Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

Sheilbh has been debating me on my insistence that it is in the DUP's best perceived interest to have a hard border between the two Irelands, but all I can see is evidence mounting on it.

I mean, it seems like the EU is actually going to compromise and let the UK reneg on their commitments, so the DUP is quick to jump in to sabotage it:

I never had any doubt that the EU was going to compromise because there are real practical problems with the Protocol and it doesn't deliver what it was supposed to. It's a fabulous technical solution that doesn't work. 

I've said before but this is broadly what was proposed by the Irish Taoiseach's office in 2016 and by May in 2017-19. I think it's a shame it took the issues with the Protocol becoming clear and, in parallel to that, it embedding itself as an issue in Northern Irish politics to get here because that makes it more challenging.

But on that article - this is the DUP on the Today programme, before they've seen Sunak's deal or spoken with him. What would you expect them to say? Whether they accept it or not, surely their message this morning would be the same? "We're not going to be pushovers, we've set our seven tests for any deal and we will stick to them." That's the line you'd take whether you were going to accept or reject the deal.

I think it is going to be challenging to get the unionists on side - but I think Sunak's taking the right approach politically. There's been a lot of involvement of Heaton-Harris and Baker at the Northern Ireland Office, there's been a lot of talks in Northern Ireland. He's gone to Belfast today to talk with Northern Irish "stakeholders" including the DUP (again with Heaton-Harris and Baker), while Cleverley is in Brussels having lunch with Sefcovic and jointly briefing member state ambassadors. Sunak'll be in Munich and speak to VDL over the weekend on the final issues. Reported the deal will be provided to the Northern Irish parties first on Monday before it gets presented to cabinet on Tuesday. That all seems like the right approach and sequencing to get buy in in Northern Ireland.

It may fail and my worry if it does is that I don't think there's an easy route to another deal in the medium term. Unionists don't really like Labour - and I think it would be even more challenging for them to get support from the DUP. But also, as Sam McBride has pointed out, if the DUP reject it, they will reject it on fundamental constitutional grounds which means theu can't really go back and sign up to a very similar deal a year or two later. I think this is gooing to be the decision of whether there are devolved institutions in Northern Ireland or not for the next decade or possibly more.

One of the challenges for the DUP is even if they are minded to accept it, their stance has been broadly popular in the unionist community as opposition to the NIP has hardened/become more identarian. They are to an extent possibly prisoners of the popularity of their stance which is going to be difficult.

Labour have said they are willing to help Sunak get the deal passed through parliament (I think they probably recognise that their chances of getting the DUP to sign up to something are even lower) - so there is no issues from a UK political perspective. It is all about convincing unionists and that's not going to be easy. If the UUP move (which I think they will) that would be a positive first step and would undermine at least some of the constitutional points the DUP will try to make if they reject it.

[The Larch]

Yeah that's a difference. In the UK at the last count (it's audited annually so this could be for Sunak, Truss or Johnson I'm not sure ) now ministers/the Tories have 125 politically appointed "special advisors". They'll generally lose their job if a new party takes office - but are also quite often tied to specific ministers they've worked with (sometimes more to policy areas) so may go even if a minister's fired/re-shuffled.

Oh, we do have those too, people of personal trust of the ministers and president, of course, but I believe they're also many many more than 125. Grabbing the first article I found on the issue (don't know if reputable, it appears pretty hostile to the government) it quotes 1839 as the number of politically designated personnel, but I think it bundles together advisors and high ranking officers. Advisors, I assume, do follow their minister around, but I don't think high ranking officers do. In any case reshufflings are also relatively rare over here.

By contrast there's over 500,000 civil servants who are on an entirely separate career track and totally insulated from politics - they report up the civil service structure and only the most senior civil servants are (sort of) answerable to politicians. Some would argue they're also a little insulated from accountability/responsibility for actually delivering policies and that people just get shuffled around

I checked it and over here we have something like 130,000 civil servants working for the ministries. Plenty more will be at other levels of the public administration, though. Take into account the high level of devolution to the regions, for instance.

The opposition has no input into the civil service. But it's been the custom since the 60s that, about 12-18 months out from an expected election, the PM authorises the civil service to have meetings with the opposition - which are fairly constrained and vary depending on the preferences of the relevant shadow minister. The purpose isn't so the opposition has any say on what the civil service does, more so the civil service has an idea what the opposition wants to do so they can prepare in case they win the election. In theory, it's good for the civil service - they can start planning and it's good for the opposition because they can hit the ground running.

As I said, that wouldn't fly over here at all. I don't think it'd happen even after an election in which the ruling government has been voted out. You just do things in a very different way over there.


Anyway, to put things into context, Spain is also an outlier in the extremely high rotation of high ranking officers due to political appointments and dismissals. It's at the top of the EU and of the OECD as well. I found the following table which can be quite enlightening:



It's about the amount of personnel change at the top levels of the public administration after a change in government. The three levels examined are first Ministerial Cabinets, at second level High Ranking officials and at third level Mid Ranking officials. Green means that less than 5% personnel change upon a change of government, Red means more than 95% change. Yellow is kinda useless as it's anything between 5 and 95%. As you can see in Spain it's at 95%+ at every level, so a change of government implies a complete change at the top of every ministry. This means that we don't have a civil service as an independent power block in government or public administration, given that only rank and file workers are protected from a government change, but the higher ranking officers are all politically dependant.

[Sheilbh]

Oh, we do have those too, people of personal trust of the ministers and president, of course, but I believe they're also many many more than 125. Grabbing the first article I found on the issue (don't know if reputable, it appears pretty hostile to the government) it quotes 1839 as the number of politically designated personnel, but I think it bundles together advisors and high ranking officers. Advisors, I assume, do follow their minister around, but I don't think high ranking officers do. In any case reshufflings are also relatively rare over here.

That's probably another important difference. Cameron - again one of the few things he was good at - was generally very anti-reshuffle and thought it would be good for stability in ministers. But he's very much the exception - obviously lots of re-shuffles in the last 6 years because chaos. But Brown and Blair both reshuffled a lot - I think both would say that they were probably oversensitive to negative media coverage/fired people too soon and used reshuffles to try to seize back the initiative.

I checked it and over here we have something like 130,000 civil servants working for the ministries. Plenty more will be at other levels of the public administration, though. Take into account the high level of devolution to the regions, for instance.

I looked into the 500k figure and it is far too high for what we're talking about. It basically includes workers for any entity that has a reporting line into the relevant department and minister. So for example the two biggest employers are the DoJ (because the prison and probation service has a direct reporting line into the ministry) and HMRC. So you can probably knock off at least 200,000 from those two alone.

But it doesn't include things like the NHS or schools which a minister is responsible for but doesn't have a direct reporting line into the ministry.

As I said, that wouldn't fly over here at all. I don't think it'd happen even after an election in which the ruling government has been voted out. You just do things in a very different way over there.

Anyway, to put things into context, Spain is also an outlier in the extremely high rotation of high ranking officers due to political appointments and dismissals. It's at the top of the EU and of the OECD as well. I found the following table which can be quite enlightening:
[...]
It's about the amount of personnel change at the top levels of the public administration after a change in government. The three levels examined are first Ministerial Cabinets, at second level High Ranking officials and at third level Mid Ranking officials. Green means that less than 5% personnel change upon a change of government, Red means more than 95% change. Yellow is kinda useless as it's anything between 5 and 95%. As you can see in Spain it's at 95%+ at every level, so a change of government implies a complete change at the top of every ministry. This means that we don't have a civil service as an independent power block in government or public administration, given that only rank and file workers are protected from a government change, but the higher ranking officers are all politically dependant.

Interesting I had no idea it was so politicised in Spain. I always thought of relatively independent stand alone civil service/state institutions were the norm in Europe (v the US which has lots of appointees). Which, looking at that chart, might be broadly right as Spain seems like a bit of an outlier with Turkey - but I wasn't aware of that at all

I assume it's similar at the provincial level?

[Sheilbh]

Nothing to add to this - but absolutely amazing image of a Tory election poster from 1992 (an election they won) in Gateshead:


Similar message in 2015 - doubt it would work today as they can't credibly claim the second sentence

[The Larch]

Interesting I had no idea it was so politicised in Spain. I always thought of relatively independent stand alone civil service/state institutions were the norm in Europe (v the US which has lots of appointees). Which, looking at that chart, might be broadly right as Spain seems like a bit of an outlier with Turkey - but I wasn't aware of that at all

Yeah, personally I'm quite surprised by the countries that don't even change the ministerial cabinet, like Norway, the Netherlands or Germany. That's even more protected from political interference than the UK. The US does have lots of appointments, yes, but seems to me that they only affect the very top of the public bodies, while the management and rank & file workers are independent. Didn't for instance Trump appointees find lots of resistance for their plans from their own departments? No wonder they then started bemoaning the Deep State. 

Spain is an outlier, yes. And it's not a bug but a feature, it's been like this since forever. You already have XIXth century novels and essays bemoaning the practice. It leads to so many disfunctional behaviours in our public administration...

I assume it's similar at the provincial level?

Yeah, this is also replicated at the regional level.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, personally I'm quite surprised by the countries that don't even change the ministerial cabinet, like Norway, the Netherlands or Germany. That's even more protected from political interference than the UK. The US does have lots of appointments, yes, but seems to me that they only affect the very top of the public bodies, while the management and rank & file workers are independent. Didn't for instance Trump appointees find lots of resistance for their plans from their own departments? No wonder they then started bemoaning the Deep State. 

It'd be interesting to know the period and methodology - I don't know about Norway but Germany surprises me. Less so the Netherlands because they have very strong PR, as far as I can see the political system seems to be that there's an election and then Mark Rutte forms a coalition

But Germany's a definite surprise.

[The Larch]

It'd be interesting to know the period and methodology

The article is from 2018 and based on a OECD report, their 2017 edition of the "Government at a Glance", which seems quite massive. I could find this link for the whole report: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/government-at-a-glance-2017_gov_glance-2017-en

That particular table seems to come from here: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/governance/government-at-a-glance-2017/staff-turnover-with-a-change-of-government-2016_gov_glance-2017-table99-en

[Sheilbh]

First DUP response from their leader - not fully clear if this is all (snipped from the Guardian) but this sounds very positive to me for the DUP:

Clearly this is a big moment, the next generation of Northern Ireland and its people requires us all, I think, collectively to use our best efforts – particularly the prime minister and the European Commission president – to get these issues resolved and to get to a place where the political institutions can be restored.

    The decisions that will be taken by the prime minister and by the European Commission will either consign Northern Ireland to more division or they will clear a path towards healing and to the restoration of the political institutions.

    Over the last 48 hours we've been engaging with officials and met the prime minister last evening and this morning.

    We have not yet seen the final text of an agreement, clearly there will be further discussions between the UK Government and the European Union but I think it is safe to say that progress has been made across a range of areas, but there are still some areas where further work is required.

[...]

If and when a final agreement is reached, we will want to carefully consider the detail of that agreement and decide if the agreement does in fact meet our seven tests. We've been very clear with the prime minister that those seven tasks remain the basis upon which we will judge any agreement.

I've indicated to the prime minister that it is fundamentally important that he agrees the right deal. I want to hear that Brussels will stretch itself to recognise the concerns that we have as unionists and that this process will correct the wrongs of the last negotiations.

I do not believe that anyone should be led by a calendar. What is fundamentally and most important here is getting it right. That must be the ultimate goal. That is our goal. That's what we're committed to – getting this right and getting it done.

We will keep working at this until we've got to the place where we can say that an outcome meets our seven tests and enables us to move towards the restoration of the political institutions here in Northern Ireland, which remains our objective.

[...]

It is absolutely crucial that this opportunity is taken, that the issues are grasped, that solutions are found that respect Northern Ireland's place within the United Kingdom and its internal market that enable us to continue trading with the European Union but that remove, in the context of our seven tests, the barriers to trade within the UK internal market, so that Northern Ireland can trade freely with the rest of the United Kingdom.

We need to see an agreement that delivers that, we're hopeful that that can happen. But, in the end, we will wait to see the final text to make our judgments as to whether, in fact, that has been delivered.

[...]

It's not for me to characterise where the EU and the UK have got to in their negotiations. I will simply say that on some very important issues I think there has been real progress, but there remain some outstanding issues that that we need to get over the line. We will then examine the final text of any agreement and come to our decision.

[Zanza]

Yeah that's a difference. In the UK at the last count (it's audited annually so this could be for Sunak, Truss or Johnson I'm not sure ) now ministers/the Tories have 125 politically appointed "special advisors". They'll generally lose their job if a new party takes office - but are also quite often tied to specific ministers they've worked with (sometimes more to policy areas) so may go even if a minister's fired/re-shuffled.

Oh, we do have those too, people of personal trust of the ministers and president, of course, but I believe they're also many many more than 125. Grabbing the first article I found on the issue (don't know if reputable, it appears pretty hostile to the government) it quotes 1839 as the number of politically designated personnel, but I think it bundles together advisors and high ranking officers. Advisors, I assume, do follow their minister around, but I don't think high ranking officers do. In any case reshufflings are also relatively rare over here.

By contrast there's over 500,000 civil servants who are on an entirely separate career track and totally insulated from politics - they report up the civil service structure and only the most senior civil servants are (sort of) answerable to politicians. Some would argue they're also a little insulated from accountability/responsibility for actually delivering policies and that people just get shuffled around

I checked it and over here we have something like 130,000 civil servants working for the ministries. Plenty more will be at other levels of the public administration, though. Take into account the high level of devolution to the regions, for instance.

The opposition has no input into the civil service. But it's been the custom since the 60s that, about 12-18 months out from an expected election, the PM authorises the civil service to have meetings with the opposition - which are fairly constrained and vary depending on the preferences of the relevant shadow minister. The purpose isn't so the opposition has any say on what the civil service does, more so the civil service has an idea what the opposition wants to do so they can prepare in case they win the election. In theory, it's good for the civil service - they can start planning and it's good for the opposition because they can hit the ground running.

As I said, that wouldn't fly over here at all. I don't think it'd happen even after an election in which the ruling government has been voted out. You just do things in a very different way over there.


Anyway, to put things into context, Spain is also an outlier in the extremely high rotation of high ranking officers due to political appointments and dismissals. It's at the top of the EU and of the OECD as well. I found the following table which can be quite enlightening:



It's about the amount of personnel change at the top levels of the public administration after a change in government. The three levels examined are first Ministerial Cabinets, at second level High Ranking officials and at third level Mid Ranking officials. Green means that less than 5% personnel change upon a change of government, Red means more than 95% change. Yellow is kinda useless as it's anything between 5 and 95%. As you can see in Spain it's at 95%+ at every level, so a change of government implies a complete change at the top of every ministry. This means that we don't have a civil service as an independent power block in government or public administration, given that only rank and file workers are protected from a government change, but the higher ranking officers are all politically dependant.

What is the first column? Ww certainly have more than 5% changed ministers after an election. On the other hand, half of the secretaries of state are civil servants, which may serve successive administrations. The current secretary of state for the federal budget has served since 2005 under five different finance ministers from three parties.

[celedhring]

The first column is ministers' staff.

Anyway, I sort of question the chart given how easy it is to mess up all the different denominations. UK's junior ministers do change with government (although last government changes have been a bit weird) and they are equivalent to Spain's secretaries of state.

[mongers]

The frenzy on social media about this 40something blonde woman who's disappeared near a river, is just bizarre in it's intensity.

I don't understand it, but there's a very good bbc article about the TikTok driving of it here:

Why TikTok sleuths descended on Nicola Bulley's village

By Marianna Spring
BBC Disinformation and social media correspondent

I am walking the same route that Nicola Bulley, 45, followed before she disappeared, along the river in the small Lancashire village of Saint Michael's on Wyre. It's also the same route that amateur social media sleuths take when they come to look into the case themselves.

They have been turning up in their numbers, prompted by rumours, speculation and conspiracy on social media viewed and shared by millions of people who have never been anywhere near this village.

The previous day, my TikTok feed had been recommended a clip of one of Nicola's friends appealing for her safe return. But the words "crisis actor" - a term used to describe someone who has been paid to act out a tragedy or scenario - had been added by someone else in large font.

My TikTok "For You Page" had been awash with videos speculating about Nicola's disappearance, recommended by TikTok's algorithm because I've shown an interest in them. But in recent days, these have escalated, and had widened out to include conspiracy theories suggesting the disappearance has been staged by the government or other sinister forces. Hence the video about friends "acting" I had been recommended.

I have previously covered how conspiracy theorists and trolls target survivors of terror attacks - like the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017 - with some going far as to track them down offline to find out if they were lying about their injuries.
......

Full article here:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64677595

[garbon]

With that one I feel like the media has some culpability. If they weren't writing about her as first page, above the fold news, would it have gotten such traction?

[Sheilbh]

I thought Gaby Hinsliff was really good on this case - which I only really became aware of this week:

The ghoulish online sleuths are shameful, but that's no excuse for how the police have treated Nicola Bulley
Gaby Hinsliff
Every British police force must learn from Lancashire's mistake: disclosing personal details is no way to respond to conspiracists
Fri 17 Feb 2023 14.27 GMT
Last modified on Fri 17 Feb 2023 19.03 GMT

She slipped through the smallest hole imaginable, an invisible rip in the fabric of a seemingly ordinary day. Nicola Bulley was there one minute, living a working mother's familiar, multitasking life – walking the dog while taking a Teams call – and gone the next.

Barely 10 minutes elapsed between Nicola bumping into a friend and someone finding her dog, minus an owner. How can a woman just vanish? We all feel the shock, and perhaps some have questions. But this week has been a masterclass in how not to answer them.

In the vacuum created by a three-week police investigation offering no leads, a ghoulish stream of amateur online sleuths and self-styled citizen investigators descended on the river meadows where Nicola disappeared, livestreaming their half-baked efforts on TikTok to much local distress. After police began dispersing them, YouTuber Dan Duffy uploaded footage of himself apparently being arrested, complaining about "what this country's turning into. No freedom of speech." The armchair hounding of her friends and family on social media completes an enraging picture.

Detectives leading high-profile cases invariably face unhelpful distractions: psychics claiming to have seen visions, fantasists "confessing" to crimes they never committed, macabre selfie-taking tourists. Even reporters there to do their jobs can, en masse, overwhelm small communities. But social media vigilantes leading online witch-hunts based on having once watched Happy Valley or downloaded a true crime podcast, or content creators trampling the riverbank, represent an additional pressure new to British police investigations – although there are echoes of what engulfed poor Madeleine McCann's family. Lancashire police have my sympathies in grappling with this madness. But if what they disclosed this week about a missing woman's private life was an attempt to defend themselves under intolerable pressure, it was a grievous mistake.

Initially, detectives announced Nicola had "vulnerabilities" identifying her as a high-risk missing person – usually code for thinking someone may conceivably be a danger to themselves – and asked reporters to respect the family's privacy by not inquiring further. All that achieved was to start a wild guessing game for hordes of self-appointed online truthseekers already bombarding accounts associated with her friends and family with pet theories.

So the police ended up clarifying that Nicola had issues with alcohol, and struggled with the menopause, a detail that seems creepily intrusive, if perhaps a misguided attempt at sympathetic context. Calling this victim-blaming feels wrong when we all hope she hasn't been a victim of anything, and when nobody should be ashamed of the mental health issues some experience in menopause. But at the very least, it seems unlikely to help find her.

Somehow here three dangerous streams have crossed: a sadly understandable mistrust of police attitudes to women, a conspiracist online culture that assumes everyone is hiding something, and the crass human impulse to make everything about you.

The amateur sleuths' bragging conceit is that they're smarter than everyone else; able to spot what everyone supposedly missed on grainy CCTV footage or in interviews given by a partner. But they're also recognisably the product of so-called "authenticity policing" on social media – a culture of calling out fake content, now colliding grotesquely with real policing.

The more time we spend in easily manipulated online worlds, the more suspicion becomes a life skill. We do need to figure out when something's filtered or Photoshopped; to understand that "reality" TV is scripted, and influencers' glossy lives not what they seem; to be sceptical of sob stories from strangers. But that vigilance can tip over too easily into hunting obsessively for minute or imaginary inconsistencies, and into trolling.

A popular 18-year-old TikTokker called Annie Bonelli has been pursued for years by users questioning whether the livid scar on her cheek is real, some breaking down her videos frame-by-frame as "evidence". The cookery writer and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe's every word is parsed by Twitter critics convinced she is richer than she lets on. It's cruel at the best of times, but in the middle of a police investigation it has alarming consequences.

What is to be done? Obviously, the TikTok circus should leave town. Parliament should consider the online harms bill in the light of social media giants once again lagging behind events. Every British police force must learn from Lancashire's experience. And we're reminded that mental health in menopause requires better understanding and treatment.

But for a mother of young daughters who vanished in an instant, all most of us can usefully do is hope against hope that she returns – and keep our theories firmly to ourselves.

Although as a lawyer in that area - please God don't add anything else to the Online Harms Bill it's already an alarming and possibly unworkable monster

And I think Braverman's reportedly asked why the police released that information, which I think is correct - the Information Commissioner is also investigating from a data protection perspective because it's really not clear how releasing some really sensitive personal data about this woman has helped or how it was supposed to help.

With that one I feel like the media has some culpability. If they weren't writing about her as first page, above the fold news, would it have gotten such traction?

Maybe - I think it would definitely be big local news. And you can see why it appeals to the true crime/online sleuth communities - so I think if they ever noticed it even on local news in the North West, this would have happened. From what I've read it sounds like a case that would go viral on true crime Reddits. Of course those facts are also what make it a compelling story for newspapers - add in a potential angle on police incompetence/floundering investigation and you've even got a plausible "in the public interest" argument.

The factual details are the sort of thing that I imagine would very much appeal to true crime content creators: a woman disappears in a ten minute gap, they find her phone still connected to a work call. Then there were the additional local rumours that I think the police have dismissed about them finding one of her gloves at the scene, a red van (not of interest according to the police) and nearby abandoned building repeatedly broken into by content creators/ghoulish tourists (and searched three times by the police, who've said it's not relevant).

[garbon]

It appeared as national news very shortly after she went missing. I know because I recall asking my husband why this case should be national news.

[garbon]

Looking at my history, I read about it as top page news on Guardian on 3 Feb.

edit: And appears first guardian article was on the 30th (just 3 days after the disappearance) so probably a bit soon for any "police incompetence/floundering investigation" narratives to have formed. It also appears they have written an article about her everyday since the 30th of Jan...