Showing posts with label evidence-based. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evidence-based. Show all posts

Wednesday 4 September 2019

We all need to chill


UK parliamentary proceedings yesterday produced yet another night of high drama with MPs delivering a bloody nose to Boris Johnson who has learned a harsh lesson in the Realpolitik of Brexit. However, it only succeeded in raising as many questions as answers. Will there be a general election? If so, what would it resolve? Will the UK really leave the EU on 31 October, and if so, with or without a deal? What is the future of the Conservative Party following the expulsion of 21 MPs? All of these are interesting questions and will undoubtedly be looked at the weeks and months to come.

But what perhaps concerns me most of all is the increasingly short-term nature of the way the UK has handled the Brexit problem. Although we went through many nights of high drama under Theresa May’s premiership, her main objective was to buy the UK some time in order to minimise the economic risks. Johnson’s government has shown no interest in such a strategy. He is focused purely on the politics of delivering Brexit without a second thought for what will follow. Dragging the UK out of the EU at any price will have economic consequences which will be reflected at the ballot box. That said, I am not sure that Remain supporters have given much thought to the future either. Their objective is simply to prevent a no-deal Brexit, which is laudable, but what happens thereafter? They presumably cannot ignore the referendum result forever. And what happens if the 21 Tory MPs expelled from the party are replaced with fellow-travellers who ultimately allow Johnson’s government to pursue its goal of a clean Brexit?

One of the key lessons we have learned over the past three years is that the British political system is incapable of dealing with the Brexit question. As I have pointed out on numerous occasions, the fact that the Conservatives have “owned” Brexit means (a) failure to deliver reflects badly on them and (b) the divide between parties, which was already considerable, has widened further which makes cross-party cooperation difficult. Watching politicians from both sides of the political divide engaging in the adversarial process which passes for debate, it is evident that oratorical skills and points scoring are more highly valued than rational consideration. Only this afternoon, Chancellor Sajid Javid’s speech delivering the government’s spending review was twice brought to a halt by the Speaker who admonished the Chancellor for being overtly partisan in what was supposed to be a dry speech about public spending. I do not recall that happening during any parliamentary speech by any Chancellor.

The theatrical nature of parliament further encourages adversarial behaviour. As the blogger Chris Dillow highlighted in a post recently, presenting politics as theatre is dangerous because it allows journalists to focus on style rather than substance. As a number of other commentators have pointed out, this focus on style over substance has produced an environment in which the media seems less interested in the facts of the matter than whether it generates an engaging debate. In a fascinating article on pro-Brexit bias at the BBC, Chris Grey argues that the BBC has inadvertently stoked the partiality of the debate by giving equal air time to both sides. 

As Grey put it, “the overwhelming balance of opinion amongst economists, including those employed by the Government, is very clear: Brexit will be economically damaging and the main debate is the extent of the damage. Yet ‘balance’ suggests that the pro-Brexit minority of economists be given equal billing with the anti-Brexit majority.” The consequence of this is that people believed that the economic merits of leaving were as strong as those of remain. Worse still, “almost all of the factual arguments made by the Leave campaign were untrue (£350M a week for NHS, Turkey is joining the EU etc.), but ‘balance’ required the BBC to treat them as being as valid as the opposing arguments.”

Imagine a debate between pro- and anti-climate change supporters. The pro lobby is backed up by a scientific body of evidence compiled by highly qualified people who do not say that human activity is causing climate change but that it is highly probable. The antis do not have anything like the same degree of scientific credibility but shout louder. Should their arguments receive the same prominence? Most rational people would argue not since it is better to believe the experts and be proved wrong than listen to the deniers if they are wrong. But with Brexit it seems we are quite content to ignore the economics.

A number of factors have thus come together to create a climate in which it is no longer possible to have a rational debate about Brexit: Political miscalculation; an adversarial political system and misguided media attempts to ensure an unbiased debate are but three factors. So poisoned has the political climate become that amongst the 21 Tory MPs stripped of their party membership after their vote against the government’s Brexit policy are two former Chancellors of the Exchequer (Ken Clarke and Philip Hammond). But the greatest irony is that the grandson of Winston Churchill, Boris Johnson’s great political hero, is another of the victims. In his speech to parliament this afternoon, Sir Nicholas Soames sarcastically thanked the prime minister, whose “serial disloyalty has been such an inspiration to so many of us.” He ended by saying that “it is my most fervent hope that this House will rediscover the spirit of compromise, humility and understanding that will enable us to push ahead with vital work in the interests of the whole country.

He speaks for many of us, lamenting the inability to engage in rational political discourse on matters of national importance. By continuing to reduce the space for evidence based policy, we run the risk of making bad political and economic decisions. As Soames’ grandfather said in 1938, “The stations of uncensored expression are closing down; the lights are going out; but there is still time for those to whom freedom and parliamentary government mean something, to consult together. Let me, then, speak in truth and earnestness while time remains.”

Wednesday 7 August 2019

Fast and loose

According to the new Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, he made it clear during the 2016 referendum campaign “that we should strive for a good deal, but if that wasn’t available, that we should go on and make a success of Brexit … I was questioned on it by the BBC almost every time I appeared and so was Michael Gove… There’s all sorts of interviews which said that of course we’d prefer a deal, but that there would be a risk.” In Raab’s telling of events, people knew what they were voting for three years ago and as a result the government now has a mandate for a no-deal Brexit.

When challenged in a BBC interview as to the veracity of this statement, Raab responded by suggesting that “the institutional memory of the BBC is a bit sketchy on this as a whole.” Fortunately, those who appear prominently in the media leave a digital trail that can be mined to check whether their claims stand up to scrutiny. Both the BBC and Channel 4 have fact-checked Raab’s media interviews, social media posts, newspaper articles, speeches and Vote Leave campaign material only to conclude that there are no clear examples of Raab’s stated position. His consistent position was that the EU would be likely to offer the UK a trade deal because “it’s certainly not in the Europeans’ interest to erect trade barriers.” Indeed, in February 2016 he wrote a newspaper article suggesting that “The Remain campaign assert the EU would cut off its nose to spite its face, vindictively defying its own interests by shutting Britain out of its markets altogether. That’s not remotely credible.

There are those who accuse Raab of being a “morally vacuous liar” who shamelessly holds to the view that his government has a mandate for a no-deal Brexit, despite the fact that the evidence points to the contrary. Others have pointed out that those who lie in the course of their job get fired but Raab has been rewarded with a promotion. I couldn’t possibly comment! But in all likelihood, Raab will get away with such falsehoods because the political dynamic has changed. We live in an era of political beliefs, not facts, which makes life difficult for those of us who seek at least some fig-leaf of empirical cover for the positions we hold.

All this is very dangerous because it erodes the lingering basis of trust between politicians and the electorate. It is one thing for politicians to be perceived to be lying; it is quite another to actually do so, particularly when the consequences of politicians’ actions have profound economic consequences. Dominic Raab’s rewriting of history means that voters did not have a chance to inform themselves of the consequences of a no-deal Brexit. Indeed, the evidence suggests that this issue did not impinge on voters’ consciousness until well after the referendum.

In order to look more closely at this issue, I took a look at Google search terms in the UK for Brexit-related keywords, starting with “no-deal Brexit.” The data do not give the exact number of searches but is reported as an index based at 100 for the maximum number of weekly searches. The latest data suggest that the highest value occurs for the week of 10 March 2019. More revealing, however, is that the index registers its first non-zero value only in March 2017 – 9 months after the referendum – and does not start to become a more prominent issue until the latter months of 2017. That is not exactly what you would call an informed electorate. Similarly, Google searches for phrase “hard Brexit” do not start to become more widespread until September 2016 (chart).
In my view, the government will be taking a huge risk in triggering a no-deal Brexit given the extent to which many people seemed unaware of such an outcome at the time they cast their vote. This may not be a problem if there are no adverse economic consequences, but if there are I would not like to be the one explaining why the government has taken such a course of action. As it happens, I maintain that Boris Johnson’s government does not really want to leave the UK without a  deal and that its tactic is designed to appeal to the party faithful in a bid to dissuade voters from defecting to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. Indeed, I suspect that Johnson hopes parliament will block his no-deal Brexit plan which in turn will allow him to call a general election.

It is, however, an extremely risky strategy. A no-deal Brexit could be triggered by accident if parliament does not play ball. And it might even be the case that Johnson means what he says. But a look at the evidence makes it clear that voters did not consider the prospect of a no-deal Brexit in 2016 and they may be reluctant to support a government that mismanages the UK’s exit from the EU. If Johnson wants to remain in office for any length of time, which surely is his aim, he either has to tone down the rhetoric or ensure that a no-deal Brexit does not result in the disruption that many fear. Unfortunately, he cannot guarantee the latter.