So Long and Thanks For All The Fish

I’m feeling low today. There are multiple reasons for this, some of them are professional and some of them are personal. I don’t propose to trouble any readers I may have with those matters. They are my problems and I will deal with them. Overarching them all though is an issue that millions of others are dealing with today. At midnight tonight Central European Time the UK will cease to be a member of the European Union and as far as I can see this is simply a bad thing.

Since David Cameron gambled the future prosperity of his country on a wild bid to control the more Neanderthal elements of the Conservative party I have been trying to find anyone who can describe to me a single concrete benefit of leaving the EU. So far the responses I have had have ranged from the deluded to the downright lunatic. Is it straight or bendy bananas that the Eurocrats have prevented us enjoying? I never was sure and of course the answer is neither. “We are taking back control of our laws, our borders and our money”. Well, as far as I can see our money has remained pretty much the same since 1971. The UK never joined the Schengen agreement and so maintained full control of its borders at all times and the European Union Withdrawal Act 2018 effectively copied and pasted the entirety of EU law onto the UK statute book.

“We are ending freedom of movement”. That’s the big one. Let’s keep out the foreigners. Let’s put up walls around our offshore island home. Let’s live in splendid isolation in this cool wet archipelago. Well, freedom of movement works both ways. By ending it we remove the right of British people to live, study, work and retire across the entire continent. Of course ways can be found for some people to do some of these things but we are talking about negotiation of special arrangements to do things that are now available as rights. The end of freedom for our European neighbours to come to work in the UK poses enormous challenges to the NHS, the care system and agriculture, none of which can currently function in the absence of a substantial non-UK work force. However I look at it, the end of freedom of movement is a disaster for all concerned. Even the xenophobes who just don’t like foreigners will eventually catch on to the hard facts of life but how much damage will have been done by then?

Even the manner of the UK’s departure from the European Parliament filled me with gloom. The boorish, screeching, hateful display from Farrage and Widdecombe on their last day in an institution they had done their very best to sabotage truly made me ashamed of the country that had elected them. In contrast the behaviour of the other MEPs in the chamber as they sang Auld Lang Syne gave me a glimmer of hope, as did the gestures of lighting the Grand Place in red, white and blue and dressing the Mannekin Pis in John Bull style yesterday evening. I spent a lot of time in Brussels in the 1980s and saw the little guy in various forms of fancy dress but I never expected to see this particular one.

This morning the BBC is covering the last day of our EU membership in its usual way. In search of balance it is interviewing politicians who still think that Brexit is a good idea. One in particular caught my attention although sadly not to the extent that I remember his name. His thesis was that in the months to come the EU would have to wake up to the fact that there was now a British government with a large majority and so it would have to accede to British demands in the trade negotiations. This too deepened my gloom. What possible difference does the size of Boris Johnson’s majority make to the fundamental facts of the situation? The EU and AEA together remain a market of almost half a billion people while the UK has 65 million. If the UK wants access to that market it will have to accept most of its rules. If it wants to diverge from those rules there will be costs. None of this is altered in the slightest by the fact that the Conservatives have a majority of 80 in the House of Commons. The speaker went on to describe the forthcoming negotiations in confrontational terms. Part of me was waiting for him to suggest that if those nasty Frogs, Krauts and Dagoes didn’t yield to our righteous demands there would be gunboats sailing up the Rhine forthwith.

How the hell does someone this stupid manage to dress himself in the morning?

Then on the lunch time news I heard Anne Widdecombe again. Leading a march away from the European Parliament behind a lone piper. Usually if you hear a lone piper, he or she is likely to be playing a lament and I can’t think of a day in recent history that more merited a lament.

While I’m on Anne Widdecombe and I’m venting, just a footnote about her brand of nasty Catholicism. I was brought up in the Catholic Church and went to Catholic primary school where ten lessons a week were dedicated to religious instruction. As an impressionable child I was much taken with New Testament teaching. You know, the bits about turning the other cheek and loving your neighbour as yourself. By the time I was a teenager I had noticed that many of the people professing these principles were actually amongst the nastiest and most bigoted people around. Love your neighbour [unless your neighbour is a single parent, gay, protestant, Jewish, a sex worker – or just generally different]. This is why Anne Widdecombe is a Catholic nowadays and I’m not.

But I digress.

As I write this in eight hours’ time the UK will have left the European Union. In practical terms not much will change tonight because we have a transition period until the end of the year. That time is supposed to be used to negotiate comprehensive trade agreements not just with the EU but with our other major trading partners throughout the world. I have yet to hear any expert with knowledge of trade negotiations say that this is in even remotely feasible. As things stand the true cliff edge will come on New Year’s Day 2021 and the prospect is hideous. The lunatic currently in charge of the Downing Street asylum, one Dominic Cummings, has been scheming towards this end for years. It’s hard to understand his motivation. Presumably it is a mixture of being very well paid and a manic desire to be disruptive. Whatever it is, he will be pushing the Prime Minister towards the hardest of scorched earth Brexits and it’s difficult to see any way to stop him.

One voice of hope this dismal morning is David Allen Green, a legal commentator whose blog has been a voice of reason over the last three and a half years and who I met in a pub once. Green is not a “Remainer”. In fact he is on record as saying that after the Maastricht Treaty he would have preferred to leave the EU but judged it to be too much trouble. He has been extremely critical, not of the decision to leave in principle, but of the absolutely shambolic way in which three successive Tory governments have attempted to carry it out. Green, along with other legal commentators, has noted that Michel Barnier has proposed an Article 217 (of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU (TFEU)) Association Agreement as the basis for the future relationship between the UK and the EU. This provides a vehicle for mitigating some of the damage that leaving the EU will do to the UK. The EU already has more than 20 such agreements in place with neighbouring countries and the legal framework is well understood. It would be a political hot potato and some of the backwoodsmen of the ERG (the European Research Group, or as I usually think of it, the Provisional Brexit Party) would no doubt oppose it with their customary venom. However, this may be where the Tory majority of 80 plus could come in handy. If Johnson were to wake up to the enormity of what he has done he might see an Article 217 Agreement as a way to avoid the worst stains on his record. With a crushing majority in the Commons and likely support from at least some of the opposition parties he could probably push it through.

Today is not the day for detailed examination of such an option but that day will come soon. Is it likely that someone with Boris Johnson’s history will take a pragmatic course to restrict the damage? In all honesty no. It’s not likely but neither is it impossible. And on this dismal day that tiny ray of hope is the only thing I am clinging on to.

336 Out of 500 Isn’t Too Bad - Is It?

Just over a month ago I set out to walk from the French foothills of the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. I was to walk in the footsteps of pilgrims who have been following the Camino de Santiago since the ninth century. I was completely confident in my ability to keep walking until I got there but as it turned out I was wrong. 

The Camino de Santiago is unique in the world and people come from every continent to follow its various routes to the Cathedral in Santiago where the relics of St James the Apostle are said to lie. The route I chose was the Camino Frances – the French Route, which is by far the most popular and the best supported with infrastructure and information. It starts in the French town of St Jean Pied de Port and follows a path of almost eight hundred kilometres through four major Spanish regions before reaching Santiago de Compostela. Many people decide not to stop there but on carry on another ninety kilometres to Finisterra – “The End of the Earth”, before accepting that the Atlantic Ocean really does represent the end of the road. Whole libraries have been written about the Camino and I don’t really see a need to add to the general information that is out there. I want to concentrate on my own experience and thoughts before, during and after my Camino.

I had planned my Camino for over a year although I had been thinking about it for a lot longer than that. I had read books and articles and seen the film “The Way” starring Martin Sheen. I later learned that I had this last thing in common with pretty much all of the English-speaking pilgrims I encountered. I knew in the abstract that it was a very long walk but I was quite confident. I knew I could walk twenty miles or thirty kilometres in a day without much difficulty. Surely it was just a matter of doing this thirty-one times and I would be home free in Santiago? I assembled my equipment carefully. Word was that your pack should weigh no more than 10% of your body weight. Since I weigh in at well over a hundred kilos that didn’t present a great challenge. By mid-April I was ready to go. 

This isn’t the place for a blow by blow account of my Camino. While I was walking, I posted every day to a dedicated Facebook page and this represents the definitive record. 

https://www.facebook.com/IanontheCamino/. 

What I want to do here is to highlight some of the thoughts, impressions and learnings I had. 

·     Crossing the Pyrenees on foot was one of the greatest physical achievements of my life
·     After I had crossed the Pyrenees on foot I assumed that the rest would be much easier. I was wrong.
·      I didn’t expect to be walking through falling snow in late April. 
·    Going up mountains cooks your lungs. Going down cooks your legs.
·    The most important thing you are carrying is your water bottle.
·     On the Camino you walk alone only for as long as you want to. People from all over the world mix freely and share experiences.
·     The Camino has become extremely popular with Korean people.
·     You get used to sleeping in dormitories in albergues (pilgrims’ hostels) very quickly.
·     The Camino gets very crowded in Easter week when thousands of Spanish people come out to walk for a few days.
·     You can walk with someone for a few hours and then not see them again for days or weeks before walking with them again.
·     Your feet will hurt.

This last point is not as trivial as it may sound. There is something slightly comical about a blister in the abstract but there is nothing whatsoever funny about them in practice. I was feeling fairly smug after the first week when I had no blisters on my feet. That all changed on day eight. It was a long day. Over thirty kilometres from Logroño to Nájera and when I took my boots and socks off at the end of the day I had a bloody right heel. A huge blister had developed and if my socks were not already red the right one certainly would have been now. In all honesty I didn’t think too much of it. I covered it with a dressing and carried on. Over the next six days the damn thing just refused to mend. Constant pressure from the boots just forced the wound deeper, added to which I developed a fever and completely lost my appetite for food. I was reduced to drinking full strength Coca Cola just to get some calories on board. It all came to a head on the long day into Boadilla del Camino on day 14. Another 30K plus day saw me collapse onto my bunk in the albergue and stay there for a couple of hours before trying and failing to eat the Pilgrims’ dinner (which was really good I might add). There were two nurses in the albergue that night and both of them looked at me and pronounced that I had to stop, at least for a couple of days. So I reluctantly conceded that I had to find a plan to recover my health and save what I could of the Camino. I took a series of trains across country via Valladolid and Barcelona to Valencia where we have an apartment. Once there I took myself off to the local health centre where a doctor told me I was too fat to walk the Camino and a nurse told me I should have put Vaseline on my feet before socks. The doctor also told me that one of my small blisters was badly infected and that I would have to take some very strong antibiotics for a week. That more or less decided things. I would lie low in Valencia for a week and then head back north to try to meet up with the friends I had made as they hit the 100km to go mark. Then I went to sleep for four days.

A week later I was on my way back north, this time via Madrid. My heel was still sore but I had worked out a way I could get my boots on and start walking again. I did manage to meet up with fellow pilgrims and over six days I walked another 130km, finishing in Santiago last Wednesday. 

That day in the Cathedral Square in Santiago was one I will always remember. I had left just 12km to walk on the last morning so starting before 7 am I was in front of the Cathedral by 9.30. Many of my friends arrived within the space of a couple of hours and we spent the morning hugging and chatting and reflecting on what we had achieved. Most of us had had some illness or injury problems. I was not the only one to have skipped stages, although I did probably skip more than anyone else who actually managed to come back. Some people did drop out altogether – maybe to come back another time. That evening a group of eleven of us went to dinner together. Since we didn’t have to be on the road at dawn the next morning the festivity went on into the small hours. 

In the end I had walked 541 kilometres, or 336 miles if you prefer, in 20 days. I had passed through a part of France and the Spanish regions of Navarra, La Rioja, Castilla y Leon and Galicia. I had crossed dozens of ancient stone bridges, walked alongside windmills high on mountain ridges and endured rain, snow and force eight gales. 

So what have I taken away from the Camino? A reinforcement of my existing love of Spain. I am so happy to call it my second home. A better appreciation of my own capabilities and perhaps a measure of humility about that. I will always remember that I didn’t manage to do the whole thing but I am a little bit proud that I didn’t just give up and go home. 

Most of all I will never again dismiss lightly the news that a group of refugees has walked from Syria or sub Saharan Africa to Europe, carrying such possessions as they are able. With all the benefits of modern lightweight equipment, good health and nutrition I was unable to go more than two weeks without breaking down. Walking five hundred miles is a big deal indeed. The desperation required to undertake a much longer trek with much less cannot be overestimated. 

One final note. I didn’t do the Camino to raise money but shortly before I left a friend suggested that maybe people would be willing to contribute to a charity on my behalf if I suffered enough. So I set up a Just Giving page on behalf of the Trussell Trust and a number of people have been generous enough to give to it. It’s still open for business and if you think that walking 336 miles in 20 days is worthy of concrete recognition you could always go and add a little to the total.  https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/ian-camino Thank you very much if you do.

I'm Gonna Walk 500 Miles

On the 13^th of April I will be on a stupidly early flight to Bordeaux. From there I will continue by train to St Jean Pied de Port on the French side of the Pyrenees where I have one night booked in a nice-looking private hotel. The next morning I will set out to walk the 769 kilometres to Santiago de Compostela.

Why on earth would a nominally sane man in his early sixties want to do such a thing? Bit late for a mid-life crisis isn’t it?

The answer is that I am going to follow in the footsteps of many thousands of pilgrims who since the ninth century AD have been making the journey to the last resting place of St James the Apostle. For the early pilgrims the journey had huge religious significance and many believed that completing it guaranteed them entry into Heaven after their death. Lacking a single religious bone in my body I am clearly not doing it for the plenary indulgence. For me it is about connecting to a tradition that is older than anything I know, about spending a month moving slowly through the landscape of a country that I do know and love and just maybe learning something about myself as I go. 

I don’t remember when I first heard of the Camino de Santiago but I am sure that when I read about it in David Lodge’s 1995 novel, Therapy, it wasn’t the first time I was aware of the name. Lodge’s protagonist arrives at the Camino towards the end of the story in which he has gone through upheavals in his life and is looking for closure on events from his youth. I think I can safely say that my route to the Camino is not the same as that of “Tubby” Passmore. What’s more (spoiler alert!) he doesn’t even walk the route himself. But if you want to know more you’ll have to read the book. 

My other big exposure to the Camino in popular culture was Emilio Estevez’s film, The Way, from 2010. In the movie Martin Sheen’s character finds himself walking the Camino unexpectedly, in memory of his son who has died suddenly at the starting point. In truth it isn’t a great film. The early scenes in which a group of misfits coalesces around Martin Sheen’s character to walk the route reminded me of nothing so much as The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy meets the Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road. Nevertheless it does give an impression of the Camino in the 21^st century which has stayed with me since I saw it on a flight almost a decade ago.

I’m not really sure what I expect to get out of the Camino. In a way there would be no point in doing it if I knew exactly what to expect. I think it will be tough going. The route that I have been reading about takes 31 days of walking at an average of 25 km per day although one day is listed at over 37 km. I know I can walk these distances as a one-off, but day in and day out for over a month and carrying a pack? We’ll see. I hope that I get to meet other people doing the Camino. In July and August the trails get crowded. They will be less busy in April and May but there should still be plenty of others following the Way. I hope to feel a sense of achievement at the end. I have actually sat on the terrace of a café in the Cathedral Square in Santiago and watched pilgrims arrive. They seem to be elated, triumphant and relieved all rolled into one. Some time in the third week of May I expect to know for myself how it feels.

I have been telling anyone who would listen about my Camino plans for several months. In part because I knew that if I announced my intention widely enough it would be very hard to back out. One of the questions that has been asked more than once is “Are you doing it for charity?”. I must confess that when I was first asked that question I hadn’t even considered it, but it makes an increasing amount of sense. I am a middle-aged, middle-class white male who can afford to take a month out of paid work to pursue a dream. Wouldn’t it be good if I could also be a vector to help out some less fortunate people? So I have decided to set up a JustGiving page for the Trussell Trust. The idea that a fifth of the way through the 21^st century, the sixth biggest economy on earth needs food banks – FOOD BANKS! - to ensure that some of its people have a bare minimum for their families to eat is a complete abomination. However that may be, it’s a fact and since it’s a fact those of us who can afford to do so need to support them.

If you can afford to, please go to Ian Camino at JustGiving.com and give a little to the Trussell Trust to keep that essential backstop in place. In return I promise that every day of the journey I will post images to Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that will offer a glimpse of the reality of life on the Camino. I won’t write many words because I don’t need the additional weight of a device with a keyboard in my backpack but I’ll try to find pictures that are inspiring, amusing or beautiful. And they will be pictures that neither you nor I have never seen before.

A Modest Proposal 2019 Style

It’s the 17^th of January 2019 as I write this. This means that in 71 days’ time the United Kingdom will no longer be a member of the European Union and will become a “third country” with absolutely no special arrangements for its political, legal or commercial relationships with the Union or its remaining 27 member states. This decision has already been taken by Parliament following the 2016 referendum. No further action is needed by anyone to enable this outcome.

This week’s entertainment in Westminster has revolved around an attempt by Theresa May to put in place some modest arrangements that will limit the adverse impact of that cliff-edge transition to third country status. Mrs May’s proposed agreement with the EU was rejected by the House of Commons in the biggest parliamentary defeat ever suffered by a British government so it is quite clear that it is now dead in the water. Where on earth do we go from here?

First of all, let me put my cards on the table. I am a Remainer. I believe very strongly that with all its faults (and there are many), membership of the European Union represents the best way forward for the UK and its people in the world of the twenty-first century. My first preference would be for Parliament to reassert its sovereignty, examine the evidence and conclude that a 52/48 majority in an advisory referendum that was marred by illegal campaigning and misinformation is not sufficient to justify the precipitous step that we will take on 29 March.

That’s my first preference but it ain’t going to happen. We need a plan B. We need a plan B that is acceptable to enough people in Parliament and the country that it can be implemented and accepted. Almost by definition it will not satisfy the ultras on either side of the argument so it has to win a lot of support in the middle ground. This is my attempt at a plan B.

1.  The UK rejoins EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, which it left in 1972 when it joined the European Community as it was at that time. As an EFTA member it also applies to join the European Economic Area which ensures that it remains inside the European Single market.

2. The UK agrees a Customs Union with the European Union.

3. The UK introduces those controls on movement of people, such as limiting the time that EU citizens are able to remain in the country without a job, that have always been available but never implemented

These actions would take time and it is vanishingly unlikely that they could be achieved in the next 70 days. However I believe that the EU27 would look favourably on a request to extend the Article 50 period if the UK were committed to this course of action.

So far so good. This is essentially the “Norway Plus” option that has attracted some, but not enough, support. It would honour the referendum result as the UK would be out of the political structures of the EU and would no longer be part of polices in agriculture and fisheries. Furthermore it would see a significant reduction in its membership dues. The down side of this from a Leaver perspective is that it would be “Brexit in Name Only”. The UK would become a “rule taker” and would be obliged to follow regulations that it has no part in setting. This is why we need to move to step 4.

4. The UK determines that this arrangement has a strict time limit. Five years might be appropriate but arguments could be made for other periods. I recognise that there are difficulties with this suggestion due to the convention that no Parliament may bind its successors. It will require constitutional lawyers and other experts to determine a solution but I am sure that the brains that brought us the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011 can find a way through.

5. During that period a body is constituted to forensically examine all available evidence around the UK’s place in the world and the relationships it needs to have in the future. The body could be a Royal Commission, a Select Committee of Parliament or some other structure. The essential requirement is that it reflects the deep divisions in the country and has a commitment to reconciling them as far as possible. Before the period is up this body makes its recommendations to Parliament which could be

·       Make the temporary EEA/Customs Union arrangements permanent

·       Replace the arrangement with some other set of agreements that better reflect the interests of the British people

·       Apply to rejoin the European Union on the best terms that can be negotiated

·       Rescind all agreements and become a real third country, outside all international agreements

5. Parliament takes the recommendations of the review body and legislates accordingly.

So that’s it. That’s my Plan B. It has some advantages and some drawbacks.

On the plus side it honours the result of the referendum. We leave the European Union but we do so without a knife-edge on March 29^th. There is no need for a hard border in Ireland or customs checks at Dover. Industries that rely on just in time production would not be hamstrung. UK services industries would be able to continue operating in Europe. We would have breathing space to make a proper evaluation of future courses of action and the time necessary to implement them without major disruption.

The down side is that it would further extend a process that many people already believe has gone on too long. Those who want to see an immediate end to free movement would need to be patient. It would delay the UK’s ability to negotiate independent trade agreements but that would be balanced by continuing to benefit from those that the EU has in place.

It is tempting to finish with reference to the corny old joke about asking for directions and being told “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you”. The fact is we are here and whatever direction we take has to start from where we are. I think that this plan could be an outline of a way forward that isn’t a disaster. It’s the best that I can come up with. What about you?

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth

No prizes for recognising that quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is said for the first time by Sherlock Holmes in “The Sign of Four” and then repeated with small variations in a couple of the short stories. Doyle clearly intended it to be remembered by his readers and indeed it has popped into my mind a number of times during the seemingly endless discussions of Brexit that have filled the airwaves for the last three years.

This morning Radio 4’s Today programme had a panel of “ordinary people” giving their opinions on Brexit. As is normally the case with these things there were some strongly opinionated people expressing themselves very forcefully. I was struck by one lady in particular who was of the opinion that the European Union was treating the UK terribly unfairly. I waited for the presenter to remind her that almost every problem in the current situation was entirely of the UK’s own making but I waited in vain. The red lines that Theresa May set out on assuming the Premiership and her haste to trigger Article 50 have led inevitably and inexorably to the situation in which we now find ourselves. The Withdrawal Agreement text that she has agreed with Michel Barnier, improbable as it seems, is pretty much the best possible deal that is available once the impossibilities of her red lines have been eliminated.

So, for that lady on Today (who almost certainly will never read this) and for anyone else who is interested, here is my take on the situation as we await the “meaningful vote” on the Withdrawal Agreement in parliament next week.

The European Union is a group of developed nations that have agreed to pool certain aspects of their sovereignty in order to improve the lives of their citizens and their standing in the world. It has an aspiration to form an “ever closer union” which has been present since its founding treaty and to which the United Kingdom signed up in 1972. As part of pooled sovereignty EU states have assigned it responsibility for a large number of aspects of modern life ranging from licencing of medicines to common standards for food safely to aviation safety to external trade tariffs and many others. Since 1993 its members have agreed to form an internal market in which goods, services, capital and labour may be freely moved without tariffs or obstructions. Interestingly the internal market rules were largely written by a British civil servant, Arthur (later Lord) Cockfield.

UK membership of the European Union has always attracted a share of controversy in a way that simply doesn’t happen in other member countries. Even Greece, which suffered greatly under European rules following the flawed introduction of the common currency, has shown no inclination to leave the union altogether. Other countries are desperate to get in. However it must be recognised that there has long been a body of opinion in the UK that was uncomfortable with the idea of pooled sovereignty and aspired to stand alone in the world, perhaps inspired by communal memories of the 1940s and Churchill’s oratory about fighting on beaches and landing fields. This opinion was most strongly felt in the Conservative party and it eventually led to David Cameron’s decision to use a popular referendum to try to quell the infighting in his own party. Millions of words have been expended on that process and I don’t propose to add to them here. The upshot was a narrow vote to leave the EU and the flight of David Cameron from the public arena.

At that point we had an advisory referendum result that suggested that our sovereign parliament should take action to withdraw the United Kingdom from the European Union. It said absolutely nothing about how long that process should take or what arrangements should be made to replace functions that the EU currently performs on behalf of its member states.

Enter Theresa May who was at that time probably the most authoritarian Home Secretary in British history. She became Prime Minister as all the victors of the referendum campaign like Johnson, Gove, Fox and Leadsom apparently decided that the job was now firmly in the “too difficult” category. Never one to be deterred by logic, common sense or human decency, May immediately declared that the referendum result must be implemented in the most draconian way possible and as fast as possible.

Meanwhile the other EU states moved to get themselves organised for the loss of one of the big three members – the other two being France and Germany. Every one of the other 27 states expressed regret that the UK was going to leave but respected its right to make that decision.

As the UK had decided to leave the Union and Mrs May had decided to eschew available options to reflect the near 50/50 split in the referendum vote by choosing a “softer” version of Brexit it is very hard to see how the remaining 27 members could have acted much differently to the way that they have.

The EU exists to further the interests of its members. The UK has decided to leave and so the starting point for future relationships is that it will not be a member. Therefore it cannot expect to enjoy the benefits of membership as a right. Any limited future access to the benefits of the EU must be negotiated with the remaining members who will, and indeed must, look after their own interests in those negotiations. So for example, if the UK wants access to the internal market for financial services then it must be prepared to offer something of value to the European Union. If it wants to go on selling its marine catch free of tariffs to the EU then it will probably have to concede some access to its waters for EU fishermen. If it wants to avoid border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic and indeed between Dover and Calais it will have to agree to uniform Customs rules on both sides of the border. This is the normal give and take of international negotiation and it is absolutely fine. The immediate problem is that such international negotiations typically take years to conclude and Mrs May’s impetuosity means that we have less than four months left before we are shivering in the cold.

Hence the need for a transitional arrangement and furthermore one that respects international law. The biggest controversy around the transitional agreement is the need for a “backstop” agreement on the Irish border. This need is driven by the impossible contradiction of Mrs May’s red lines. The UK is leaving the internal market and the customs union but there will also be no hard border in Ireland and no difference between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. These positions are logically incompatible. They directly contradict each other. They may each be achieved separately but they absolutely cannot be achieved together.

So, coming back to Sherlock Holmes, if we eliminate this impossibility then what remains – Mrs May’s deal, however improbable is all that is left. Unless of course parliament decides to grow a pair, recognises that the whole thing is lunacy of the highest order and goes right back to square one. With or without a second referendum in which rather more attention is paid to enforcing electoral law and spending rules.

Magical Thinking

I was listening to a conference presentation in Bangkok the other day - he said, shamelessly dropping place names. The subject of the presentation was the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in managing airline pricing decisions. It’s a fairly specialised topic and you will be glad to hear that I don’t intend to say any more about it than that. I was struck however by an illustration that the speaker used to add colour to his remarks. He was talking about how the AI makes decisions that the human user of the system cannot understand. Not only that, but the designers of the system cannot explain how the machine made that particular decision. Just like in Angry Birds.

This game was a brief sensation a few years ago. If you are the one person who has never seen it, it is a smart phone app in which the player uses a virtual catapult to launch improbably-coloured cartoon birds at a variety of targets. In the game the launching is done by dragging a finger across the screen and then letting go. The cartoon bird then “flies” in a parabolic arc just as if it were a real physical object propelled by the release of elastic tension and moving under the influence of gravity. The physics of the situation are modelled accurately and somewhere in the calculations reference must be made to Hooke’s Law of elasticity and Newton’s Laws of motion and gravitation. And the player of the game knows nothing of this. She just knows that if she pulls back the spring the bird will fly in a certain way. If it misses the target she needs to adjust the point of release.

It is an example of a phenomenon of our modern times, a technology that is used by millions of people without any of them understanding how it works. This situation has arisen largely over the last twenty-five years or so and I believe it is having a profound effect on the way society functions. Probably not in a good way.

Until some time around the 1970s there was no technology in widespread use that could not be comprehended by a single individual. When I studied computers in college we started from the electronics – transistors, diodes, resistors and the like. We were taught how these things functioned at the physical level and then how they could be put together to make logic gates and then how these logic gates could be assembled to make computer processors. Then we were taught how these processors could be controlled using binary codes input as varying voltages and how these codes could be built up into computer languages with which we could do useful work like calculating linear regressions. We were undergraduates and it was reasonable for us to grapple with computers from the flow of electrons in semiconductors all the way up to high-level languages making sophisticated calculations.

The same considerations applied to other technologies like radio and TV sets, motor cars and aircraft. It wasn’t that these were products of lone artisans working from their cottages, but somewhere along the line there was a group of people who understood everything about how they worked.

Not any more.

Modern technology is built in layers. In any kind of intelligent device the base layer is silicon that has been etched at nanometre scales to create billions of transistors on a scrap of material the size of a fingernail. Chip fabrication is an exquisitely precise function that requires factories costing billion of dollars to set up and run. The engineering of those chips is a highly specialised skill possessed by a small number of people world wide. The next layer up is the code that allows those chips to do work, responding to physical inputs and manipulating voltages that eventually translate to useful outputs. On top of that are the higher-level languages, the networks, the aggregation and packaging of devices, the operating systems and finally the development environments in which programmers can create apps like Angry Birds. Each layer in the process has its own specialists with their own esoteric skills. At each layer the engineers and programmers typically know nothing about the internal workings of the layer above or below. At best they know things along the lines of “If I do this then the machine will respond by doing that”.

And the end-user? She only knows that if she slides her finger just so, the cartoon bird will fly across the screen and break the glass in the greenhouse. The processes by which that happens are completely unknown and if anyone tried to explain them the response would probably be glassy-eyed incomprehension.

Angry Birds is just one trivial example of the way that technology has advanced to a point where it might just as well be magic. This was expressed by science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke in his third law which states[1];

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

I think that we have reached a point in our development at which Clarke’s third law has real practical consequences.

We now have a generation of people who have grown up with technologies that do amazing things and literally nobody knows how they do them. Some people know parts of the story and they also know that colleagues and friends know other parts. Rational human beings accept the expertise of their peers and take on trust the pieces for which they do not have direct understanding. The problem comes with the irrational ones.

If nobody can understand the full functioning of a device then it becomes possible to believe more or less anything about it. Maybe there are tiny little birds hiding inside your iPhone for your entertainment. Ludicrous idea? Of course it is but when the real explanation is too complicated to comprehend why not believe something simpler? If it were just the workings of video games then maybe this wouldn’t matter, but it isn’t.

Global climate change is primarily caused by the emission of certain gasses into the atmosphere. The mechanism is actually quite simple, provided you have a basic understanding of atomic physics and electromagnetic radiation. But for the many millions of people without that knowledge it’s a phenomenon on a par with shooting birds across a screen. And so it is characterised as “unknowable”, which allows cretins like Nigel Lawson to go on radio and TV and claim either that it doesn’t exist or that it is entirely an act of God and beyond human intervention. 

During the Brexit debate Michael Gove infamously said that the British people have had enough of experts and he may well have been right. People are so accustomed to technology that does things for them as if by magic that on an unconscious level they believe that everything in their lives is amenable to magical intervention. Of course it must be possible to walk away from the world’s biggest and most prosperous trading bloc with nothing to put in its place and still have £350 million more per week to spend on health care. The reasons why this is untrue are complex and depend on an understanding of underlying factors, most of which are opaque to the mythical man in the street. So-called “experts” are really spoilsports who deny the existence of magic despite all the evidence of Netflix, Twitter and a doorbell that shows you on your phone screen who is trying to get in.

At some point however the magic has to stop. As that great philosopher Montgomery Scott so often remarked

“Ye cannae change the laws of physics Jim”.

Magic isn’t real. Physics is. Climate change is with us already as the experts have always known it would be. The “laws” of economics are less well defined than those of physics but on the whole people who spend a lifetime observing and studying economic phenomena are more likely to be correct than those who just pull ideas out of their hats following a booze and fags session down at the Dog and Duck.

The greatest British novelist of the late 20^th century was Iain (M) Banks[2]. In his science fiction writings he created a universe, The Culture, in which humans and artificial intelligence live side by side and on the whole rationality prevails. It’s a captivating utopian vision. Some humans display irrationality – sometimes on a monumental scale, but these are clearly the aberrations. They are the exceptions that prove the rule and they usually (but not always) get their comeuppance. I’d like to think that Banks’s vision offers a distant goal. A way of thinking about how societies might evolve as technology advances at a rate beyond human ability to keep up. I’d like to think it but I’m afraid that the descent into magical thinking that we have seen over the last few years makes me fear that we might not make it.

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[1] Discovering the first two laws is left as an exercise for the reader.

[2] You may disagree but then we have to fight