Saturday, 2 June 2018
Citizenship for sale: how tycoons can go shopping for a new passport
Jon Henley in The Guardian
It’s the must-have accessory for every self-respecting 21st-century oligarch, and a good many mere multimillionaires: a second – and sometimes a third or even a fourth – passport.
Israel, which helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich out of a spot of bother this week by granting him citizenship after delays in renewing his expired UK visa, offers free nationality to any Jewish person wishing to move there.
But there are as many as two dozen other countries, including several in the EU, where someone with the financial resources of the Chelsea football club owner could acquire a new nationality for a price: the global market in citizenship-by-investment programmes – or CIPs as they are commonly known – is booming.
The ‘golden visa’ deal: ‘We have in effect been selling off British citizenship to the rich’
The schemes’ specifics – and costs, ranging from as little as $100,000 (£74,900) to as much as €2.5m (£2.19m) – may vary, but not the principle: in essence, wealthy people invest money in property or businesses, buy government bonds or simply donate cash directly, in exchange for citizenship and a passport.
Some do not offer citizenship for sale outright, but run schemes usually known as “golden visas” that reward investors with residence permits that can eventually lead – typically after a period of five years – to citizenship.
The programmes are not new, but are growing exponentially, driven by wealthy private investors from emerging market economies including China, Russia, India, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the Middle East and more recently Turkey.
The first launched in 1984, a year after young, cash-strapped St Kitts and Nevis won independence from the UK. Slow to take off, it accelerated fast after 2009 when passport-holders from the Caribbean island nation were granted visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen zone.
For poorer countries, such schemes can be a boon, lifting them out of debt and even becoming their biggest export: the International Monetary Fund reckons St Kitts and Nevis earned 14% of its GDP from its CIP in 2014, and other estimates put the figure as high as 30% of state revenue.
Wealthier countries such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand have also seen the potential of CIPs (the US EB-5 programme is worth about $4bn a year to the economy) but sell their schemes more around the attractions of a stable economy and safe investment environment than on freedom of movement.
Experts from the many companies, such as Henley and Partners, CS Global and Apex, now specialising in CIPs and advertising their services online and in inflight magazines, say that unlike Abramovich, relatively few of their clients buy citizenship in order to move immediately to the country concerned.
For most, the acquisition represents an insurance policy: with nationalism, protectionism, isolationism and fears of financial instability on the rise around the world, the state of the industry serves as an effective barometer of global political and economic uncertainty.
But CIPs are not without their critics. Malta, for example, has come under sustained fire from Brussels and other EU capitals for its programme, run by Henley and Partners, which according to the IMF saw more than 800 wealthy individuals gain citizenship in the three years following its launch in 2014.
Critics said the scheme was undermining the concept of EU citizenship, posing potential major security risks, and providing a possible route for wealthy individuals – for example from Russia – with opaque income streams to dodge sanctions in their own countries.
Several other CIPs have come under investigation for fraud, while equality campaigners increasingly argue the moral case that it is simply wrong to grant automatic citizenship to ultra-high net worth individuals when the less privileged must wait their turn – and, in many cases, be rejected.
The Caribbean
The best-known – and cheapest – CIP schemes are in the Caribbean, where the warm climate, low investment requirements and undemanding residency obligations have long proved popular. Five countries currently offer CIPs, often giving visa-free travel to the EU, and have recently cut their prices to attract investors as they seek funds to help them rebuild after last year’s hurricanes. In St Kitts and Nevis a passport can now be had for a $150,000 donation to the hurricane relief fund, while Antigua, Barbuda and Granada have cut their fees to $100,000, the same level as St Lucia and Dominica.
Europe
Almost half of the EU’s member states offer some kind of investment residency or citizenship programme leading to a highly prized EU passport, which typically allows visa-free travel to between 150 and 170 countries. Malta’s citizenship-for-sale scheme requires a €675,000 donation to the national development fund and a €350,000 property purchase. In Cyprus the cost is a €2m investment in real estate, stocks, government bonds or Cypriot businesses (although the number of new passports is to be capped at 700 a year following criticism). In Bulgaria, €500,000 gets you residency, and about €1m over two years plus a year’s residency gets you fast-track citizenship. Investors can get residency rights leading longer term to citizenship – usually after five years, and subject to passing relevant language and other tests – for €65,000 in Latvia (equities), €250,000 in Greece (property), €350,000 or €500,000 (property or a small business investment fund) or €500,000 in Spain (property, and you have to wait 10 years to apply for citizenship).
Rest of the world
Thailand offers several “elite residency” packages costing $3,000-$4,000 a year for up to 20 years residency, some including health checkups, spa treatments and VIP handling from government agencies. The EB-5 US visa, particularly popular with Chinese investors, costs between €500,000 and $1m depending on the type of investment and gives green card residency that can eventually lead to a passport. Canada closed its CA$800,000 (£460,000) federal investment immigration programme in 2014 but now has a similar residency scheme, costing just over CA$1m, for “innovative start-ups”, as well as regional schemes in, for example, Quebec. Australia requires an investment of AU$1.5m (£850,000) and a net worth of AU$2.5m for residency that could, eventually, lead to citizenship, and New Zealand – popular with Silicon Valley types – an investment of up to NZ$10m (£5.2m).
It’s the must-have accessory for every self-respecting 21st-century oligarch, and a good many mere multimillionaires: a second – and sometimes a third or even a fourth – passport.
Israel, which helped Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich out of a spot of bother this week by granting him citizenship after delays in renewing his expired UK visa, offers free nationality to any Jewish person wishing to move there.
But there are as many as two dozen other countries, including several in the EU, where someone with the financial resources of the Chelsea football club owner could acquire a new nationality for a price: the global market in citizenship-by-investment programmes – or CIPs as they are commonly known – is booming.
The ‘golden visa’ deal: ‘We have in effect been selling off British citizenship to the rich’
The schemes’ specifics – and costs, ranging from as little as $100,000 (£74,900) to as much as €2.5m (£2.19m) – may vary, but not the principle: in essence, wealthy people invest money in property or businesses, buy government bonds or simply donate cash directly, in exchange for citizenship and a passport.
Some do not offer citizenship for sale outright, but run schemes usually known as “golden visas” that reward investors with residence permits that can eventually lead – typically after a period of five years – to citizenship.
The programmes are not new, but are growing exponentially, driven by wealthy private investors from emerging market economies including China, Russia, India, Vietnam, Mexico and Brazil, as well as the Middle East and more recently Turkey.
The first launched in 1984, a year after young, cash-strapped St Kitts and Nevis won independence from the UK. Slow to take off, it accelerated fast after 2009 when passport-holders from the Caribbean island nation were granted visa-free travel to the 26-nation Schengen zone.
For poorer countries, such schemes can be a boon, lifting them out of debt and even becoming their biggest export: the International Monetary Fund reckons St Kitts and Nevis earned 14% of its GDP from its CIP in 2014, and other estimates put the figure as high as 30% of state revenue.
Wealthier countries such as Canada, the UK and New Zealand have also seen the potential of CIPs (the US EB-5 programme is worth about $4bn a year to the economy) but sell their schemes more around the attractions of a stable economy and safe investment environment than on freedom of movement.
Experts from the many companies, such as Henley and Partners, CS Global and Apex, now specialising in CIPs and advertising their services online and in inflight magazines, say that unlike Abramovich, relatively few of their clients buy citizenship in order to move immediately to the country concerned.
For most, the acquisition represents an insurance policy: with nationalism, protectionism, isolationism and fears of financial instability on the rise around the world, the state of the industry serves as an effective barometer of global political and economic uncertainty.
But CIPs are not without their critics. Malta, for example, has come under sustained fire from Brussels and other EU capitals for its programme, run by Henley and Partners, which according to the IMF saw more than 800 wealthy individuals gain citizenship in the three years following its launch in 2014.
Critics said the scheme was undermining the concept of EU citizenship, posing potential major security risks, and providing a possible route for wealthy individuals – for example from Russia – with opaque income streams to dodge sanctions in their own countries.
Several other CIPs have come under investigation for fraud, while equality campaigners increasingly argue the moral case that it is simply wrong to grant automatic citizenship to ultra-high net worth individuals when the less privileged must wait their turn – and, in many cases, be rejected.
The Caribbean
The best-known – and cheapest – CIP schemes are in the Caribbean, where the warm climate, low investment requirements and undemanding residency obligations have long proved popular. Five countries currently offer CIPs, often giving visa-free travel to the EU, and have recently cut their prices to attract investors as they seek funds to help them rebuild after last year’s hurricanes. In St Kitts and Nevis a passport can now be had for a $150,000 donation to the hurricane relief fund, while Antigua, Barbuda and Granada have cut their fees to $100,000, the same level as St Lucia and Dominica.
Europe
Almost half of the EU’s member states offer some kind of investment residency or citizenship programme leading to a highly prized EU passport, which typically allows visa-free travel to between 150 and 170 countries. Malta’s citizenship-for-sale scheme requires a €675,000 donation to the national development fund and a €350,000 property purchase. In Cyprus the cost is a €2m investment in real estate, stocks, government bonds or Cypriot businesses (although the number of new passports is to be capped at 700 a year following criticism). In Bulgaria, €500,000 gets you residency, and about €1m over two years plus a year’s residency gets you fast-track citizenship. Investors can get residency rights leading longer term to citizenship – usually after five years, and subject to passing relevant language and other tests – for €65,000 in Latvia (equities), €250,000 in Greece (property), €350,000 or €500,000 (property or a small business investment fund) or €500,000 in Spain (property, and you have to wait 10 years to apply for citizenship).
Rest of the world
Thailand offers several “elite residency” packages costing $3,000-$4,000 a year for up to 20 years residency, some including health checkups, spa treatments and VIP handling from government agencies. The EB-5 US visa, particularly popular with Chinese investors, costs between €500,000 and $1m depending on the type of investment and gives green card residency that can eventually lead to a passport. Canada closed its CA$800,000 (£460,000) federal investment immigration programme in 2014 but now has a similar residency scheme, costing just over CA$1m, for “innovative start-ups”, as well as regional schemes in, for example, Quebec. Australia requires an investment of AU$1.5m (£850,000) and a net worth of AU$2.5m for residency that could, eventually, lead to citizenship, and New Zealand – popular with Silicon Valley types – an investment of up to NZ$10m (£5.2m).
Using Visualisation to improve your cricket
Tim Wigmore in Cricinfo
It was the night before the final day of West Indies' Test against Australia in Barbados in 1999. West Indies were in jeopardy: 85 for 3, in pursuit of 308 to win. Prospects of victory, it was obvious, hinged upon Brian Lara, who was 2 not out, after surviving a tetchy end to the fourth day.
When stumps were called, Lara had a chat with Rudi Webster, West Indies' mental-skills coach. In his book, Think Like A Champion, Webster recalls:
"My advice to him was to imagine the game as already won and to visualise and feel himself constructing that victory. I asked him to mentally rehearse seeing the ball the moment it leaves the bowler's hand and to feel his movements as he gets into position smoothly and quickly to stroke the ball into the gaps in the field. I also asked him to see and feel himself playing his natural game, facing one ball at a time, and enjoying the challenge."
The following day, Lara played one of the greatest innings of all time. In the euphoria after his 153 not out, Lara told Webster: "I was seeing the ball so clearly that I couldn't miss it. Everything worked out the way I imagined it."
Lara was an adherent of visualisation, as Rahul Bhattacharya detailed for the Cricket Monthly. An old school friend, Nicholas Gomez, had earlier given him a book on Michael Jordan, which included a section on how Jordan used visualisation. At 6am on the day of his 153 not out, Lara called Gomez. "We went about planning this innings against the best team in the world. And it was amazing to see how it just came to fruition."
Before they head onto the field for a game, most of the world's best cricketers have already, like Lara, been there in their heads. Some do this in the middle itself - either with their bat or just their hands; some just do it in front of a mirror at home or, as Lara did, through talking the innings over.
Such visualisation aims to prepare players by decoding the opposition and conditions before game day. "What you're trying to do in visualisation is build that depth of experience even though you're not physically doing it," explains Jeremy Snape, a former England cricketer who has worked as a sports psychologist in six editions of the IPL. "When your brain has that conditioning, it's more likely to respond in a favourable way under pressure. What athletes then do is try and first visualise it, then stimulate it, then practise it, then do it."
Visualisation can help players remain more grounded during matches, keeping their focus upon their normal processes rather than what is new. Snape explains: "We want to make sure that our decision-making is as calm and rational as it possibly can be, rather than being emotional and irrational, which is what happens under pressure."
It was the night before the final day of West Indies' Test against Australia in Barbados in 1999. West Indies were in jeopardy: 85 for 3, in pursuit of 308 to win. Prospects of victory, it was obvious, hinged upon Brian Lara, who was 2 not out, after surviving a tetchy end to the fourth day.
When stumps were called, Lara had a chat with Rudi Webster, West Indies' mental-skills coach. In his book, Think Like A Champion, Webster recalls:
"My advice to him was to imagine the game as already won and to visualise and feel himself constructing that victory. I asked him to mentally rehearse seeing the ball the moment it leaves the bowler's hand and to feel his movements as he gets into position smoothly and quickly to stroke the ball into the gaps in the field. I also asked him to see and feel himself playing his natural game, facing one ball at a time, and enjoying the challenge."
The following day, Lara played one of the greatest innings of all time. In the euphoria after his 153 not out, Lara told Webster: "I was seeing the ball so clearly that I couldn't miss it. Everything worked out the way I imagined it."
Lara was an adherent of visualisation, as Rahul Bhattacharya detailed for the Cricket Monthly. An old school friend, Nicholas Gomez, had earlier given him a book on Michael Jordan, which included a section on how Jordan used visualisation. At 6am on the day of his 153 not out, Lara called Gomez. "We went about planning this innings against the best team in the world. And it was amazing to see how it just came to fruition."
Before they head onto the field for a game, most of the world's best cricketers have already, like Lara, been there in their heads. Some do this in the middle itself - either with their bat or just their hands; some just do it in front of a mirror at home or, as Lara did, through talking the innings over.
Such visualisation aims to prepare players by decoding the opposition and conditions before game day. "What you're trying to do in visualisation is build that depth of experience even though you're not physically doing it," explains Jeremy Snape, a former England cricketer who has worked as a sports psychologist in six editions of the IPL. "When your brain has that conditioning, it's more likely to respond in a favourable way under pressure. What athletes then do is try and first visualise it, then stimulate it, then practise it, then do it."
Visualisation can help players remain more grounded during matches, keeping their focus upon their normal processes rather than what is new. Snape explains: "We want to make sure that our decision-making is as calm and rational as it possibly can be, rather than being emotional and irrational, which is what happens under pressure."
Matthew Hayden would habitually sit and meditate on the pitch a day before the match © Getty Images
The tool can be invaluable for players who don't expect to play. On South Africa's tour of Australia in 2008, JP Duminy was the reserve batsman and faced a tour carrying drinks. Snape, then a consulting psychologist for South Africa, observed that Duminy seemed "disgruntled, dragging around his bag at training". He set Duminy a challenge: "Why don't you prepare for this Test match as if you're the captain of South Africa in four years' time? We prepared as if he was going to take them on for real." Duminy was given various simulations, including imagining that he was facing Mitchell Johnson when Lonwabo Tsotsobe bowled his left-arm pace in the nets.
The day before the first Test, Ashwell Prince broke his thumb and was ruled out on the morning of the game. Duminy hit 50 not out in the second innings as South Africa chased down 414 in Perth. In the next Test he hit 166, an innings for the ages, as South Africa sealed their first Test series victory in Australia.
Pre-game visualisation aims not to inhibit instinctive play but to enable it. After each net session the day before a game, Matthew Hayden sat cross-legged by the stumps, grasping his bat in his hands and closing his eyes. He began the process as a child when he would train until he dropped, and then sit down to discuss the session with his older brother, who was his coach.
Of his method throughout his professional career, Hayden explained: "I continued the process of gathering my thoughts, sitting down in an environment which was comfortable and going through the kind of expectations I had in store for me in the week's period of the Test or the one-dayers, getting used to the conditions, understanding where the breeze is coming from, what the bowler's arms were going to look like, so that there were no surprises on the day, and just going through how I felt at that time."
After playing the innings in his head - not just picturing the bowlers he would face, but their angles of attack and how they would try to bowl to him - Hayden returned the next day to bat. "In the middle, I would let it all go and be completely relaxed, looking down at the wicket, loving the environment of being outside and being in a physical state of mind where I would be at peace."
Players even visualise how best to breathe between balls - which can help them maintain their equanimity and focus, and so keep their focus on the next delivery, rather than the opposition's attempts to frazzle them. For instance, when a bowler moves several fielders back, as preparation to bowl a bouncer, Snape says, earlier visualisation of breathing techniques can keep batsmen calm in the moment - and make them less susceptible to bowlers bowling a yorker as a bluff.
For batsmen, visualisation is a tool to demystify bowlers. On West Indies' tour of Australia in 1975-76 tour, Alvin Kallicharran was struggling against Jeff Thomson. Webster encouraged Kallicharran to practise against Thomson in slow motion, and then imagine that he was bowling at his normal speed. When he became comfortable with the idea of this, Kallicharran then visualised facing Thomson at twice his normal speed - and, in his mind, could still see the ball when it was released from the hand, gauge the line, angle and length and get into position to play his shots.
In his next innings, Kallicharran made a rapid 76. He then told Webster: "Everything happened the way we visualised them. I was alert but relaxed throughout my innings, and at no stage did I lose control. And I saw the big, bright red ball the moment it left the bowler's hand."
While visualisation is particularly favoured by batsmen, some bowlers have also used it to good effect. Wasim Akram's late wife, Huma, a psychologist and psychotherapist, introduced him to the concept.
© ESPNcricinfo Ltd
"When I started playing cricket as a professional, nobody told me how important the mind was in cricket," he said. During matches, Akram "used to visualise most of the deliveries that I bowled. For example, if there were reverse swing, I would bowl three awayswingers and then the inswinger. But before I bowled the inswinger I would visualise it and would see the ball swinging from outside the off stump into the batsman's pads or the stumps."
As with many other areas beyond the field of play, more cash and personnel are now being allocated to sports psychology.
"The understanding of neuroscience is the thing that's advanced in the last five-ten years," Snape observes. "Neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to grow connections and change through repetition and skill development - is really powerful." In Formula One, drivers can now visualise their lap times to within a few seconds, such is their depth of preparation.
Virtual-reality technology, which is already functional and rapidly developing, will take visualisation to a new level. Players will not just be able to visualise the bowlers but also the grounds, crowd and the noise in a stadium. It will then be possible for overseas batsmen to prepare for a tour of England, long before they have even left for the trip, by strapping on VR goggles and facing James Anderson and Stuart Broad at Lord's and Trent Bridge.
Not even Lara before Bridgetown was able to prepare for an innings with such thoroughness. But visualising like Lara is one thing; batting like him quite another.
The tool can be invaluable for players who don't expect to play. On South Africa's tour of Australia in 2008, JP Duminy was the reserve batsman and faced a tour carrying drinks. Snape, then a consulting psychologist for South Africa, observed that Duminy seemed "disgruntled, dragging around his bag at training". He set Duminy a challenge: "Why don't you prepare for this Test match as if you're the captain of South Africa in four years' time? We prepared as if he was going to take them on for real." Duminy was given various simulations, including imagining that he was facing Mitchell Johnson when Lonwabo Tsotsobe bowled his left-arm pace in the nets.
The day before the first Test, Ashwell Prince broke his thumb and was ruled out on the morning of the game. Duminy hit 50 not out in the second innings as South Africa chased down 414 in Perth. In the next Test he hit 166, an innings for the ages, as South Africa sealed their first Test series victory in Australia.
Pre-game visualisation aims not to inhibit instinctive play but to enable it. After each net session the day before a game, Matthew Hayden sat cross-legged by the stumps, grasping his bat in his hands and closing his eyes. He began the process as a child when he would train until he dropped, and then sit down to discuss the session with his older brother, who was his coach.
Of his method throughout his professional career, Hayden explained: "I continued the process of gathering my thoughts, sitting down in an environment which was comfortable and going through the kind of expectations I had in store for me in the week's period of the Test or the one-dayers, getting used to the conditions, understanding where the breeze is coming from, what the bowler's arms were going to look like, so that there were no surprises on the day, and just going through how I felt at that time."
After playing the innings in his head - not just picturing the bowlers he would face, but their angles of attack and how they would try to bowl to him - Hayden returned the next day to bat. "In the middle, I would let it all go and be completely relaxed, looking down at the wicket, loving the environment of being outside and being in a physical state of mind where I would be at peace."
Players even visualise how best to breathe between balls - which can help them maintain their equanimity and focus, and so keep their focus on the next delivery, rather than the opposition's attempts to frazzle them. For instance, when a bowler moves several fielders back, as preparation to bowl a bouncer, Snape says, earlier visualisation of breathing techniques can keep batsmen calm in the moment - and make them less susceptible to bowlers bowling a yorker as a bluff.
For batsmen, visualisation is a tool to demystify bowlers. On West Indies' tour of Australia in 1975-76 tour, Alvin Kallicharran was struggling against Jeff Thomson. Webster encouraged Kallicharran to practise against Thomson in slow motion, and then imagine that he was bowling at his normal speed. When he became comfortable with the idea of this, Kallicharran then visualised facing Thomson at twice his normal speed - and, in his mind, could still see the ball when it was released from the hand, gauge the line, angle and length and get into position to play his shots.
In his next innings, Kallicharran made a rapid 76. He then told Webster: "Everything happened the way we visualised them. I was alert but relaxed throughout my innings, and at no stage did I lose control. And I saw the big, bright red ball the moment it left the bowler's hand."
While visualisation is particularly favoured by batsmen, some bowlers have also used it to good effect. Wasim Akram's late wife, Huma, a psychologist and psychotherapist, introduced him to the concept.
© ESPNcricinfo Ltd"When I started playing cricket as a professional, nobody told me how important the mind was in cricket," he said. During matches, Akram "used to visualise most of the deliveries that I bowled. For example, if there were reverse swing, I would bowl three awayswingers and then the inswinger. But before I bowled the inswinger I would visualise it and would see the ball swinging from outside the off stump into the batsman's pads or the stumps."
As with many other areas beyond the field of play, more cash and personnel are now being allocated to sports psychology.
"The understanding of neuroscience is the thing that's advanced in the last five-ten years," Snape observes. "Neuroplasticity - the ability of the brain to grow connections and change through repetition and skill development - is really powerful." In Formula One, drivers can now visualise their lap times to within a few seconds, such is their depth of preparation.
Virtual-reality technology, which is already functional and rapidly developing, will take visualisation to a new level. Players will not just be able to visualise the bowlers but also the grounds, crowd and the noise in a stadium. It will then be possible for overseas batsmen to prepare for a tour of England, long before they have even left for the trip, by strapping on VR goggles and facing James Anderson and Stuart Broad at Lord's and Trent Bridge.
Not even Lara before Bridgetown was able to prepare for an innings with such thoroughness. But visualising like Lara is one thing; batting like him quite another.
Friday, 1 June 2018
Londongrad oligarchs are being forced back to Russia’s embrace
Max Seddon in The Financial Times
As the west’s relations with Moscow plumb ever lower depths, the UK is abuzz with calls to do something about its oligarch problem. “We are going after the money,” Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, vowed after former double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned.
A group of MPs recently singled out law firm Linklaters for its work on the London float of En+, owned by sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and called for a crackdown on “corrupt” Kremlin-connected tycoons.
But the ones in real trouble may be the oligarchs themselves. They were once ideal go-betweens between Russia and the west. The real life models for the mafia money launderer in espionage novelist John le Carré’s Our Kind of Traitor saw no contradiction in sending their children to Eton. UK politicians had no qualms about staying on their yachts or serving in their boardrooms.
Now, feeling equally at home in London’s Soho and Moscow’s Soho Rooms — the nightclub so exclusive that, according to legend, Roman Abramovich once did not pass “face control” — is a liability. Mr Abramovich, who epitomised “Londongrad” bling when he bought Chelsea football club and a house on a street known as “ Billionaire’s Row”, struggled to get a UK visa. Suddenly, oligarchs are too Russian for a west eager to clean up its act and too western for a Russia hunting for “enemies of the people”. Or, as the Russian saying goes: if you sit on two chairs, something vulgar will happen to you through the crack in the middle.
“Even if you’re not sanctioned yourself, it still affects you,” a close friend of one of Russia’s richest oligarchs told me this week. “You go to a bank and the compliance department doesn’t want anything to do with anything Russian.”
Today, oligarchs are like hipsters with even worse dress sense: nobody will admit to being one, even if you know them when you see them.
Part of the problem is the nature of oligarchy, which has changed dramatically since Vladimir Putin took power 18 years ago. The classical definition is someone who acquired vast wealth, often through dubious political connections, by privatising state assets on the cheap, thus giving them huge power over the penniless political class.
In the 1990s, it was widely held that the real power in Russia lay not with Boris Yeltsin, but the oligarchs backing him. The late Boris Berezovsky liked to give the impression he ran the country during Yeltsin’s frequent absences due to heart problems and that he had handpicked Mr Putin as the next leader.
Mr Putin shifted the power dynamic in his first few years in office. Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who challenged him through their TV channels, were forced to flee. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who dared to take him on politically, was jailed for a decade.
That turned most of the other oligarchs into supplicants working under an unwritten rule: they were allowed to keep their wealth in exchange for staying out of politics.
The new set of prime movers were figures from Mr Putin’s childhood. They amassed huge fortunes after he became president — often through winning lucrative contracts from state companies such as Gazprom. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the US sanctioned these individuals first in the hope they would convince Mr Putin to change course.
Instead, they circled the wagons around him. Yuri Kovalchuk, a billionaire banker who once owned a dacha outside St Petersburg next to Mr Putin’s, made a bizarre TV appearance in which he said that Russia had a “nationally oriented elite” that knew “what side of the barricades it was on”.
He went on: “I’m not against having a flat abroad or a villa on the Cote d’Azur, be my guest. But the question is: where’s your home?”
The more recent US sanctions have cast a wider net that has perplexed its potential targets. “Before, they were going after people who really made money with the regime. Now we don’t get what it is for. If you think we can go to Putin and tell him what to do, you don’t understand Russia,” one oligarch told me this week. If anything, he continued, the western attack on oligarchs benefits the Kremlin. First, moves against Russian capital push them to repatriate cash stashed abroad in western companies — a goal Putin has struggled to achieve for years. Second, many in the elite increasingly see little reason to leave key businesses in private hands, especially if they require state support.
And now that several sanctioned oligarchs cannot pay off dollar loans to the state banks to whom they pledged major assets as collateral, they may not be tycoons for much longer.
“Putin loves this,” the oligarch said. “The regime is winning. The people like it because nobody likes oligarchs, and the state consolidates.”
The pressure the tycoons face at home and abroad has put the entire UK oligarch service industry at risk. I recently had dinner with my first Russian teacher, who now runs a consultancy helping oligarchs and assorted pretenders get their children into exclusive schools. When I mentioned that I had heard one businessman with a prominent UK presence was facing trouble after the state nationalised a company he part-owned, the teacher nearly spat out his food. “You’re joking!” he said. “He’s one of my best clients!”
As the west’s relations with Moscow plumb ever lower depths, the UK is abuzz with calls to do something about its oligarch problem. “We are going after the money,” Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, vowed after former double agent Sergei Skripal was poisoned.
A group of MPs recently singled out law firm Linklaters for its work on the London float of En+, owned by sanctioned oligarch Oleg Deripaska, and called for a crackdown on “corrupt” Kremlin-connected tycoons.
But the ones in real trouble may be the oligarchs themselves. They were once ideal go-betweens between Russia and the west. The real life models for the mafia money launderer in espionage novelist John le Carré’s Our Kind of Traitor saw no contradiction in sending their children to Eton. UK politicians had no qualms about staying on their yachts or serving in their boardrooms.
Now, feeling equally at home in London’s Soho and Moscow’s Soho Rooms — the nightclub so exclusive that, according to legend, Roman Abramovich once did not pass “face control” — is a liability. Mr Abramovich, who epitomised “Londongrad” bling when he bought Chelsea football club and a house on a street known as “ Billionaire’s Row”, struggled to get a UK visa. Suddenly, oligarchs are too Russian for a west eager to clean up its act and too western for a Russia hunting for “enemies of the people”. Or, as the Russian saying goes: if you sit on two chairs, something vulgar will happen to you through the crack in the middle.
“Even if you’re not sanctioned yourself, it still affects you,” a close friend of one of Russia’s richest oligarchs told me this week. “You go to a bank and the compliance department doesn’t want anything to do with anything Russian.”
Today, oligarchs are like hipsters with even worse dress sense: nobody will admit to being one, even if you know them when you see them.
Part of the problem is the nature of oligarchy, which has changed dramatically since Vladimir Putin took power 18 years ago. The classical definition is someone who acquired vast wealth, often through dubious political connections, by privatising state assets on the cheap, thus giving them huge power over the penniless political class.
In the 1990s, it was widely held that the real power in Russia lay not with Boris Yeltsin, but the oligarchs backing him. The late Boris Berezovsky liked to give the impression he ran the country during Yeltsin’s frequent absences due to heart problems and that he had handpicked Mr Putin as the next leader.
Mr Putin shifted the power dynamic in his first few years in office. Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, who challenged him through their TV channels, were forced to flee. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who dared to take him on politically, was jailed for a decade.
That turned most of the other oligarchs into supplicants working under an unwritten rule: they were allowed to keep their wealth in exchange for staying out of politics.
The new set of prime movers were figures from Mr Putin’s childhood. They amassed huge fortunes after he became president — often through winning lucrative contracts from state companies such as Gazprom. After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the US sanctioned these individuals first in the hope they would convince Mr Putin to change course.
Instead, they circled the wagons around him. Yuri Kovalchuk, a billionaire banker who once owned a dacha outside St Petersburg next to Mr Putin’s, made a bizarre TV appearance in which he said that Russia had a “nationally oriented elite” that knew “what side of the barricades it was on”.
He went on: “I’m not against having a flat abroad or a villa on the Cote d’Azur, be my guest. But the question is: where’s your home?”
The more recent US sanctions have cast a wider net that has perplexed its potential targets. “Before, they were going after people who really made money with the regime. Now we don’t get what it is for. If you think we can go to Putin and tell him what to do, you don’t understand Russia,” one oligarch told me this week. If anything, he continued, the western attack on oligarchs benefits the Kremlin. First, moves against Russian capital push them to repatriate cash stashed abroad in western companies — a goal Putin has struggled to achieve for years. Second, many in the elite increasingly see little reason to leave key businesses in private hands, especially if they require state support.
And now that several sanctioned oligarchs cannot pay off dollar loans to the state banks to whom they pledged major assets as collateral, they may not be tycoons for much longer.
“Putin loves this,” the oligarch said. “The regime is winning. The people like it because nobody likes oligarchs, and the state consolidates.”
The pressure the tycoons face at home and abroad has put the entire UK oligarch service industry at risk. I recently had dinner with my first Russian teacher, who now runs a consultancy helping oligarchs and assorted pretenders get their children into exclusive schools. When I mentioned that I had heard one businessman with a prominent UK presence was facing trouble after the state nationalised a company he part-owned, the teacher nearly spat out his food. “You’re joking!” he said. “He’s one of my best clients!”
Pakistan: Who's in the dock?
Najam Sethi in The Friday Times
Lt General (retd) Asad Durrani, ex-DG ISI, has run afoul of his Alma Mater. His alleged crime: jointly authoring a book with AS Dulat, ex RAW chief of India. GHQ has formed a “court of inquiry” to determine whether he violated any army rules in venturing into this project or revealed “state secrets” detrimental to the cause of national security. It has also ordered that his name be placed on the Exit Control List pending the case.
Gen Durrani describes himself as a “normal line officer” until he became “an accidental spymaster” in a stopgap appointment by a caretaker government for 18 months in 1990-91. During this time, he worked closely with COAS General Mirza Aslam Beg to bribe politicians and facilitate the election of Nawaz Sharif as prime minister. But he fell out with PM Sharif when he refused to spy on COAS General Asif Nawaz Janjua who, in Nawaz’s view, was conspiring with Benazir Bhutto to get rid of him. So, upon the urging of Nawaz Sharif who wanted his “own man” Gen Javed Nasir as DG ISI, Gen Janjua transferred Gen Durrani to GHQ after promoting him to Lt Gen. Shortly after Gen Janjua’s sudden death in 1993, the new COAS Gen Abdul Waheed Kakar sacked Gen Durrani from the army for indulging in unauthorized political activity by becoming a go-between Benazir Bhutto and General Janjua. But after coming to power, Ms Bhutto rewarded him by posting him as Ambassador to Germany. In due course, Gen Durrani became a columnist and was actively wooed as a think-tanker and Track-2 diplomat with an insider’s take on critical Indo-Pak and US-Pak matters. He now honed his persona to go with his new job: part blunt, part enigmatic, depending on the issue and forum.
GHQ has always looked upon Gen Durrani as a maverick who can be trusted to defend the institution when push comes to shove but with some views subtly contrary to the prevailing national security wisdom in his Alma Mater establishment. So why has GHQ suddenly jumped the gun and hauled him up?
Gen Durrani isn’t the first army officer to have empowered his elbow. At least a dozen Generals and a score of other army officers have, before him, spilled the beans in dribs and drabs, whether in the form of articles, books or TV interviews, at home and abroad. None of them had their books vetted by GHQ and none obtained a formal NOC before doing so. If Air Marshals Nur Khan and Asghar Khan were surprisingly candid about all the wars fought against India, General Pervez Musharraf is the biggest loud mouth of recent times and can safely be classified as a national security risk in comparison with the soft-spoken Gen Durrani. Moreover, at least a couple of dozen books detailing the shenanigans of the Miltablishment, including three full length critical biographies of the ISI by foreign scholars, are freely available at bookshops across the country. Indeed, this practice of writing memoirs or policy critiques is widely prevalent in the West where every second US National Security Advisor and CIA Chief has freely commented on his time in office and often revealed startling facts. So what’s the beef with Gen Durrani?
Regardless of what’s in the book – and there isn’t anything terribly significant that is unknown to Pakistan watchers – GHQ is unsettled by its timing. Only recently it has extracted a heavy price from Nawaz Sharif for Dawnleaks in which a well-known fact – that the Miltablishment’s policy of propping up militant non-state actors has become a millstone around the elected government’s neck – was made public. Nawaz Sharif’s subsequent comments of Miltablishment meddling in politics have attracted charges of “treason” and “Indian agent”. Now General Durrani comes along and calmly goes a couple of steps further than Nawaz Sharif, prompting the latter to quickly demand a sitting of the National Security Council to ascertain the veracity of admissions in the book and compare these with the insignificant utterances that cost him his job as prime minister. Under the circumstances, GHQ had no option but to quell the demand by pulling the “errant” General under its wing and silencing its rising critics. Should GHQ now demand a ban on the book that is published in India, it would look sillier still because it is now freely available on the web.
The double standards of the Miltablishment are now evident all round. General Musharraf is kosher but Gen Durrani is not. Nawaz Sharif is guilty of Iqama but Imran has not misdeclared. And so on, ad nauseam. No wonder, then, that a recent PILDAT survey shows that the credibility of military leaders in the popular imagination has fallen to the lowest among eleven institutional categories. This has raised serious question marks about its strategy to oust Nawaz Sharif and install another kangaroo government in Islamabad by pre-rigging the next elections. It has also put the spotlight on who is really in a bind and in the dock.
Lt General (retd) Asad Durrani, ex-DG ISI, has run afoul of his Alma Mater. His alleged crime: jointly authoring a book with AS Dulat, ex RAW chief of India. GHQ has formed a “court of inquiry” to determine whether he violated any army rules in venturing into this project or revealed “state secrets” detrimental to the cause of national security. It has also ordered that his name be placed on the Exit Control List pending the case.
Gen Durrani describes himself as a “normal line officer” until he became “an accidental spymaster” in a stopgap appointment by a caretaker government for 18 months in 1990-91. During this time, he worked closely with COAS General Mirza Aslam Beg to bribe politicians and facilitate the election of Nawaz Sharif as prime minister. But he fell out with PM Sharif when he refused to spy on COAS General Asif Nawaz Janjua who, in Nawaz’s view, was conspiring with Benazir Bhutto to get rid of him. So, upon the urging of Nawaz Sharif who wanted his “own man” Gen Javed Nasir as DG ISI, Gen Janjua transferred Gen Durrani to GHQ after promoting him to Lt Gen. Shortly after Gen Janjua’s sudden death in 1993, the new COAS Gen Abdul Waheed Kakar sacked Gen Durrani from the army for indulging in unauthorized political activity by becoming a go-between Benazir Bhutto and General Janjua. But after coming to power, Ms Bhutto rewarded him by posting him as Ambassador to Germany. In due course, Gen Durrani became a columnist and was actively wooed as a think-tanker and Track-2 diplomat with an insider’s take on critical Indo-Pak and US-Pak matters. He now honed his persona to go with his new job: part blunt, part enigmatic, depending on the issue and forum.
GHQ has always looked upon Gen Durrani as a maverick who can be trusted to defend the institution when push comes to shove but with some views subtly contrary to the prevailing national security wisdom in his Alma Mater establishment. So why has GHQ suddenly jumped the gun and hauled him up?
Gen Durrani isn’t the first army officer to have empowered his elbow. At least a dozen Generals and a score of other army officers have, before him, spilled the beans in dribs and drabs, whether in the form of articles, books or TV interviews, at home and abroad. None of them had their books vetted by GHQ and none obtained a formal NOC before doing so. If Air Marshals Nur Khan and Asghar Khan were surprisingly candid about all the wars fought against India, General Pervez Musharraf is the biggest loud mouth of recent times and can safely be classified as a national security risk in comparison with the soft-spoken Gen Durrani. Moreover, at least a couple of dozen books detailing the shenanigans of the Miltablishment, including three full length critical biographies of the ISI by foreign scholars, are freely available at bookshops across the country. Indeed, this practice of writing memoirs or policy critiques is widely prevalent in the West where every second US National Security Advisor and CIA Chief has freely commented on his time in office and often revealed startling facts. So what’s the beef with Gen Durrani?
Regardless of what’s in the book – and there isn’t anything terribly significant that is unknown to Pakistan watchers – GHQ is unsettled by its timing. Only recently it has extracted a heavy price from Nawaz Sharif for Dawnleaks in which a well-known fact – that the Miltablishment’s policy of propping up militant non-state actors has become a millstone around the elected government’s neck – was made public. Nawaz Sharif’s subsequent comments of Miltablishment meddling in politics have attracted charges of “treason” and “Indian agent”. Now General Durrani comes along and calmly goes a couple of steps further than Nawaz Sharif, prompting the latter to quickly demand a sitting of the National Security Council to ascertain the veracity of admissions in the book and compare these with the insignificant utterances that cost him his job as prime minister. Under the circumstances, GHQ had no option but to quell the demand by pulling the “errant” General under its wing and silencing its rising critics. Should GHQ now demand a ban on the book that is published in India, it would look sillier still because it is now freely available on the web.
The double standards of the Miltablishment are now evident all round. General Musharraf is kosher but Gen Durrani is not. Nawaz Sharif is guilty of Iqama but Imran has not misdeclared. And so on, ad nauseam. No wonder, then, that a recent PILDAT survey shows that the credibility of military leaders in the popular imagination has fallen to the lowest among eleven institutional categories. This has raised serious question marks about its strategy to oust Nawaz Sharif and install another kangaroo government in Islamabad by pre-rigging the next elections. It has also put the spotlight on who is really in a bind and in the dock.
I can make one confident prediction: my forecasts will fail
Tim Harford in The Financial Times
I am not one of those clever people who claims to have seen the 2008 financial crisis coming, but by this time 10 years ago I could see that the fallout was going to be bad. Banking crises are always damaging, and this was a big one. The depth of the recession and the long-lasting hit to productivity came as no surprise to me. I knew it would happen.
Or did I? This is the story I tell myself, but if I am honest I do not really know. I did not keep a diary, and so must rely on my memory — which, it turns out, is not a reliable servant.
In 1972, the psychologists Baruch Fischhoff and Ruth Beyth conducted a survey in which they asked for predictions about Richard Nixon’s imminent presidential visit to China and Russia. How likely was it that Nixon and Mao Zedong would meet? What were the chances that the US would grant diplomatic recognition to China? Professors Fischhoff and Beyth wanted to know how people would later remember their forecasts. Since their subjects had taken the unusual step of writing down a specific probability for each of 15 outcomes, one might have hoped for accuracy. But no — the subjects flattered themselves hopelessly. The Fischhoff-Beyth paper was titled, “I knew it would happen”.
This is a reminder of what a difficult task we face when we try to make big-picture macroeconomic and geopolitical forecasts. To start with, the world is a complicated place, which makes predictions challenging. For many of the subjects that interest us, there is a substantial delay between the forecast and the outcome, and this delayed feedback makes it harder to learn from our successes and failures. Even worse, as Profs Fischhoff and Beyth discovered, we systematically misremember what we once believed.
Small wonder that forecasters turn to computers for help. We have also known for a long time — since work in the 1950s by the late psychologist Paul Meehl — that simple statistical rules often outperform expert intuition. Meehl’s initial work focused on clinical cases — for example, faced with a patient suffering chest pains, could a two or three-point checklist beat the judgment of an expert doctor? The experts did not fare well. However, Meehl’s rules, like more modern machine learning systems, require data to work. It is all very well for Amazon to forecast what impact a price drop may have on the demand for a book — and some of the most successful hedge funds use algorithmically-driven strategies — but trying to forecast the chance of Italy leaving the eurozone, or Donald Trump’s impeachment, is not as simple. Faced with an unprecedented situation, machines are no better than we are. And they may be worse.
Much of what we know about forecasting in a complex world, we know from the research of the psychologist Philip Tetlock. In the 1980s, Prof Tetlock began to build on the Fischhoff-Beyth research by soliciting specific and often long-term forecasts from a wide variety of forecasters — initially hundreds. The early results, described in Prof Tetlock’s book Expert Political Judgement, were not encouraging. Yet his idea of evaluating large numbers of forecasters over an extended period of time has blossomed, and some successful forecasters have emerged.
The latest step in this research is a “Hybrid Forecasting Tournament”, sponsored by the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, designed to explore ways in which humans and machine learning systems can co-operate to produce better forecasts. We await the results. If the computers do produce some insight, it may be because they can tap into data that we could hardly have imagined using before. Satellite imaging can now track the growth of crops or the stockpiling of commodities such as oil. Computers can guess at human sentiment by analysing web searches for terms such as “job seekers allowance”, mentions of “recession” in news stories, and positive emotions in tweets.
And there are stranger correlations, too. A study by economists Kasey Buckles, Daniel Hungerman and Steven Lugauer showed that a few quarters before an economic downturn in the US, the rate of conceptions also falls. Conceptions themselves may be deducible by computers tracking sales of pregnancy tests and folic acid.
Back in 1991, a psychologist named Harold Zullow published research suggesting that the emotional content of songs in the Billboard Hot 100 chart could predict recessions. Hits containing “pessimistic rumination” (“I heard it through the grapevine / Not much longer would you be mine”) tended to predict an economic downturn.
His successor is a young economist named Hisam Sabouni, who reckons that a computer-aided analysis of Spotify streaming gives him an edge in forecasting stock market movements and consumer sentiment. Will any of this prove useful for forecasting significant economic and political events? Perhaps. But for now, here is an easy way to use a computer to help you forecast: open up a spreadsheet, note down what you believe today, and regularly revisit and reflect. The simplest forecasting tip of all is to keep score.
I am not one of those clever people who claims to have seen the 2008 financial crisis coming, but by this time 10 years ago I could see that the fallout was going to be bad. Banking crises are always damaging, and this was a big one. The depth of the recession and the long-lasting hit to productivity came as no surprise to me. I knew it would happen.
Or did I? This is the story I tell myself, but if I am honest I do not really know. I did not keep a diary, and so must rely on my memory — which, it turns out, is not a reliable servant.
In 1972, the psychologists Baruch Fischhoff and Ruth Beyth conducted a survey in which they asked for predictions about Richard Nixon’s imminent presidential visit to China and Russia. How likely was it that Nixon and Mao Zedong would meet? What were the chances that the US would grant diplomatic recognition to China? Professors Fischhoff and Beyth wanted to know how people would later remember their forecasts. Since their subjects had taken the unusual step of writing down a specific probability for each of 15 outcomes, one might have hoped for accuracy. But no — the subjects flattered themselves hopelessly. The Fischhoff-Beyth paper was titled, “I knew it would happen”.
This is a reminder of what a difficult task we face when we try to make big-picture macroeconomic and geopolitical forecasts. To start with, the world is a complicated place, which makes predictions challenging. For many of the subjects that interest us, there is a substantial delay between the forecast and the outcome, and this delayed feedback makes it harder to learn from our successes and failures. Even worse, as Profs Fischhoff and Beyth discovered, we systematically misremember what we once believed.
Small wonder that forecasters turn to computers for help. We have also known for a long time — since work in the 1950s by the late psychologist Paul Meehl — that simple statistical rules often outperform expert intuition. Meehl’s initial work focused on clinical cases — for example, faced with a patient suffering chest pains, could a two or three-point checklist beat the judgment of an expert doctor? The experts did not fare well. However, Meehl’s rules, like more modern machine learning systems, require data to work. It is all very well for Amazon to forecast what impact a price drop may have on the demand for a book — and some of the most successful hedge funds use algorithmically-driven strategies — but trying to forecast the chance of Italy leaving the eurozone, or Donald Trump’s impeachment, is not as simple. Faced with an unprecedented situation, machines are no better than we are. And they may be worse.
Much of what we know about forecasting in a complex world, we know from the research of the psychologist Philip Tetlock. In the 1980s, Prof Tetlock began to build on the Fischhoff-Beyth research by soliciting specific and often long-term forecasts from a wide variety of forecasters — initially hundreds. The early results, described in Prof Tetlock’s book Expert Political Judgement, were not encouraging. Yet his idea of evaluating large numbers of forecasters over an extended period of time has blossomed, and some successful forecasters have emerged.
The latest step in this research is a “Hybrid Forecasting Tournament”, sponsored by the US Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, designed to explore ways in which humans and machine learning systems can co-operate to produce better forecasts. We await the results. If the computers do produce some insight, it may be because they can tap into data that we could hardly have imagined using before. Satellite imaging can now track the growth of crops or the stockpiling of commodities such as oil. Computers can guess at human sentiment by analysing web searches for terms such as “job seekers allowance”, mentions of “recession” in news stories, and positive emotions in tweets.
And there are stranger correlations, too. A study by economists Kasey Buckles, Daniel Hungerman and Steven Lugauer showed that a few quarters before an economic downturn in the US, the rate of conceptions also falls. Conceptions themselves may be deducible by computers tracking sales of pregnancy tests and folic acid.
Back in 1991, a psychologist named Harold Zullow published research suggesting that the emotional content of songs in the Billboard Hot 100 chart could predict recessions. Hits containing “pessimistic rumination” (“I heard it through the grapevine / Not much longer would you be mine”) tended to predict an economic downturn.
His successor is a young economist named Hisam Sabouni, who reckons that a computer-aided analysis of Spotify streaming gives him an edge in forecasting stock market movements and consumer sentiment. Will any of this prove useful for forecasting significant economic and political events? Perhaps. But for now, here is an easy way to use a computer to help you forecast: open up a spreadsheet, note down what you believe today, and regularly revisit and reflect. The simplest forecasting tip of all is to keep score.
Wednesday, 30 May 2018
How to defeat fake news: Lessons from Ireland's abortion referendum
Fintan O'Toole in The Guardian
In all the excitement of what happened in Ireland’s referendum on abortion, we should not lose sight of what did not happen. A vote on an emotive subject was not subverted. The tactics that have been so successful for the right and the far right in the UK, the US, Hungary and elsewhere did not work. A democracy navigated its way through some very rough terrain and came home not just alive but more alive than it was before. In the world we inhabit, these things are worth celebrating but also worth learning from. Political circumstances are never quite the same twice, but some of what happened and did not happen in Ireland surely contains more general lessons.
If the right failed spectacularly in Ireland, it was not for want of trying. Save the 8th, one of the two main groups campaigning against the removal of the anti-abortion clause from the Irish constitution, hired Vote Leave’s technical director, the Cambridge Analytica alumnus Thomas Borwick.
Save the 8th and the other anti-repeal campaign, Love Both, used apps developed by a US-based company, Political Social Media (PSM), which worked on both the Brexit and Trump campaigns. The small print told those using the apps that their data could be shared with other PSM clients, including the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and Vote Leave.
Irish voters were subjected to the same polarising tactics that have worked so well elsewhere: shamelessly fake “facts” (the claim, for example, that abortion was to be legalised up to six months into pregnancy); the contemptuous dismissal of expertise (the leading obstetrician Peter Boylan was told in a TV debate to “go back to school”); deliberately shocking visual imagery (posters of aborted foetuses outside maternity hospitals); and a discourse of liberal elites versus the real people. But Irish democracy had an immune system that proved highly effective in resisting this virus. Its success suggests a democratic playbook with at least four good rules.
Fake ‘facts’: A Save The 8th no campaign poster. Photograph: Laura Hutton/Alamy Live News
In all the excitement of what happened in Ireland’s referendum on abortion, we should not lose sight of what did not happen. A vote on an emotive subject was not subverted. The tactics that have been so successful for the right and the far right in the UK, the US, Hungary and elsewhere did not work. A democracy navigated its way through some very rough terrain and came home not just alive but more alive than it was before. In the world we inhabit, these things are worth celebrating but also worth learning from. Political circumstances are never quite the same twice, but some of what happened and did not happen in Ireland surely contains more general lessons.
If the right failed spectacularly in Ireland, it was not for want of trying. Save the 8th, one of the two main groups campaigning against the removal of the anti-abortion clause from the Irish constitution, hired Vote Leave’s technical director, the Cambridge Analytica alumnus Thomas Borwick.
Save the 8th and the other anti-repeal campaign, Love Both, used apps developed by a US-based company, Political Social Media (PSM), which worked on both the Brexit and Trump campaigns. The small print told those using the apps that their data could be shared with other PSM clients, including the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and Vote Leave.
Irish voters were subjected to the same polarising tactics that have worked so well elsewhere: shamelessly fake “facts” (the claim, for example, that abortion was to be legalised up to six months into pregnancy); the contemptuous dismissal of expertise (the leading obstetrician Peter Boylan was told in a TV debate to “go back to school”); deliberately shocking visual imagery (posters of aborted foetuses outside maternity hospitals); and a discourse of liberal elites versus the real people. But Irish democracy had an immune system that proved highly effective in resisting this virus. Its success suggests a democratic playbook with at least four good rules.
Fake ‘facts’: A Save The 8th no campaign poster. Photograph: Laura Hutton/Alamy Live News
First, trust the people. A crucial part of what happened in Ireland was an experiment in deliberative democracy. The question of how to deal with the constitutional prohibition on abortion – a question that has bedevilled the political and judicial systems for 35 years – was put to a Citizens’ Assembly, made up of 99 randomly chosen (but demographically representative) voters. These so-called ordinary people – truck drivers, homemakers, students, farmers – gave up their weekends to listen to 40 experts in medicine, law and ethics, to women affected by Ireland’s extremely restrictive laws and to 17 different lobby groups. They came up with recommendations that confounded most political and media insiders, by being much more open than expected – and much more open than the political system would have produced on its own.
It was these citizens who suggested entirely unrestricted access to abortion up to 12 weeks. Conservatives dismissed this process, in Trump style, as rigged (it wasn’t). They would have been much better off if they had actually listened to what these citizens were saying, and tried to understand what had persuaded them to take such a liberal position. The Irish parliament did listen – an all-party parliamentary committee essentially adopted the proposals of the Citizens’ Assembly. So did the government. And it turned out that a sample of “the people” actually knew pretty well what “the people” were thinking. If the Brexit referendum had been preceded by such a respectful, dignified and humble exercise in listening and thinking, it would surely have been a radically different experience.
Second, be honest. The yes side in the Irish debate handed its opponents a major tactical advantage but gained a huge strategic victory. It ceded an advantage in playing with all its cards turned up on the table. Technically, the vote was merely to repeal a clause in the constitution. There was no need to say what legislation the government hoped to enact afterwards. But the government chose to be completely clear about its intentions. It published a draft bill. This allowed opponents of reform to pick at, and often distort, points of detail. But it also completely undercut the reactionary politics of paranoia, the spectre of secret conspiracies. Honesty proved to be very good policy.
Yes campaigners did not assume that an elderly lady going to mass in a rural village was a lost cause
Third, talk to everybody and make assumptions about nobody. The reactionary movements have been thriving on tribalism. They divide voters into us and them – and all the better if they call us “deplorables”. The yes campaigners in Ireland – many of them young people, who are so often caricatured as the inhabitants of virtual echo chambers – refused to be tribal. They stayed calm and dignified. And when they were jeered at, they did not jeer back. They got out and talked (and listened) without prejudice. They did not assume that an elderly lady going to mass in a rural village was a lost cause. They risked (and sometimes got) abuse by recognising no comfort zones and engaging everyone they could reach. It turned out that a lot of people were sick of being typecast as conservatives. It turned out that a lot of people like to be treated as complex, intelligent and compassionate individuals. A majority of farmers and more than 40% of the over-65s voted yes.
Finally, the old feminist slogan that the personal is political holds true, but it also works the other way around. The political has to be personalised. The greatest human immune system against the viruses of hysteria, hatred and lies is storytelling. Even when we don’t trust politicians or experts, we trust people telling their own tales. We trust ourselves to judge whether they are lying or being truthful. Irish women had to go out and tell their own stories, to make the painful and intimate into public property.
This is very hard to do, and it should not be necessary. But is unstoppably powerful. The process mattered, political leadership mattered, campaigning mattered. But it was stories that won. Exit polls showed that by far the biggest factors in determining how people voted were “people’s personal stories that were told to the media”, followed by “the experience of someone who they know”.
Women, in the intimate circles of family and friends or in the harsh light of TV studios, said: “This is who I am. I am one of you.” And voters responded: “Yes, you are.” If democracy can create the context for that humane exchange to happen over and over again, it can withstand everything its enemies throw at it.
It was these citizens who suggested entirely unrestricted access to abortion up to 12 weeks. Conservatives dismissed this process, in Trump style, as rigged (it wasn’t). They would have been much better off if they had actually listened to what these citizens were saying, and tried to understand what had persuaded them to take such a liberal position. The Irish parliament did listen – an all-party parliamentary committee essentially adopted the proposals of the Citizens’ Assembly. So did the government. And it turned out that a sample of “the people” actually knew pretty well what “the people” were thinking. If the Brexit referendum had been preceded by such a respectful, dignified and humble exercise in listening and thinking, it would surely have been a radically different experience.
Second, be honest. The yes side in the Irish debate handed its opponents a major tactical advantage but gained a huge strategic victory. It ceded an advantage in playing with all its cards turned up on the table. Technically, the vote was merely to repeal a clause in the constitution. There was no need to say what legislation the government hoped to enact afterwards. But the government chose to be completely clear about its intentions. It published a draft bill. This allowed opponents of reform to pick at, and often distort, points of detail. But it also completely undercut the reactionary politics of paranoia, the spectre of secret conspiracies. Honesty proved to be very good policy.
Yes campaigners did not assume that an elderly lady going to mass in a rural village was a lost cause
Third, talk to everybody and make assumptions about nobody. The reactionary movements have been thriving on tribalism. They divide voters into us and them – and all the better if they call us “deplorables”. The yes campaigners in Ireland – many of them young people, who are so often caricatured as the inhabitants of virtual echo chambers – refused to be tribal. They stayed calm and dignified. And when they were jeered at, they did not jeer back. They got out and talked (and listened) without prejudice. They did not assume that an elderly lady going to mass in a rural village was a lost cause. They risked (and sometimes got) abuse by recognising no comfort zones and engaging everyone they could reach. It turned out that a lot of people were sick of being typecast as conservatives. It turned out that a lot of people like to be treated as complex, intelligent and compassionate individuals. A majority of farmers and more than 40% of the over-65s voted yes.
Finally, the old feminist slogan that the personal is political holds true, but it also works the other way around. The political has to be personalised. The greatest human immune system against the viruses of hysteria, hatred and lies is storytelling. Even when we don’t trust politicians or experts, we trust people telling their own tales. We trust ourselves to judge whether they are lying or being truthful. Irish women had to go out and tell their own stories, to make the painful and intimate into public property.
This is very hard to do, and it should not be necessary. But is unstoppably powerful. The process mattered, political leadership mattered, campaigning mattered. But it was stories that won. Exit polls showed that by far the biggest factors in determining how people voted were “people’s personal stories that were told to the media”, followed by “the experience of someone who they know”.
Women, in the intimate circles of family and friends or in the harsh light of TV studios, said: “This is who I am. I am one of you.” And voters responded: “Yes, you are.” If democracy can create the context for that humane exchange to happen over and over again, it can withstand everything its enemies throw at it.
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