Thoughts on fact checking

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This may I’m afraid be a bit of a ramble. It seems that “independent” fact checking has become all the rage in politics today. The Electoral Reform Society has opined that official “facts ” should be published before any future referendum, and anyone disagreeing with them should be punished – presumably “so the oiks don’t win again“. The Clinton/Trump debate was also live “fact checked”, and many on line debates are “settled” by referring to fact checking sites. Now checking facts in debates is a good thing, I’d even go so far as to say that it’s a very good thing – however I have a problem with this trend.

The first and most obvious problem is who checks that fact checkers? I know that I rarely check the sources on “fact check” websites I’m referred to, often the sources aren’t given. So how accurate are these fact checking sites? For the purpose of this ramble though I’m going to ignore that and assume that the “facts” given on such sites are taken from reputable sources.

The next problem is how “independent” is almost always assumed to also mean “non-partisan”. This blog for example is independent, no one pays me – nor so much as buys me a drink, I try to only reference reputable sources and by and large I dislike all of the major political parties. All that said though on some subjects I’m far from non-partisan and will quite happily present the evidence that best supports my cause because I want to make my case and I assume that people that disagree with me will have their own sources so I don’t need to do their research for them. This will be true to a greater or lesser extent of all those “independent” fact checking sites that are so popular these days. The site might of course claim to be non-partisan, but how do you verify that? Just like newspapers even the most independent of sites will tend to have an editorial slant.

However lets put all of that aside and assume that we have discovered an independent notionally non-partisan fact checking site, I’m afraid the problems don’t stop there. At the simplest level there is the question of who decides what “facts” need checking. The simple choice of which “facts” to check in a debate can cause one or other side to seem less trustworthy, by dint of the number of facts they’ve had checked compared to their opponent. It doesn’t matter if the facts all check out correctly, what a lot of people will see is that a lot of facts “needed” checking compared to the other side, and so the side with the least “facts” checked will be perceived as more trustworthy and honest. If you checked just one or two items amongst a sea of falsehoods, but numerous items in an ocean of truth a perception will be given that the dishonest sea was more reliable than the honest ocean.

Lets assume though that the fact checking has been even handed, with no particular bias towards one side or the other. Now obviously well agreed upon facts don’t need checking, so our hypothetical fact checking site will only be checking the more contentious points – well that and out right lies. I’m going to ignore out right lies – as if they’re not contentious they’re easily checked so not a problem. So lets consider the contentious “facts”, at this point actual facts start being thin on the ground. If we’re lucky our fact checking website will provide links to the sources they got their version of the facts from, they might if we’re exceptionally lucky also give some hint as to where the bad information came from. There though lies the problem, we potentially have two sources of the “facts” that disagree with each other. Now one source may seem far more reputable than the other, but are those the only sources? After all the more contentious the “fact” the more likely that they’ll be multiple accounts both in support and against it. Which leaves us with a problem how did the fact checking site choose which account to side with, how did they evaluate the one to believe?

I like fact checking websites, they’re useful – but ultimately they’re aggregators of curated evidence. How the “facts” to be checked are chosen, how and what supporting evidence is selected are things that generally remain obscure. So as a starting point they’re wonderful things but to close down debate they’re just a convoluted appeal to authority and as ever further research is needed.

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Brexit means….

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As we’ve all been repeatedly told “Brexit means Brexit” – which is of course utterly meaningless. Though if it is taken to simply mean that the current Government (Or at least Mrs May) is committed to triggering article 50 and taking the UK out of the EU then that’s all well and good as far as it goes. I don’t think there’s any need to have that bit subject to a parliamentary vote as the literature the Government sent out said quite clearly that the result of the vote would be implemented. If our MPs had wanted further conditions on the referendum like a certain threshold they should have put that in place before hand. Likewise the idea of having a second referendum or parliamentary vote at the end of negotiations is patent nonsense. The idea that parliament/the populace should get a chance to approve the final deal is all very nice but ignores the two awkward “fact” that once article 50 is triggered there’s a two year process and then we’re out, and that no negotiation starts until we trigger article 50 (honest guv, no word of a lie). So if there is to be a vote on the final terms of leaving then it would have to take place before the already unrealistically short two year deadline was reached with any further negotiation happening between the deal being rejected and the two years running out. I really can’t see how that would be viable, so the other option is we get to the end of the two years, at which point we’re automatically out and then we have another referendum/vote to see if we’re happy? Can you imagine it?

EU: Well the two years are up here’s what we’ve negotiated, auf wiedersehen
UK: Hold on we just need to have another vote to see if we’re happy with this, and actually we might have changed our minds
EU: Oh ok that’s fine, we’ve spent two years and vasts amount of time to do this negation before the legally binding deadline but no problems – you can stay a member whilst you have a think about it, maybe negotiate a bit more, and if you’ve changed your mind we’ll just pretend this never happened – not a problem.
UK: Thanks awfully, we’ll just go away and have another of those referendum thingies and we’ll get back to you in a few months to let you know – We’re sure it’ll all be fine but perhaps best not to pack away the negotiating rooms just yet and we’ll just keep hold of our membership card as well for the time being.

Nah not going to happen, at the end of two years there’ll be whatever deal there is, and of course negotiations may then start on a whole load of other deals which Parliament can vote on. But the final terms we exit the EU on, there’ll be whatever compromise the civil servants of the UK and the EU hash out between them and get the relevant politicians to rubber stamp after, no doubt, one final all nigh round of meetings to to try and salvage something at the last minute.

So Parliament has no place in deciding if we leave the EU or not, and has no chance to decide on the final terms of the exit. This would seem all a bit bleak for democracy and would from how many people are talking seem to give Mrs May a free hand to do whatever she likes. Except there really is a glimmer of hope for all of us, both those that wanted to remain and those that wanted to leave either on internationalist of isolationist terms. Parliament could and should be debating just what it is that “Brexit means”. Here I actually agree (somewhat) with Mr Tyrie that the Government should set out it’s negotiationg terms. All we actually know from the referendum is that the country as a whole wants to leave the EU ( not the ECHR, not Europe, just the EU ), we haven’t debated if we want more free trade, more free movement of people or anything else. It’s on these matters, the shape of the UK after it’s left the EU that our MPs should be listening to us and debating in parliament the goal towards which the Governments negotiators should be working. Lets have a proper debate as to where the country should be going next, and then make damn sure that Mrs May and her team deliver on that. Neither Parliament nor any of us should allow the Government to get away with claiming everything they negotiate is sanctified by the magic phrase that “Brexit means Brexit”.

So Remainers get over it the votes gone, Brexiteers stop resting on your laurels – now we need to talk about what we actually want. Time to discuss the shape of things to come and try to make sure that we get the best outcome we can – rather than wasting time and energy fighting the last battle whilst Mrs May and co forge on unsupervised.

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Paying the price of Brexit?

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Francois Hollande amongst others have recently been saying that the “UK must pay price for Brexit”. Similar things were said before the Brexit vote and they puzzled me then and continue to puzzle me now. Mr Hollande has reportedly said that:
“There must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price”
and also that:
“other countries or other parties will be minded to leave the European Union in order to have the supposed benefits and no downsides or rules”

Now if being part of the EU is an awesome deal then just leaving the EU, no matter what terms you negotiate could surely never be as good as being in the EU. On the other hand if a country can negotiate a better deal for itself by being out of the EU but with appropriate terms, and this is possible for a multitude of countries – then surely this tells us that the EU is not actually the optimal solution. If the majority of the people of Europe would be better off if their countries left the EU and negotiated different terms, then surely the EU needs to reform itself along the lines of whatever those terms might be to best serve the peoples of Europe. Surely after all the countries that would be better off on different terms have left, the remaining members of the EU will be in an even better position as they’ll be able to more easily optimize the terms of the EU for the good of their people.

Now if the above isn’t the case, and that the EU actually depends upon there being net winners and net losers, then it’s surely beholden on the governments of every country that is a net loser to leave the EU for the betterment of their own people. Which rather leads me to the conclusion that as the great and good of the EU are talking about making sure that the UK “pays the price” for leaving the EU that price the UK would be better off. This in turn suggests that the UK is in fact worse off by being in the EU.

There might be another explanation, but it seems to me that the only logical conclusion to be drawn from the EU needing to punish the UK for leaving to discourage others from leaving is that both the UK and other countries would be better off out and that it’s the EU that would suffer from a free association of trading countries.

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