Ireland and the mainland UK, was the one remarkable achievement of an otherwise unremarkable Major administration and it's a great shame to discard it so casually and with so little forethought. I'd think the best outcome we could hope for there would be a relatively straightforward and peaceful reunification process for Ireland as a whole, but there will be a whole lot of unhappy people whatever happens, and the peace there was fairly fragile in the first place.

Scotland has a more straightforward position. If Sturgeon can get pre-agreement on some reasonable EU membership deal (which seems to be on the cards), then the second referendum for independence will be a shoo-in. The pro-EU vote north of the border last week was far stronger than the pro-UK vote was last year, and it's inevitable that a lot of the no voters from last time (when the UK was firmly in the UK, and an independent Scotland would have had no easy route to EU membership) will change sides now.

Not all Brexiteers are ignorant racist bigots, of course. But their votes have provided support to ignorant racist bigots who are already demonstrating in cities with hate slogans and chants, and distributing hate literature (not just according to the Guardian, but the Indy too). The intelligent, informed Leave voters (they do exist, we've met a few) seem convinced that "sovereignty" is the answer to just about everything. I'll be ok of course, I've not got a job to lose and will still be able to afford Booths artisanal sausages for tea. But a whole lot of people are going to find that sovereignty neither pays the rent nor puts food on the table. The economy will probably recover over time, and there is more to life than money anyway. More sadly, future generations may find that they are unable to enjoy the freedoms that we took for granted, such as the ability to hop over to France on a whim to work a season in a ski chalet, for example. Scientists are uniquely fortunate in being able to work pretty much where they please (visa requirements are usually quite easy for us to satisfy) and living and working aboard is in principle a very worthwhile and positive experience that I'd recommend to all. It would be a shame to make it the preserve of the privileged few. All the other stuff like environmental protection, workers rights and conditions (e.g. the contract stuff - which is just one minor case study), safety standards, and the rest are unlikely to be stronger out than in. The typical business lobby's whine "it will make us uncompetitive" has much more validity if we can only impose regulations unilaterally, rather than simultaneously with our largest trading partners. I should also mention the Calais border moving to Dover, the million pensioners in Spain who will need to come back for their free healthcare (a great swap for a couple of million young EU workers)...the list really is endless. 40 years of ever-closer collaboration will not be easily unpicked.

I'd really be interested to hear if Brexiteers think that the outcome has been good so far, or if they expect it to be good in the foreseeable future. Having both major parties in total disarray is great political theatre but is perhaps not the best background from which to enter 2 years of critical negotiations and push a lot of detailed legislation through parliament. Did anyone actually vote for this? It's amazing to see the string of idiots who are regretful that they won.

A few days before the referendum Nick Barnes predicted on farcebook that Cameron would immediately invoke Article 50 if he lost, but that always seemed improbable to me - so much so, that I bet him 10 quid (Nick's limit, not mine!) that it wouldn't happen within a week. All three options remain possible as I write (i.e., either he does, or does not, or something obscure and legalistic happens that makes it impossible to judge the outcome fairly) but Cameron's clearly stated intention is not to trigger it, but leave it to his successor. Which always seemed obvious to me - he can't now avoid going down in history as the twat that loaded the gun but he can at least avoid being the twat that pulled the trigger. Boris Johnson has already stated he is in no hurry either, but wants to make progress on negotiations first. This is patently ridiculous, as the rest of the EU has no reason to negotiate anything until A50 has been invoked. It is possible that the EU will lose patience and find a way to unilaterally start the process (as has already been threatened). Or else the forthcoming Tory leader will wake up in time and smell the coffee and realise that it's a completely unwinnable proposition. BoJo clearly never wanted to win the referendum in the first place and has no strategy, no goals, and no policy for the situation that he's landed us in. So much for his political instincts. He even spent yesterday playing cricket.

I can't help but conclude that the best outcome would be for the new Govt to reject the referendum result (and fight an election on that basis). There is no good exit plan or outcome that I can see. Of course it would inevitably destroy a few political careers and we'd have a bit of rioting, but that's better than the alternatives.

What did the EU ever do for us?

Ok, I said I wasn't going to do the referendum, but there's nothing else to talk about and I think this is worth mentioning.

Way back in the mists of time when I was starting out in the workplace, it was commonplace for new employees, especially junior researchers and academics, to be employed on the basis of short contracts. Open ended positions still existed however, and different institutes had different attitudes towards moving contract staff to open-ended positions. My first employer did it by creating an entirely new open-ended position, which was widely advertised. This was of course pretty stressful for the internal candidate having to fight for “their” job, although in practice it was just a huge waste of time for the external candidates who were never really in with a shout for a job which was designed for someone else. Not to mention being pretty awkward for staff like me having to talk to and show around these candidates without letting on that the job was really meant for the guy in the adjacent office who happened to be away that day. My next employer had more of an internal review process, similar to but far less formal than the US university tenure review system. My internal review was the day after I'd just got my job offer from Japan, which made it more fun than it might otherwise have been :-)

Incidentally, “permanent” is not a great term to use for these positions. No jobs are permanent in the UK, it is not uncommon to make people (or to be precise, their positions) redundant, as the chemistry department at Exeter Uni learnt to their cost. But making positions redundant costs money and takes time: much easier, management thought, to just allow contracts to end efficiently and painlessly (for them). This was also in line with the long term trend for research councils to be more "responsive", ie quicker to follow new fashions and not be tied down with things like staff or institutes or facilities to support, or long-term strategies to think about and follow through on. But I digress.

Some people were stuck indefinitely on a succession of short contracts, with no guarantee of renewal. I think one of the Reading people who visited us in Japan had been on 1-year contracts for something like a decade. Of course, a succession of short contracts, even if there's some sort of likelihood of renewal, are no basis for buying a house, raising a family, or even building a career.

Along came the interfering bureaucratic EU, who observed that this was not really a fair or sustainable state of affairs. And at a stroke, in the admirably brief and readable Council Directive 1999/70/EC, they put an end to it. Short contracts are still allowed for a finite duration, or where they can be objectively justified. But the directive underlines that the normal form of employment contract is one of indefinite duration. In practice, the research institutes and universities have pretty much abandoned short contracts, employees may get one on initial employment or for a particular project, but this no longer carries on indefinitely.

Incidentally, Japan is still struggling with this issue two decades later, in its own inimitable manner. Around the time we left, a law was coming in to limit contract employment to 5 years of continuous work, following which it would be regarded as open-ended. Prior to this new law, there was some sort of established precedent that after 9 years in the same job, you could claim open-ended status, but JAMSTEC had been careful to set up enough loopholes in our employment that there's no way jules and I were going to trust the legal system to actually enforce this in our favour. JAMSTEC's initial response to this new law was to state that all future contract employment would be on the basis of 5 years work and then a 6 month “break” (ie unemployment) followed by another 5 years work etc. I'm pleased to say that when my manager explained this to me, I laughed in his face and told him that he, and the institute directors, were all idiots if they thought that was going to work. Eventually they came up with a saner tenure review plan but excluded us from it, as I have probably mentioned here before.

So, the tl;dr version is that at a stroke, the EU abolished an unsustainable, abusive and unfair system of short-term employment, and this move has also had the benefit of making management think a little more carefully about the long-term sustainability of their institutes. The widespread RCUK fellowships (5 years of research which converts to an open-ended lecturer position) were one obvious response to the change in the law. Younger scientists probably don't even realise this, as the short contract era will have ended before they started work. But it has certainly made a big difference to scientific careers in the UK, and no UK govt had shown any inclination to do anything about it.

EU referendum

This isn't a political blog and I don't intend to say much about the referendum. But I do think it would be far preferable to have a result which was decided by a large proportion of the electorate, rather than a small and unrepresentative rump of extremists. So I hope all eligible readers will make sure they are registered by the deadline of 7th June. And then go on to actually use their vote on the day itself. (If you don't know which way to vote, toss a coin to decide and then see if you are relieved/disappointed at which way it landed!)