Exterior: Antarctica. A dog runs across the snow, pursued by a helicopter. As we watch, the dog runs to US Outpost 31, where it encounters the research team. The Norwegian occupants of the Helicopter shout warnings (in Norwegian) and shoot at the dog.

Dog (singing to research team and base crew, to the tune of ‘A wand’ring minstrel, I’)

A wand’ring monster, I
A thing of cells proactive.
Your planet is attractive
Mankind is a warm place to hide

My body it is wrong
Through many shapes it ranges
And as my purpose changes
I shift my supple form!
I shift my supple form!

Are you my future shape?
You will be mine, tomorrow
I’ll be you, synthetic.
I’ll be your aesthetic
Duplicate, genetic
There’s no escape,
Tomorrow, tomorrow.

****

Interior: The dog pads through the station, looking through doors until it finds NORRIS sitting alone in a room and pauses to sing before moving to attack.

Dog (Singing, sotto voce, to the tune of ‘With cat-like tread’)

With dog-like tread
Upon my prey I steal
And when he’s dead,
I’ll be the one who’s real.

His long johns torn
I’ll put them in the bin
I’ll be re-born
And hide within his skin

(Ta-ran ta-ra, ta-ran ta-ra)

NORRIS sings

So stealthily our canine slinks
While MacReady plays his chess and drinks
Come hound, who walks our station
You innocent Alsatian
That’s not an affectation
As through our base you wend
I hope you’ll be our friend!

(Ta-ran ta-ra, ta-ran ta-ra)

The dog takes over the singing.

With dog-like tread
Upon my prey I steal
And when he’s dead,
I’ll be the one who’s real.

****

Interior, later: MACREADY covers the crew with his flamethrower as he tests their blood, one at a time, with a hot wire. As he tests PALMERS’s, it responds and PALMER immediately begins to transform, bursting into song as he does so (to the tune of ‘I am the very model of a modern major-general’).

I am the very model of a polymorphic alien
With shapes which range from recognisable to rank pnigalion
I want to take up residence in your bodies mammalian
But failing that I’ll settle for configurations avian
I’m very well constructed your abilities to simulate
Your speech patterns and actions I will quickly learn to emulate
When under threat my body then will twist and change with shapes innate
I’ll try and leave my cells in you as they’ll cause you all to mutate

The monster attacks WINDOWS, infecting him. MACREADY clicks at his flamethrower and finally ignites it, burning the creature and its victim. At which point GARRY Takes up the refrain.

As leader of this mission you will very rarely hear me swear
As I make the hard decisions in regards to crew and hardware
But I am not prepared to deal with creatures come from who knows where
So when you find the time if you’d untie me from this fucking chair?

****

Exterior, later still: Outpost 31 is in flames, and MACREADY staggers from the blazing wreckage. He encounters CHILDS, and the two of them look at each other, warily. MACREADY takes a swig from a bottle of whisky and offers it to CHILDS, who drinks from it. The two look at each other in mutual understanding of what this means, and CHILDS starts to sing (to the tune of ‘For he is an Englishman’).

He is American!
For in drinking down the liquor
He showed (and that’s the kicker),
That he is American!

For he might have been Mercurian,
From Mars, Moon or Venusian,
Or perhaps a Jovian!
Or perhaps a Jovian!

But in spite of all temptation,
To become an evil alien,
He remains American!
He remains American!

A CHORUS of alien forms burst from the ice, included a hugely distorted dog, a tentacled monstrosity and a two-headed abomination. They join in the singing as the credits roll.

For in spite of all temptations
To succumb to evil aliens
He remains American!

CURTAIN

I’ve spent the last few weeks gazing in awe – in the original sense, implying mild horror – at the aftermath of the US elections. Back in 2016 I said Trump would win, and win he did, and this time round it was pretty clear that Biden was going to carry it, and he did. What I didn’t see coming was the explosion of allegations of theft and vote rigging and, more importantly, just how many people would go along with it.

I mean, Trump was always going to kick up a fuss about losing because he knows no other way, but the sheer volume of people buying it caught me on the hop. Otherwise apparently functional human beings with jobs and families seemingly sincerely believed the story of how the election had been stolen, no matter how often the story changed – and one sure sign of an unreliable narration is the terms of the narrative change as evidence changes so the conclusion can remain the same.

First it was Arizona and then Wisconsin and Michigan, before Georgia and then the Trump Watermark, followed by Dominion and the Kraken and then some videos and then the Texas Supreme court bid… and all along it was ‘Okay, so this didn’t work, so let’s move on to the next idea that fits the conclusion.’.

In spite of all that I’ve been pretty certain all the way through that it was all bullshit, for one main reason: I’ve spent much of the last decade of writing bullshit on the internet to milk people for clicks, and I know it when I see it.

I’ve generated tens, if not hundreds of millions of pageviews which means there’s a reasonable chance that you’ve read my content and never knew it. If so, thanks for your clicks.

You see, there’s an art of sorts to creating clickbait. It doesn’t have to be true, or even part true. It helps to have a kernel of truth in there to build a narrative around, but it’s not necessary. What’s more important is that your audience want to believe it because it speaks to how they see themselves and the world around them. I’ll give you an example.

During the 2016 election cycle, Donald Trump accused Barack Obama of founding ISIS. In response to this, I wrote a piece saying that Obama had accused Trump of founding the Village People in return. It did very well, generating several hundred thousand views, and judging by the comments the reason it did well was because people believed it, or wanted to. It reflected something about how Obama supporters saw themselves, and him. Calm, collected in the face of fury, and possessed of a dry, intelligent, disparaging wit. And it’s speaking to that self-image, and how people think the world ought to be and not how it is, that makes a good piece of clickbait. It draws upon the narratives of how people see themselves, and expands upon that narrative. Depicting actual reality is entirely secondary to the process.

If you’re going to try and base your clickbait with a kernel of reality, the first thing it’s important to do when constructing such a narrative is aggressively cherrypick your data points. People tell me the evidence of fraud is overwhelming, which I guess makes it Schrodinger’s Evidence; simultaneously overwhelming and insufficient to convince a single judge at the same time. That’s what happens when you only look at supporting evidence, and why these cases have consistently fallen apart in courtrooms where there is an adversarial process with people who’ll challenge the claims and offer a different or more complete narrative.

What you’re really doing is taking individual points which support the narrative you’re creating and amplifying them. If six people on twitter say something stupid, make it a thousand. If there’s a video which is uncertain or can be interpreted in different ways, tell the story about it people want to believe.
But it’s not just that. Once people have started to believe the narrative they’ll start finding their own supportive datapoints. I’ve literally had people tell me my own clickbait is true, and find evidence to support events I know I made up. It is possible to create a reality for people to live in to a degree they’ll prefer it to the real world, and they’ll seek confirmation that the reality you made up is the real one. And then you can write stuff that supports the story they’ve begun to tell themselves about the story you created. If you’re lucky, it becomes self-perpetuating.

The second thing about clickbait is that the story you told yesterday does not matter. You create a new one for today. This is why clickbait narratives change so quickly. The story you told yesterday will get debunked quickly enough so you have to keep moving it forward. So the Arizona Affidavits were thrown out of court as they fell apart under cross examination yesterday? Who cares! Today there’s 700,000 more votes than ballots in Wisconsin. And by the time the fact checkers have got to that you’ve already moved on to signatures in Georgia. It doesn’t matter if it’s not true. At every step some people will believe it and fall by the wayside and cling to it, meaning that reach of the debunking will lessen as you move. It’s about generating noise. Creating smoke where there is no fire, or next to none. If you’re creating smoke you cannot let it disperse enough to let your audience see clearly, so you’ll have to light a new source for it tomorrow.


So how can you avoid falling for created narratives like this? I have a few of suggestions:

1: Don’t rely for your news on people whose business model relies upon you clicking on their stuff. Doing so makes it in their interest to hold your attention, and the risk that they will do so by exaggerating, cherrypicking and bullshitting is so high is becomes almost impossible to separate the wheat from the chaff. If you are not paying for your media then the product being sold is you, and the best click – and therefore advertising - rates are got from angry, frightened and frustrated people.
Instead, pay directly for your news wherever possible.

2/ Don’t look for evidence that supports your position. Look for evidence that proves you wrong, and look for it honestly. If you can’t find it, then, and only then, assume you might have a point.
This is especially true if you encounter a perfectly logical straight-line narrative, each step supported, which leads to a single inescapable solution.
More; if the supporting evidence for the conclusion you’re following changes more than twice, odds on it’s bullshit. Assume it is until proven otherwise.

3/ If you think I’m not talking about you because you’re really smart and would never fall for this, then thank you for your clicks. You’re my easiest customer. The person who is so sure they can never be wrong; the die-hard Brexit remainer who just knows as a matter of fact you’re right? That’s you? I’ve written a shitload of remain clickbait and you went for it. The Democrat who thought that piece about Trump was just so funny? Yeah, cheers for that too.

4/ The best defence is not to be sure. To say to yourself ‘Really? Maybe I’d better double-check that’ when the evidence seems overwhelming. Imagine the internet is a courtroom and you’re on the jury but the court has only provided a prosecution lawyer. You’re going to have to fill the defence in for yourself.

The weird thing about all of this is that back in about 2012-13 I was offered a gig writing for Breitbart. They didn’t even know who I was, they just encountered my online troll persona and thought my click generating ability would probably be a good fit for them. It’s odd to think that if I’d taken it it’s perfectly possible I might be creating the rigged election narrative now, rather than critiquing it. Life takes us in strange directions.

There is only one picture known with certainty to be of William Scott; a glass-plate picture taken at a town meeting in the city of Miracle, Kansas (pop 1,927) in 1875. The picture was perhaps a test or an accident, as much of the picture is blurred and indistinct due to most of the subjects not staying still as you would expect of a posed portrait of the time, but instead they are moving around as if in debate and conversation.
However, William Scott sits just off centre, still and clear and gazing with a calm passivity out of the frame and at you, the viewer, like he knows you’re looking and couldn’t give two figs for your thoughts. He wears a suit a little too large, as if he had been a bigger man when he bought it and was shrunken in his frame since. He sports a moustache which might have been neatly trimmed a week or so beforehand, and his wide brow is crowned by light hair slicked back with oil. A pair of spectacles hang from his breast pocket although no record ever suggests he was known for wearing them. An affectation, perhaps.

William had moved to Miracle from back East a year or two previous to the picture being taken. He wasn’t unusual in this – the West at the time was full of drifters like him. Men looking to make their fortunes, or on the run from the law or unhappy love affairs a thousand miles away, or just dreamers hoping that tomorrow would be better than yesterday. He rolled into town with two trunks and a heavy black doctors bag to his name that town gossip claimed was full of gold; if it were, and what became of it if so, none could later say, but in years to come it was not unknown for folk to try dredging up the river bend near what became his house in hope of finding it. Of course they never did turn up any treasure. Just more bones, and sometimes worse.

On his arrival he’d taken lodging with the widow Mrs Knight on West Street, just up from the Presbyterian chapel she attended every Sunday and insisted her lodgers did too. Unsurprisingly, many of her lodgers did not stay long and William Scott was no exception. He was quick to take a house down towards the river on Grant Street. Not the biggest, but by no means the smallest neither. A little secluded though. Set back from the street it was, in a large yard with a fence of middling height. Several trees stood in the yard, but after the hanging they were all cut down and burned by neighbours who said sometimes the wind made queer noises which they didn’t care for through their branches at night.

You couldn’t rightly say that William Scott made himself neighbourly from his new home, but nobody said he was a hermit. He had a head for numbers which he made use of, helping people with their taxes and their accounts and so forth, and got enough of a name for himself that after a time he was invited along to town council meetings to look over the figures and help with the consideration of any plans for developing the city the members might have. Maybe this was how he came to end up in that picture which was mentioned earlier.

He was also passing good at playing a flute, which in a place with as little entertainment as Miracle was enough to get him enough invitations to satisfy any social urges he might have, not that he took up that many of them. He did make himself as friendly as he might with a certain sort of woman – widows and unmarrieds, you understand – but there was no suggestion of anything improper or of him going what you might call a-wooing. Later some suggested that he’d just being acting a part by seeking their society, which didn’t seem unlikely.

Mostly, though, he kept himself to his home. He didn’t engage a maid or a cook, which some took to mean he was short of means but those with eyes in their heads didn’t believe that. He got enough packages; books, it seemed, from back East in New England and sometimes further afield, and his library got a good reputation about town for those who were lucky enough to be invited to visit. He didn’t drink himself but he kept some pretty good whisky for guests, and when word got around it wasn’t unusual for gentlemen of the town to find an excuse to pop by on an evening. Sometimes they’d be invited in, sometimes not.

He’d dine alone most nights, and cooked for himself too mostly, which was seen as unusual, and then the lamp from his study window would often be lit late and people with business to be up after midnight would sometimes say they’d seen the light moving around in his house at all sorts of hours and there’d be some idle speculation in both the temperance hall and the saloon bar as to what he was about.

As a rule, though, people left him be as much as he liked and he was as sociable as he liked, and everyone was happy with the arrangement. It was sometimes said he was queer in his manner but there was nothing unusual about that in a time and place when people moved about so much for their own reasons.

It was a few days after the picture was taken that George Fletcher, who was the law in Miracle at that time, took it on himself to have words with William Scott. George was a man of the old school. Some said too old for the job of upholding the law in a modern city with the twentieth century just around the corner, but he didn’t take to fools and wasn’t above breaking a head or two when things got rowdy which made him popular with the townsfolk so he kept his job. He’d had his own company in the War Between the States, so he knew how order and discipline worked and he knew when to look the other way too.

Anyhow, George had called on a few of his regular boys that afternoon, and asked them if they didn’t mind acting as his deputies for what he didn’t expect to be a difficult job, but there was a chance it would be an unhappy one.

So George and a few boys got together around five or maybe half past the hour and set off. He took his revolver along with him for security’s sake, and a length of wood which acted as a walking stick but which those who knew said had a wicked knob on the end which George had drilled out and filled with lead, just in case. The boys were surprised by the degree to which George was taking whatever it was he wanted to talk to Mister Scott about seriously, but he knew his business and they were just along for the ride. As it was, George just told the boys – Dutch Bradford, Sandy Johnson and a couple of others - he wanted them in case William didn’t get the message which, as things transpired, he didn’t.

The reason the law decided to have words with Scott was because a boy of the town, Louis Depelier, whose parents were good people notwithstanding their being French, had been missing a day after going out to do some fishing in the river and after asking about George Fletcher had heard from Mr and Mrs Franklin Boyson, who lived at the head of Grant Street, that they’d seen Scott and the boy talking the day before and thought something had passed between them.

Now, I don’t think that George was expecting any trouble from a tall drink of water like Scott to really believe he needed to take precautions, but on the other hand he hadn’t lived to see the other side of fifty through a war and a lawman’s job by taking risks, so along went the stick and the pistol and a few boys who on another day he might be just as busy sobering up as working with.

And that’s how it came to pass that not twenty minutes later Dutch Bradford came bursting through the door of the saloon all covered in blood and hollering fit to burst that George Fletcher was dead.

This was met as you’d expect; that moment of silence when something completely out of the ordinary happens followed by a frenzy of activity. Someone rustled up a drink which Dutch put down himself as fast as a man could and then out came some story which didn’t make much sense but the end was clear – George Fletcher was a dead man, as were all the other boys who had gone with him, and it was William Scott as had done it.

The tale went like this – no, wait. I’ll come on back to that. The pace picks up here so I’ll run with it and return to the telling of the longer yarn later. Once folks had got the idea that William Scott – yes, that William Scott – had somehow done to death four strong men in less than twenty minutes a commotion broke out like you wouldn’t believe. Whilst the good people of Miracle were all for the due process and the rights of man clearly laid out in the constitution, they were also not ones for standing for sudden death of one of their own and it wasn’t a few minutes more before there was a length of rope made available and a small crowd all armed; those who had firearms got them, those who didn’t took whatever they had to hand such as pick handles and I believe even an iron poker from the saloon stove.

By six twenty a crowd dozens strong was headed down Grant Street, every one of them looking for the barrel of a gun or listening for the ring of shot, because how else could a man like Scott have killed George Fletcher? Instead, what happened next none of them expected because up the street to meet them came the suspect himself, smiling and walking like it was a sunny Sunday afternoon and he’d just met his neighbours on a stroll. He was wearing some big coat – some said it had a hood, but nobody could properly remember later – which left his arms bare and those were smeared with gore like a man who’d just killed a pig. It was on his face and in his hair too, and there were cuts on his arms which looked regular like he’d done them himself instead of gotten them in a fight.

There was a pause, and then Scott apologised for not wearing his hat so as he could greet them properly, and then there was a roar and like a dam bursting the people of Miracle descended on William Scott and hanged him from his own tree.

He kicked for some time. Longer than would be considered normal for a man doing the dance and through it all he didn’t say a word or cry out. Just made some croaking noise over and again that sounded almost gloating. Like a laugh, if a frog could laugh. People threw things at him and some shot at him as he bobbed about, as the body of Sandy Johnson lay half out of the door of Scott’s house and it was clear that however he had been killed it had got him in the back. It was the shots stopped him kicking, in the end.

When the excitement was over, Jeb Halliwell from the livery took charge. He and a few others went into the house and came out with an expression I can’t describe. He’d found enough of Louis Depelier to be sure it was him, and of George Fletcher he said any funeral would have to be an empty casket for all the difference it would make. He wouldn’t let the Pastor in to take a look, and said what he’d seen showed Scott had been some kind of Satanist and the best thing to do would be burn the place to the ground with everything in it. They nailed up the door and windows and went to tell the town what had occurred leaving William Scott swaying in the breeze over his front yard.

Of course, in the morning his body had gone, and nobody could say where.

So for Dutch Bradford’s tale. He’d been shooting the breeze with Caleb Harris and the Guilfoyle twins when George Fletcher had come up and asked him for a hand, and he didn’t need to think much but to say yes. Dutch was the kind of man that the law being well-disposed to him would surely come in handy down the line and the chance to maybe throw a lawful punch or two at someone smaller than himself was not unwelcome neither.
The band of them had made their way down Grant Street with Fletcher all grim and quiet, and his little posse all ribbing each other about what the look on Scott’s face might be when they hoved up at his door. Sandy Johnson was even offering five dollars in silver that Scott would positively soil himself at the sight of them if anyone would take the wager.

At Scott’s door, Fletcher knocked and then banged with his stick, and after a moment they was met with a shout from an upstairs window to the effect that Mister Scott would be down presently if they’d be so kind as to wait awhile. Looking up to the cry, there was a light in the upstairs window all flickering as if there were a fire lit in the room, but not the warm light of a fire but of cold colors – blues and yellows and whites. Seeing this, and satisfying himself that that front door was bolted locked, George Fletcher put his shoulder to the hinges and had it open in a moment. Leading the boys in he started up the flight of stairs in the hall only for William Scott to appear at the top, and if anyone had taken Sandy Johnson’s bet they would have won it as he did not even slightly disconcerted to see them.

He was wearing nothing but that same coat garment and a pair of pants, and he had some sign cut into his chest, all bloody. What was worse – although none could check it later seeing as how the body vanished – was that his chest and belly were as white and pale and unhealthy as any man had ever seen and he had ribs all the way down to his hips. Like a fish or an eel, Dutch said.

So George the lawman raised up his stick and started to tell Scott he needed to answer a few questions, but he was dead before he’d finished speaking. Scott moved with an unearthly speed down the stairs and what he did to George when he hit him made a spray of liquid and fragments out of what had been a man a moment before which doused the hall and his boys like he’d turned on a hose.

It was Dutch’s good fortune, such as it was, that he’d been last in as he was the only one to come out as they all turned and ran in such fear as no man ought to feel. Sandy Johnson was got, like I said before, as he ran through the door a second after Bradford and Dutch said his death made a noise which he’d hear for the rest of his life when he woke in the night and with nothing but his fears and memories for company. More than anything I do believe that it was that noise in the cold hours of the night with only a bottle for company that did for him.

For upward of a dozen years until he died, Dutch was not the same man as he was before that afternoon. He would sometimes be found deep in his cups, muttering to himself ‘Like an eel’. Whatever the truth of what he had seen, it took its toll. He wasn’t forty when they buried him and it was drink did most of the work.

Why Scott didn’t pursue Dutch and finish him too, I do not know, but I surmise he had some unpleasant business of his own to finish as the cuts on his arms were to appear between the death of George Fletcher and the arrival of the townsfolk a short while later. Who can say what a man driven by the devil might do to himself if he’ll kill another?

Come the morning, Jeb Halliwell organised a bonfire and on it went everything he could pull from Scott’s house; all the books and odd trinkets and gewgaws he’d had sent from him from all over. A lot of the books were in foreign tongues and some had illustrations which it didn’t do anyone any good to see. On they went into the blaze, but the blaze itself was wrong, somehow, with the colours all blues and yellows and whites and it lacked the heat you’d expect. Instead of getting some sort of feeling of ending, folk who’d come to watch drifted away silently and alone and not looking at one another like that feeling of wrongness had been made worse rather than better by trying to fix it.

With Scott’s body vanishing and then the fire, the town was an unhappy place thereafter. The Depelier boy’s parents took to arguing and then one night the wife killed the husband in what she said was self-defence, and that hostile spirit was by no means unusual in Miracle.

That stretch of river got an ugly reputation too, from there all the way down to Kaw Lake. People said the fish dried up, and worse. Bones that weren’t from any fish, or any sheep or cow for that matter, would be dredged from the river or found on the shore, and sometimes a fisherman might not return, or a boat found drifting and empty on a clear day. By the time Dutch Bradford died the town of Miracle had a population of 443, and all the grand plans of the city fathers had come to nothing. The library was never finished and nor was the memorial for the War Between the States. Nobody ever really said anything specific, but whatever it was that William Scott did, or was, poisoned the air in those parts and none really wanted to stay. They drifted away to other towns, leaving boarded up houses and chapels to rot in the rain.

They say, almost thirty years later, that a boy out swimming was feared trapped underwater and drowned in the Arkansas River miles downstream and they fired cannon and threw dynamite into the flow to try and dislodge his body from whatever snag had caught it. Instead of a boy’s body though, one explosion caused a gout of thick slimy blood out of the stream. Whether that was the end of William Scott none can say, but then I truly do not know what else it might have been.

For reasons I don't even want to try and work out, I've had this in my head to the tune of Blink-182's 'All the small things' all afternoon.

All the Smallfilms
Bagpuss, Engines
Clangers, Noggins
Pogles and Pingwings
Lost things I know
Put in the window
Sleeping, then waking, small dreams, you’re making
Say it was so, so long ago
Saggy cloth cat, carry me home.

- "I'll have six pints, a chicken vindaloo and then go out clubbing!"
- "I think I'll go clubbing this week."
- "Shit, I'm going clubbing next month. I'd better start training."

I've lately been reading The Fellahin of Upper Egypt by Winifred Blackman. It's an anthropological study of the peasantry of Egypt in the 1920s, written first hand by Blackman who spent years living in peasant villages and directly integrated herself into the lives of the people so she could understand them better. It is, to my knowledge, the only book of its kind. Blackman writes with a schoolmarmish air, both interested and detached from the people and the beliefs.

One thing that struck her, and me from her description, was the way that although the peasantry were nominally Muslim and Coptic the reality was those belief systems were little more than a thin veneer over far older beliefs. Although the top layer of belief was from the Koran or the Bible, scratch that and these people lived in a world of the Evil Eye and desert spirits, Ifrit and magic and sorcerors. Every village had a magician who could, for a price, cast spells using the Koran as his or her spellbook to help you find love, reveal lies or find buried treasure.

For all that the books of both Christianity and Islam forbade it, their entire lives revolved around magic and the belief in it one way or another.

As I read, something struck me. The magic has gone away. The march of rationalism has killed genies and spells and the hope of magic treasure and all it has left behind is the words of the book which once controlled them. I got to wondering whether when you take the magic away, all you leave is fundamentalism and if that's where it has come from.

I went to see Rogue One last night. I liked it; choppy opening, sagged in the middle, and then pulled it all out at the end for one of the best action/ battle finales I've ever seen. Not a truly great film, but a pretty good one. I like Gareth Edwards' slightly distant, observational directorial style as well.

About twenty minutes from the end, though, I sat bolt upright as a thought struck me. "I know how this is going to end", I thought. And I was wrong. As it turns out, I knew how it should have ended.

So; closing reel. The big battle in space providing cover whilst our plucky heroes have to get the Death Star plans off planet, the transmission made, the sequence as the Empire tries to stop the rebels escaping with the plans. The Tantive IV makes its jump to lightspeed with Vader in pursuit and fade to black...

And then, as the close, before the credits roll...

FANFARE.

"It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy...."

END.

That's how it should have ended, and would have done if I'd written it.

Hey LJ. Been a while.

It’s odd. You write about economics and politics for fifteen years and all of a sudden people start asking you about it.

In the last few weeks I’ve had – I think – five people say something to me to the effect of “David, nobody in the EU referendum, in or out, seems to be arguing on the facts. It’s all just mudslinging and tales of terror if you don’t do as they tell you. I’d like to vote on the facts, but I don’t’ know what they are. Can you help?”

I’m not kidding. People are coming to me of all people for advice on how they should vote on a matter which will affect their life. That’s either a huge compliment to me or a slamming indictment of the quality of political debate. Actually, it’s probably both.
Now the referendum is certainly a tricky topic to talk about. The debate on social media at least has been at times fraught and personal. If you want to leave, the only explanation is that you’re a racist and a xenophobe. If you want to stay, you’re stupid at best and a traitor at worst. Whichever way you’re thinking of voting, someone not only thinks you’re stupid but they actively hate you for it. This is hardly an atmosphere of civilised debate.

So why aren’t people debating on the facts? That’s easy. There are sod all facts about what will happen if we stay or leave, and those that there are are debatable, capable of being interpreted in different ways, and if acknowledged can sometimes be used to support the opposition as much as your own case.

Take, for example, the different economic predictions. The predictions made by Remain are based on the assumption that all the benefits of membership would be lost (and they do exist), but also that after leaving no benefit whatsoever would accrue. In fact, they assume that the UK government would make no policy changes whatsoever in the event of Brexit. Clearly this is not what would happen.
On the other hand Leave discounts any and all benefits of membership and paints a happy world of sun-filled uplands after the fact. Clearly this wouldn’t happen either.
Thus neither official position is correct. You see the problem.

In truth, the picture is messy and complex and the facts and reasonable assumptions and predictions support both camps to a greater or lesser extent. This means neither can give any ground as it’s all so unclear any concession is immediately seized upon and played to the full extent by the opposition.

So what we’re seeing is that self-selected groups think you should agree with them and any disagreement is met by vitriol rather than debate, because debate with few facts and no concessions is pretty hard. The internet is a lousy place to have debates like this, as 140 characters isn’t enough to put forward arguments; however, it is just enough to score points and move on.

***************************************

To begin, it’s worth considering why this is happening now. You’ll have seen it in the news – populist, nationalist, protectionist and anti-establishment politics are on the rise everywhere. Le Pen, Trump, AFD, Pegida, Syriza, Golden Dawn, Corbyn, Farage, Beppe Grillo, whatever the groups in Scandinavia are calling themselves, Putin. There are more I’m sure. To my mind these are all expressions of the same thing. Or things, because I think there are two of them.
Firstly, we’re in what I would call post-crash politics. This is something I’ve been looking at a lot recently and had planned one of those huge old posts that I used to make on it. You see 2008 wasn’t a unique event. Over the last 300 years or so there have been seven or eight similar speculative credit bubble collapses, and a similar pattern ensues afterwards. To summarise, the point of greatest political instability does not follow immediately after the collapse. It happens 7-10 years afterwards. In other words, right about now.

I might be wrong in this analysis, btw, it’s something I’m working on. But give me the benefit of the doubt. I believe this is the point where the pustule of political unhappiness in the wake of the crash comes to a head and bursts for good or ill.

The second reason is something that was first outlined seventy years ago; if you have a combination of open migration, generous welfare and a minimum wage you will inevitably see a rise in nationalism. Quite simply quality of life in one place will always be lower than the welfare and minimum wage in another and you will get migration from the one to the other. This migration will cause resentment and fear amongst the current population proportionate to numbers and integration, and the reaction to this will be protectionism and nationalism as political forces.
In the interests of clarity here, I’m not saying that migrants come to take benefits. I’m saying generous welfare makes low-paid work economically unbeneficial to recipients in a way it is not to migrants from places where standards of living are lower.

Look at those factors in combination and you see an outcome of fear, concern, blame, economic protectionism and nationalism.
You may not agree with my assessment, but I think you have to admit that the effects have happened as described – and whilst I’m trying to be non-partisan here, I will take a moment to say See? I told you.

To my thinking David Cameron has always been a lucky general – lucky in his opposition, lucky in his circumstances, lucky in his results, and when he called the referendum a few years ago I think he made two incorrect assumptions. Firstly I think that Angela Merkel promised him a better deal when she stayed at Chequers for Christmas which emboldened him and she wasn’t able to deliver when it came to it, and second that he kicked the can far enough down the road in the hope that something would come up – Le Pen would win something in France or the Euro would go down in flames or somesuch – to make the whole point moot.
Neither of those happened and suddenly shit, as they say, has got real for Mr. Cameron.

So, what are the facts of the debate, and how true are they?

I’ll start with big ones and then work down from there.

Fact: If the UK leaves the EU it will be a catastrophe for all concerned.
Status: False

It is being quite loudly shouted by all concerned that if the UK leaves the EU, it could well lead to war, financial meltdown, a rain of frogs and dogs and cats living together. Everyone will be consumed in a catastrophe.
So the EU says it would be catastrophic, but it wouldn’t be such a big catastrophe that it is willing to consider changing the rules to avoid it. In other words, the EU considers the risk load of changing the rules to be greater than the risk of a member leaving.

Fact: Up to three million jobs would be lost.
Status: Hyperbole with some truth.

If you add up everyone in the UK involved in trade with the EU in some capacity it comes to about 3m people, and this assumes that all trade with the continent immediately ceases and everyone is sacked.
So that’s not going to happen.

The question is, therefore, how badly trade would be affected by Brexit and the answer to that is: nobody knows. Nobody knows what sort of deal would be the outcome; if you want out then it will be sunshine and flowers. If you want in, then it will be doom. The honest answer is somewhere in the middle, and probably the lower end because people wanting to make a profit tends to trump most other considerations given half a chance, and the with the state of the Eurozone economy these days it’s not like they don’t need it.
Being realistic: if the UK leaves the EU there will be some sort of slowdown or recession. How severe is debatable. Now, as you’ll know from this post I wrote a couple of years ago I think we’re due that anyway (in fact, I suspect we’re having it right now). See below for more on this.

So, yes, there will be job losses. The number will probably be a function of the final trade tariff the UK gets with the EU (see below), offset by any deals done elsewhere plus recovery. What will that number be? Nobody at all knows. Considerably fewer than 3m, but definitely greater than none.

Fact: If the UK leaves the pound will drop and inflation will rise.
Status: Nobody knows.

Everyone says it: The Treasury, the BoE, the IMF, Deutsch Bank, Goldman Sachs and more all say this will happen. So will it?

Well, the first thing you have to remember is that a weaker pound and higher inflation is BOE and Treasury policy, so it’s a bit rich to present exactly what they want as a dire threat should we leave.

However, I have a rule about economics and it rarely lets me down. When someone makes a prediction ask yourself what they will lose, personally, if they’re wrong. If the UK leaves and the pound doesn’t drop will Osborne, or Lagarde, or Carney, or whoever lose their job? Their pension? No? Fuck them then.

Now I did think it would be a clever thing to take out a whopping short against the pound should a Leave vote come in, so what I did was go and ask the Forex traders I know. People who make their actual living, with their own money, trading currency fluctuations. And the answer I got was this: “If you told me what the outcome of the vote was going to be right now, I still couldn’t tell you what the market would do.”

Because nobody does know. Leaving might be seen as the UK withdrawing from engagement and the pound might tank. Alternatively it might be seen as the death blow to the EU and we’ll see capital flight to the safety of London and the pound rises. It might not move much at all. Then again, something else entirely might happen.

Seriously, nobody knows, and anyone who says they do is selling you something.

I was going to leave this point here, but thought I’d throw this last observation in. When everyone - absolutely everyone - tells you what a market is going to do, you’re usually best running for the hills. Under the circumstances my personal prediction is that if we vote leave the Pound would rise specifically to take out the stops of all the people who thought it would be a great idea to sell on the back of these predictions.

Fact: If the UK leaves there will be a recession.
Status: True

If there’s one thing markets hate it’s uncertainty, and a leave vote would create uncertainty.
However, the ‘year long recession’ prediction put out by the treasury is fanciful. That is as long as the recession post 2008, which was caused by the collapse of the biggest credit bubble in recorded human history and someone leaving a political union is not even close to an event of that magnitude.

If you read the document on the effects of Brexit put out by the treasury the ‘year long recession’ claim is based on the assumption that the UK government would not make any policy changes to adapt to circumstances, which seems unlikely.

However there would be a period of currency volatility (see above) and market uncertainty. How big would it be? I dunno. Nobody does. Not as big as George Osborne wants you to think, and not as small as leave would have you believe. I’ll go out on a limb and say 3-6 months, but that’s just gut feel. A great deal would depend upon the policy changes made by the UK post-vote.

Fact: The UK fees to the EU would buy a new hospital every week.
Status: Lets just look at that shall we?

UK payments to the EU are about £350m every week, which is indeed about enough to buy a new hospital. Thing is, the UK gets about half of that back in various rebates, schemes and payments, less a certain amount of inevitable bureaucratic inefficiency.
Now, the leave campaign has adapted to that by saying that it’s still enough to build a new hospital every two weeks, which is true, but it neatly sidesteps the fact that we wouldn’t be able to afford to put anything important in these hospitals like doctors, nurses or patients.

By way of comparison a permanent seat on the UN Security Council with a veto costs the UK about 20-25% of this sum, so you’ve got something to work with.

The question really being asked here is whether if the UK left the EU profits from trade and investment would fall by more than £160m a week. i.e. if leaving would be net profitable given any deals we might do elsewhere. I’ve not seen either side really address this specific point, which suggests neither really wants to – and that suggests both fear the other might have something and don’t want to draw attention to it as it’s all a bit difficult.

Fact: The EU is the world’s largest market
Status: Well, there’s a thing

Saying the EU is the world’s largest market is true. However, it is only the world’s largest market because the UK is a member. If the UK were to leave then NAFTA would be the world’s largest market. So by merit of membership, the UK makes the EU the largest market in the world and I don’t think anyone is claiming that the UK would lose access to its own internal market were it to leave. Using this as an argument to remain or leave is disingenuous – and I think meaningless.

As an additional point, the only continent which has shown less economic growth than Europe post-2008 has been Antarctica. The rest of the world has grown more quickly and more strongly than Europe. This is largely due to the inherent internal flaw of the Euro, a problem which there is no prospect of being solved.

Saying that the UK should be a member of the world’s largest market is actually an argument for joining NAFTA rather than being a member of the EU, and neither remain or leave seem to be arguing for that.

Incidentally, way back in 1999 I suggested to Francis Maude that we should join NAFTA, BTW. Funny how things work out, innit?

Fact: The EU is not democratic
Status: You pays your money, you takes your choice.

There are seven core governmental bodies in the EU which are:
The EU Commission: This is a body made up of representatives appointed by national governments. It is not elected, and members are supposed to be independent of national interests. This body is the primary reason people describe the institution as undemocratic and the Commission, whilst appointed by governments, is independent of responsibility to voters or the wishes of any electorate. It is from this body that legislative proposals are passed to…
The European Parliament: This is a directly elected body whose proportions are based upon the populations of member states. It shares responsibility for passing laws and budgets with…
The Council of Ministers: A council composed of one member from each member state. These are appointees from the national governments, and can include elected members of the national government although sometimes figures like ambassadors and senior diplomats are appointed.
The European Council: This is the grouping of the elected heads of the member states. It meets four times a year to decide the direction of the whole.
The European Court of Justice: Nowhere sane elects judges.
The European Central Bank: Nominally independent, although nobody much believes that. In reality, without UK membership of the Euro the ECB is primarily a second central bank to Germany.
The Court of Auditors: The body which makes sure the funds of the Union have been correctly spent. I know, I know. I kill myself.
It is composed of one appointee from each member state.

Decide for yourself the democratic legitimacy of this.

Fact: If the UK leaves the EU house prices will fall.
Status: False.

I’ve seen this one bandied about so just to tackle it, even the most negative predictions say that the rate of house price increase would slow but not fall. So if you’re thinking leave to help get your foot on the property ladder, forget it.

Fact: TTIP will result in the NHS being privatised.
Status: False. Very false. So false as to be wilfully deceitful.

The Europe/US trade deal known as TTIP has been criticised for writing in provisions which in effect would result in the NHS being privatised. This is not true. I don’t think going into why is within the remit of this post, but being charitable here anyone claiming the NHS will be privatised as a result of TTIP is misinterpreting what it says.

Fact: The EU protects your rights.
Status: False, with a dissenting opinion below.

What protects your rights is living in a functioning first-world democracy with a growing economy and the rule of law. Anyone who thinks that the Blair government wouldn’t have introduced maternity and minimum wage without the EU forcing them to do it is off their chump, if I may make so bold. Canada doesn’t need to be in the EU, nor do Japan, Australia or New Zealand.

It’s the system that matters, not the institution.

To illustrate that I’ll pull out some examples that I’ve been specifically asked about:
• Maternity leave: EU law requires 14 weeks minimum. UK law is 52 weeks.
• Maternity pay: There is no minimum maternity pay enshrined in EU law.
• Minimum wage: The EU does not legislate a minimum wage.
• Holiday: The EU requires a minimum 4 weeks holiday. The UK requires 5.6 weeks of holiday.

And so on.

After a while of this I went and asked my friendly local trades union rep and he told me that he wasn’t aware of any area (except working hours directive, which the UK has opted out of anyway) where UK employment was not already more generous to employees than EU employment legislation.
He did say that if we voted leave he feared that we’d become less generous than the EU and I said I’d mention that too in the interest of balance - although I don't know why he drew than conclusion.

The thing is, EU employment legislation must take into account the requirements of developing economies as well as developed, richer ones like us. The UK can afford to be more generous than the average, and consistently is because people vote for it.

One area where the EU may have done more than the UK could do on its own is in the area of Antitrust, such as dealing with Microsoft bundling IE with Windows.

Fact: The UK lacks influence in the EU and is constantly outvoted.
Status: Take your pick

Take a look at the chart below which shows how often, as a percentage, the UK is outvoted in the EU. There’s a few things you can take from it.



The first thing you should notice is that the second most outvoted country in the EU is Germany and everyone is convinced they run the thing. It’s entirely contradictory to say that the second least influential country in the organisation also runs it so there’s clearly more going on than voting records indicate.

however, it is absolutely true the UK is outvoted disproportionately more than any other member, but is in the majority 87% of the time. This is a meaningless statistic without knowing what the Uk was outvoted on, as a lot of minor stuff will get waved through on the nod.

As an observation I was asked to make by someone I spoke to during the writing of this, the UK has become less likely to be outvoted as the EU has expanded. The former Soviet vassal states like Poland are much more enthusiastic about economic growth and less protectionist than the central core powers of the Union, and Britain has more allies these days.

Fact: If the UK leaves wages will rise.
Status: True, for some.

This is supply and demand and it really affects the bottom, unskilled labour end of the job market. Where the increase in supply of labour exceeds growth in demand for it, wages inevitably fall.

In some sectors, primarily skilled labour, supply isn’t increasing faster than demand. However, let’s say as a rule of thumb for the bottom 20% of the labour market supply is rising faster than demand. Although wages bottom out at the minimum wage (yeah, I know, exceptions, but I’m generalising here), the net effect here is to depress wage growth at the bottom end.
What I’m saying here is that increased competition at the bottom end of the market results in more people being paid the minimum legal wage than something higher as would/ will be the case with less competition.

This is actually part of the source of one of the criticisms of the UK’s economic recovery post-crash – the failure of wages to recover as strongly. The economy has recovered but the increase in supply of labour has at least kept pace with the rate of recovery (understandable when most of the rest of continent hasn’t really recovered very well) meaning that wage growth has been depressed.

Even the official Remain figures acknowledge – accidentally – that people will be better off, as their predictions for wage growth post-Brexit are actually higher than they’ve been in the real world in the last five years.

Fact: Migrants pay more in tax than they take in benefits.
Status: True and probably true.

Migrants pay more into the exchequer in tax than they take out in benefits is absolutely true. I don’t think anyone is arguing this point.

In researching this question I was asked another: Yes, okay, so they pay more than they take in benefits, but do migrants contribute net more than they cost in additional infrastructure costs due to higher population?

This is a really good question, and it’s something that Migration Watch makes a lot of noise over. What’s more it’s something that Remain are being very quiet on – I asked my usual sources and they not only were silent but they didn’t even respond to the question, which I took to be a bad sign.

However, after a lot more digging I found an answer – and the answer is that actually, yes, they most likely cover that too. I’m not 100% on this one (it’s only one study). But yeah, it looks like the migrant population don’t just pay more tax than they take in benefits, but they pay more than enough to cover their use of other public utilities as well.
Considering the noise that’s made on this point I was mildly surprised by this one, and think Remain have missed a trick by not tackling it head on.

Fact: If the UK leaves then the price of imports will rise
Status: That’s up to us, with caveats.

If we introduce import tariffs then of course they will. If we don’t, they won’t. This is entirely up to the UK.
This is subject to the uncertainty over what would happen to the £ which I address above.

Fact: If the UK leaves the EU will send back all our Expats.
Status: False.

Take a quick look at the state of the Spanish and Portuguese economies and tell me why you think they’d deport hundreds of thousands of well-funded expats. Then we’ll talk.
The chance of this happening is zero.

Fact: If we leave the EU we will deport foreign expats living here
Status: False.

The leave campaign have made it very clear that not only will current residents be more than welcome to stay, but one of their leading lights (Boris) has gone on to reiterate his proposed amnesty for illegal migrants as well.
The only people saying we would throw anyone out are a bunch of vocal fruitloops who aren’t going to get anywhere near the levers of legislation unless we’re stupid enough to implement Proportional Representation.

Fact of the matter is that in the 21st century skills are currency, and there’s a skills shortage in pretty much every industry. The UK is a big buyer of skills and that wouldn’t stop. It’s more a question of whether other people would stop selling.

Fact: The UK is just leaving the political Union, but would remain in the European Economic Area/ EFTA.
Status: Okay, that one is complex.

There is nothing in the EU treaties which compels a member leaving the political union to leave the trade area.

However, in counterpoint, there is nothing compelling the Trade area to let us stay either, so a lot depends on post Brexit relations and realpolitik. On the one hand you have the quite real desire of German manufacturing to sell us loads of cars (for example). On the other hand, as I note elsewhere, a wounded beast can do unpredictable things. My take is that a deal would be done, as a deal is always done. Others disagree with me.

Leave are hedging their bets here by suggesting that a newer, shinier deal would be done, but that’s because they cannot say we would definitely be staying in the Free Trade Area that already exists because they could easily be called on that in the same way the Scots were called on their claims about a continued about a currency union during their referendum. These things require willing from both parties.

Fact: If the Uk leaves the EU we would have to pay their full 20% import tariff
Status: Probably false.

I’ve seen it said that UK would have to pay a full 20% tariff on trade with the community. Would it? Well, the EU flat import tariff is indeed 20%, but to the best of my knowledge only one country in the world - that bit of the Ukraine occupied by Russia – actually pays it in full. Everywhere else some sort of deal has been done to a greater or lesser extent. Hence me saying a deal is always done.

I suppose it’s possible that the EU would implement sanctions against itself (that’s what a sanction is – making it harder for you to buy other people’s stuff), as the UK leaving may drive them spare.

Ultimately, the only people who know for certain what they would do are the ones who absolutely will not be drawn on the question.

Fact: If the UK leaves the EU it will promptly negotiate trade deals with everyone else.
Status: Somewhere in the middle

The fact is some will, some won’t. The country has considerable economic heft and that’s attractive. However, leaving the EU will annoy some people enough to slow or delay deals being done. On the one hand, we won’t be isolated and it will probably happen and sooner rather than later in some cases (although the US will be difficult. It always is). On the other hand, it won’t be as easy as the out camp like to make out.

Fact: If the UK left we’d have no influence over the regulations
Status: God’s truth, I have no idea why this is even a thing.

I’ve done business with Americans and Indians and I’ve no influence whatsoever over their trade regulations. What I did was ‘tailor my products to market’, which is what you do if you want to sell people stuff no matter whether you get influence or not. I’m guessing this is a line used by people who do either have huge market heft and are worried that their privileged market position might be threatened, in which case I’ve got no sympathy, or it’s used by people who’ve never actually sold anything to anyone and think it’s important when it’s not.

Seriously, this is a huge non-issue for me. I think it's something that sounds frightening but has minimal real-world effects.

Fact: The UK should remain in a reformed EU
Status: That’s not on the voting paper.

Your options are the status quo or leave. As noted in the first point above, the EU has made it clear they consider reform more dangerous than departure. If they’re prepared to risk catastrophe rather than change minor points of benefit legislation, you can be sure that voting to stay in and then asking for some changes will go nowhere.

Fact: If you want to leave the EU you are a stupid racist.
Status: Fuck off.

Fact: If you vote to stay you’re a stupid traitor.
Status: I said Fuck Off.

Fact: A vote to leave will result in a second vote a bit down the line.
Status: Actually yes. Yes it probably will.

Everyone says it won’t happen, but it will.

So, to summarise:
The EU says the UK leaving would be a catastrophe but is not willing to change anything at all to prevent it happening.
Nobody knows what the pound will do.
There will be a recession.
Wages at the bottom end of the Labour market will probably rise.
The gain from leaving may be offset long term from the profits of increased free trade but then again they may not.
Neither side are addressing any of this stuff particularly honestly because answering questions “fucked if I know” doesn’t win votes.

**************************************************************************************

During the writing of this post, one of the people I spoke to asked me a question: “Do you think the UK could be successful outside the EU?”

It’s a question which was asked a lot during the Scottish referendum as well (Do you think Scotland could be successful if it left the union?), usually by nationalists, and it annoys me now as it did then because it’s not a real question. It’s rhetorical. If you say yes we could be successful, then you should support leave. If you say no, then you think we’re too wee and frit to make a go of it and therefore some kind of traitor. It’s a question designed to push you into a corner rather than elicit a meaningful debate.

The best answer is that I think the UK already is a successful country. The question you should be asking is ‘Do you think the UK will be more or less successful outside the EU, and over what sort of timescale?’” and the answer you should give to that depends on your vision of the future.

At their best, both camps are forward thinking and internationalist, and differ in a view of the future and how best to position the country for it.
The Remain position is one in which the 21st century is one of emergent, integrated regional trade and power blocs and being central to such a project is a vital part of positioning the country for the next century.
On the other hand Leave views the future as one of greater decentralisation, where flexibility and an ability to respond rapidly to a digitally connected world where opportunities are global, not regional is paramount - and being tied into an inward-looking and relatively declining force is a hindrance and not an advantage.

Me? I think we’re going somewhere else. But then I always do, and that’s a post for another day.

I set out with great intentions of reading a book a week in 2015 and was cracking along with it well until I had some bad news in September and haven't read much since, sadly.

Unknown author - the Kagero Nikkei
dean Koontz - The Good Guy
Bill Bryson - Down Under
Stephen Baxter - proxima
Eduard Dekker - max Havelaar, or Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company.
Marx & Engels - The Communist Manifesto
Terry pratchett - hogfather
David Baldacci - Hell's Corner
Neil Gaiman - the ocean at the end of the lane
Jeanette Winterson - the daylight gate
Ralph Summers - Thunderfire
Chris Kuzneski - the Einstein pursuit
Mark Kermode - the good, the bad and the Multiplex
Unknown author - the Saga of Gunnlaug serpent-tongue
Pu Songling - wailing ghosts
Oliver Postgate - seeing things
Johan Hebel - how a ghastly story was brought to light by a common or garden butchers dog.
Kenneth graham - The wind in the willows.
Erich Cline - 1177bc - The Year Civilisation collapsed.
Ill met by moonlight - w. Stanley moss
Ann Leckie - ancillary justice
Cavalier - Lucy Worsley
Bill Bryson - notes from a big country
Harry Harrison - Technicolour Time machine
Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Terry Pratchett - The Last Continent
George MacDonald Fraser - Flashman and the Great Game
Terry Pratchett - Jingo
Boris Akunin - The death of Achilles
Bill Bryson - the life and times of the thunderbolt kid.
Stefan Spjut - Stallo
Phil Houston, Michael Floyd & Susan Carnicero - Get the Truth
Reza Negarestani - Cyclonopedia
Dylan Trigg - The Thing
TJ Bass - The Godwhale
John lindqvist - let the right one in.
Terry Pratchett - Sourcery
Terry Pratchett - Wyrd Sisters
Terry Pratchett - Reaper Man
Rowland White - Vulcan 607
Brian Stableford - Halcyon Drift
Joshua Chaplinsky - Kanye West, Reanimator.
Barry Cunliffe - The birth of Eurasia

Ladies and Gentlemen, roll up to enter the grand Jeremy Corbyn Defenestration Sweepstake! How long can Jeremy stay leader of the Labour party? How long before his own party fall upon him like a pack of wolves, or just say "Sod this for a game of soldiers", and leave?

The rules are simple:
1) Buy-in is £10
2) The Winner will be the person who most closely picks the date when either
i) Jeremy Corbyn ceases to be leader of the Labour party for any reason (forcibly removed, steps down, pushed out of a window by Tom Watson, etc)
ii) A schism within the party, where schism is defined as 10 or more incumbent MPs either quitting the party (important update: not simply shadow cabinet resignations) or otherwise resigning the whip.
3) (UPDATE 2) "Election" to be defined as UK general election unless otherwise specified.
4) Winner to be paid by all entrants via paypal, or similar method if they prefer, within 10 days of a result being announced.

Runners and riders are:

Me: 1/3/16
davedevil = 9/5/16
raggedyman = 14/2/16
whiskeylover = 30 days after the next election
vampyrefate - Entry TBA
Orange Peel - 25/5/17
Izzy - 31/3/16
Dave T - The day after the next election.

Any more for any more?