Momentum, a convenient sporting myth

Suresh Menon in The Hindu

So Australia has the “momentum” going into the final Test match in Dharamsala.

At least, their skipper Steve Smith thinks so. Had Virat Kohli said that India have the momentum, he would have been right too. The reason is quite simple. “Momentum” does not exist, so you can pour into the word any meaning you want. Sportsmen do it all the time. It is as uplifting as the thought: “I am due a big score” or “the rivals are due a defeat”. Sport does not work that way, but there is consolation in thinking that it does.

“Momentum” is one of our most comforting sporting myths, the favourite of television pundits and newspaper columnists as well as team coaches everywhere. It reaffirms what we love to believe about sport: that winning is a habit, set to continue if unchecked; that confidence is everything, and players carry it from one victory to the next; and above all, that randomness, which is a more fundamental explanation, is anathema. It is at once the loser’s solace and the winner’s excuse. Few streaks transcend random processes. Of course streaks occur — that is the nature of sport. But that is no guide to future  performance.

Momentum, momentum, who’s got the momentum? is a popular sport-within-a-sport. It is a concept that borders on the verge of meaning, and sounds better than “I have a feeling about this.”

A study in the 1980s by Thomas Gilovich and Amos Tversky raised the question of “hot hands” or streaks in the NBA. They studied the Philadelphia 76ers and found no evidence of momentum. Immediate past success had no bearing on future attempts, just as a coin might fall heads or tails regardless of what the previous toss might have been.
That and later studies — including the probability of the winner of the fourth set winning the fifth too in tennis — confirmed what a coin-tossing logician might have suspected: that momentum, like the unicorn, does not exist.

Statistics and mythology are strange bedfellows, wrote the late Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary biologist and baseball fan. One can lead to the other over the course of an entire series or even through a single over in cricket.

Gould has also explained the attraction of patterns, and how we are hard-wired to see patterns in randomness. In many cases, patterns can be discerned in retrospect anyway, but only in retrospect. “Momentum” is usually recognised after the event, and seems to be borne of convenience rather than logic.

The momentum in the current series was with India before the matches began. Then they lost the first Test in Pune, and the momentum swung to Australia for the Bengaluru Test which then India won, grabbing the momentum again.

The third Test was drawn, so the momentum is either with Australia for plucking a draw from the jaws of defeat or with India for pushing Australia to the edge. Such simplistic analyses have kept pundits in business and given “momentum” a respectability and false importance in competitive sport. There is something romantic too in the idea, and many find that irresistible.

Momentum is such a vital component of sport that it has assumed the contours of a tangible object. Fans can reach out and touch it. Teams have it, they carry it, they ride it, they take great comfort from it and work hard to ensure that the opposition does not steal it from them. They carry it from venue to venue like they might their bats and boots and helmets.

To be fair to Steve Smith, what he actually said was “If there’s anything called momentum, it’s with us at the moment,” giving us a glimpse into a measured skepticism. If it exists, then we have it.

Does Peter Handscomb have momentum on his side, after a match-saving half-century in Ranchi? By the same token, does Ravindra Jadeja, after a half-century and nine wickets in the same match? Is team momentum the sum total of all the individual momentums? Will Ravi Ashwin, in that case, begin the final Test with a negative momentum having been less than at his best on the final day in Ranchi? How long before someone decides that momentum is temporary, but skill is permanent?

It is convenient to believe that either one team or the other has the momentum going into the final Test. Yet it is equally possible that those who swing the match with their performance might be players who haven’t been a great success in the series so far.

Someone like fast bowler Pat Cummins, or Virat Kohli himself. A whole grocery list of attributes then becomes more important than momentum: motivation, attitude, desperation, and imponderables that cannot be easily packaged and labeled.

Whichever team wins, momentum will have nothing to do with it. But that will not stop the next captain from telling us that the momentum is with his side. It might seem like blasphemy to disagree with him, so deeply is the concept grouted into our sporting consciousness.

Meritocracy: the great delusion that ingrains inequality

Jo Littler in The Guardian







We must create a level playing field for American companies and workers!” shouted Donald Trump in his first address to Congress last month, before announcing that tighter immigration controls would take the form of a “merit-based” system.

Like so many before him, Trump was wrapping political reforms in the language of meritocracy, conjuring up the image of a “fair” system where people are free to work hard to activate their talent and climb the ladder of success.

Since becoming prime minister, Theresa May has also promised to make Britain “the world’s great meritocracy” (or, in The Sun’s phrase, a “Mayritocracy”). She reiterated this pledge when announcing her revival of the grammar schools system, abandoned in the 1960s. “I want Britain to be a place where advantage is based on merit not privilege,” she proclaimed, “where it’s your talent and hard work that matter, not where you were born, who your parents are or what your accent sounds like.”

In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, many people noticed that the meritocracy they had been taught to believe in wasn’t working. The idea you could be anything you wanted to be, if only you tried hard enough, was increasingly hard to swallow. Even for the relatively pampered middle classes, jobs had dried up, become downgraded and over-pressured, debt had soared and housing was increasingly unaffordable.


Even Thatcher presented herself as an enemy of vested interests and a promoter of social mobility

This social context, created through 40 years of neoliberalism, was reflected on TV: in Breaking Bad, being brilliant at chemistry was not enough to guarantee mainstream career progression or even survival; the evisceration of social support was the backdrop to The Wire; and the precarious creative labour depicted in Girls was very different to the glamorous stability shown a decade earlier in Sex and the City.

In the face of this instability, May and Trump have managed to resuscitate the idea of meritocracy to justify policies that will increase inequality. They use different cultural accents: Trump’s brash rhetoric panders overtly to racism and misogyny; May presents herself as a fair-minded headmistress of the home counties. But their political logic is intertwined, as indicated by the indecent haste with which May rushed to the White House post-election. Both acknowledge inequality but prescribe meritocracy, capitalism and nationalism as the solution. Both want to create economic havens for the uber-rich while deepening the marketisation of public welfare systems and extending the logic of competition in everyday life.

When the word meritocracy made its first recorded appearance, in 1956 in the obscure British journal Socialist Commentary, it was a term of abuse, describing a ludicrously unequal state that surely no one would want to live in. Why, mused the industrial sociologist Alan Fox, would you want to give more prizes to the already prodigiously gifted? Instead, he argued, we should think about “cross-grading”: how to give those doing difficult or unattractive jobs more leisure time, and share out wealth more equitably so we all have a better quality of life and a happier society.

‘May and Trump have managed to resuscitate the idea of meritocracy to justify policies that will increase inequality.’ Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The philosopher Hannah Arendt agreed, arguing in a 1958 essay: “Meritocracy contradicts the principle of equality … no less than any other oligarchy.” She was particularly disparaging about the UK’s introduction of grammar schools and its institutional segregation of children according to one narrow measure of “ability”. This subject also troubled the social democratic polymath Michael Young, whose 1958 bestseller The Rise of the Meritocracy used the M-word in an affably disparaging fashion. The first half of his book outlined the rise of democracy; the second told the story of a dystopian, meritocratic future complete with black market trade in brainy babies.

But in 1972, Young’s friend the American sociologist Daniel Bell gave the concept a more positive spin when he suggested that meritocracy might actually be a productive engine for the new “knowledge economy”. By the 1980s the word was being used approvingly by a range of new-right thinktanks to describe their version of a world of extreme income difference and high social mobility. The word meritocracy had flipped in meaning.

Over the past few decades, neoliberal meritocracy has been characterised by two key features. First, the sheer scale of its attempt to extend entrepreneurial competition into the nooks and crannies of everyday life. Second, the power it has gathered by drawing from 20th-century movements for equality. Meritocracy has been presented as a means of breaking down established hierarchies of privilege.

Even Margaret Thatcher, despite her social conservatism, presented herself as an enemy of vested interests and a promoter of social mobility. Under New Labour, meritocracy embraced social liberalism, rejecting homophobia, sexism and racism. Now, we were told, really anyone could “make it”.

Those who did “make it” – the enterprising mumpreneur, the black vlogger, the council estate boy-turned-CEO – were spotlighted as parables of progress. But climbing up the social ladder became an increasing individualised matter, and as the rich got richer the ladders became longer. Those who didn’t make it were ignored or positioned as having personally failed. Under the coalition and Conservative governments, meritocratic yearning took a more punitive turn. In David Cameron’s “aspiration nation”, you were either a striver or a skiver; the very act of hoping to reach upwards became a moral obligation. Those who could not draw on existing reservoirs of privilege were told to worker harder to catch up.

The fact is, meritocracy is a myth. Social systems that reward through wealth, and which increase inequality, don’t aid social mobility, and people pass on their privilege to their children. The Conservatives have made this situation far worse by raising the inheritance tax threshold. And their reintroduction of grammar schools would involve using extremely narrow educational measures to divide children and to privilege the already privileged (often with the help of expensive private tutors). As the geographer Danny Dorling has said, it is a system of “educational apartheid”.

“Merit” itself, moreover, is a malleable, easily manipulated term. The American scholar Lani Guinier has shown how, in the 1920s, Harvard University curbed the number of Jewish students admitted by stipulating a new form of “merit”: that of “well-rounded character”. A more recent example was supplied by the reality TV filmmaking contest Project Greenlight, in which the white actor Matt Damon repeatedly interrupted black producer Effie Brown to tell her that diversity wasn’t important in film production: decisions, he explained, have to be “based entirely on merit”. This “Damonsplaining” was widely ridiculed on social media (“Can Matt Damon tell me why the caged bird sings?”). But it illustrated how versions of “merit” can be used to ingrain privilege – unlike clear criteria for specific roles, combined with anti-discrimination policies.

It is not hard to see why people find the idea of meritocracy appealing: it carries with it the idea of moving beyond where you start in life, of creative flourishing and fairness. But all the evidence shows it is a smokescreen for inequality. As Trump, May and their supporters attempt to resurrect it, there has never been a better moment to bury meritocracy for ever.

I'm glad to see David Davis 'still hasn't looked into' the economic impact of Brexit

Mark Steel in The Independent

Some people are concerned we aren’t prepared for this Brexit situation, so it was heartening to hear Minister David Davis explain what happens if we don’t manage a deal with the EU, by saying he “hadn’t looked into it yet.”

This shows a steady hand, rather than someone who rushes into things by looking into stuff within the first nine months of a job specifically created to look into exactly that stuff. What’s achieved by panicking like that? Because Davis is only Minister for Brexit. How is he supposed to find out anything about Brexit, on top of all the other things in his title?  

The government should create other specific posts to try and match Davis. They could create a Minister for Desiccated Coconut, so that after nine months they can say: “I won’t lie, I haven’t given a passing thought to desiccated coconut.” At least campaigners for  leaving the EU were honest. Before the referendum, supporters of the Leave campaign like Davis always explained that if we left, they didn’t have the slightest idea what would happen, and even came up with the slogan “nine months after the result we’ll confirm we haven’t looked into it”, which as I recall they put on the side of a bus.

Theresa May has insisted that “no deal is better than a bad deal”, which introduced a philosophical edge to Brexit. Because how can anyone know whether it will be better or worse if we haven’t yet looked into it? It’s like saying you have no idea what’s on the other side of the universe, but whatever it is, it’s better than a donkey.

But Davis went even further, explaining: “You don’t need pieces of paper with a number on it to make an economic assessment.” Of course not, an economic assessment isn’t about numbers. When you apply for a mortgage, the bank asks how much you earn, and you say “a bit”, then the bank manager has a think and says: “In that case you’re allowed to borrow a yellowish amount, that reminds you of the sea.” So you ask: “How much will I have to pay back every month?” and they say: “Come back in nine months, by which time I won’t have looked into it yet.”

Asked whether British citizens will continue, after Brexit, to get free healthcare in the EU, Davis said they probably wouldn’t, but added reassuringly: “I have not looked at that one.”

There’s a man on top of his brief. Anyone can be clueless on the general direction of Brexit, but it takes dedication to be even more vague on each specific detail.

Hopefully the foreign health authorities will adopt the same attitude, and when a British citizen arrives at a Spanish hospital with appendicitis, they’re met by an appendicitis doctor who tells them to wait nine months, then they’ll be given a letter saying: “Do you know, I haven’t got the slightest clue about appendixes.”





Davis agreed that UK producers of dairy and meat will face tariffs of up to 40 per cent, conceding: “The numbers in agriculture are high.” It’s a shame he let his side down there, because acknowledging “high” is a bit too specific. Ideally he’d have answered the question by saying: “How long’s a piece of string, mate? I tell you what I do know about meat, I’ve got a lovely recipe for a liver casserole. The ingredients are a chunk of liver, an unspecified volume of stock and in indeterminate degree of vegetables. I won’t give you a piece of paper with exact numbers as that spoils a recipe.”

Asked how Brexit is likely to affect the border between Northern Ireland and the South, he explained it will be “light, not hard”. That was as much detail as he gave, so I expect he means the customs officers will always wear gloves before they put their fingers up your bottom.

This shows the problem Hammond made with his Budget, he gave out exact numbers. He should have said: “The borrowing requirements for the coming year as predicted by the Office of Budget Responsibility are a bit salty and not as soggy as you might think. To this end, National Insurance contributions for the self-employed will be curlier than they have been, and taste of cucumber.” Then he wouldn’t have had to change his mind and look an idiot.

But Davis was impressively consistent. Asked: “Would financial services lose passporting rights to trade in the EU?” he replied: “I expect so, that’s an area of uncertainty.”

Hilary Benn, who was asking the questions on behalf of a parliamentary committee, nodded, which shows how aloof he’s become. Because anyone normal would have gone: “Oh that’s the one area of uncertainty is it? That’s one small zone of ambiguity amidst a sea of poxy certainty with your definite super-accurate answers such as 'oh blimey I haven’t the foggiest idea' is it, Mister David 'Atomic Clock' Davis?”

The committee could have asked if he was a man or a woman, and he’d have said: “In these days of binary non-specific gender types it’s not easy to say, especially as I haven’t looked into it yet.”

You can understand how he was caught on the hop, because the campaign for Britain to leave the EU has only been going on for around 40 years, so they’ve hardly had a moment to consider what to do if they got their way.

But it brings politicians nearer to the common person, because Davis sounded like any random passer-by on a vox-pop for local news. When he finally presents the final treaty, it will just say: “Blimey, phhhh, dear oh dear, there’s all sorts to think about isn’t there? Does anyone know anything about olive oil?”

And Jesus Said Unto Paul of Ryan ...

Nicolas Kristof in The New York Times

A woman who had been bleeding for 12 years came up behind Jesus and touched his clothes in hope of a cure. Jesus turned to her and said: “Fear not. Because of your faith, you are now healed.”

Then spoke Pious Paul of Ryan: “But teacher, is that wise? When you cure her, she learns dependency. Then the poor won’t take care of themselves, knowing that you’ll always bail them out! You must teach them personal responsibility!”

They were interrupted by 10 lepers who stood at a distance and shouted, “Jesus, have pity on us.”

“NO!” shouted Pious Paul. “Jesus! You don’t have time. We have a cocktail party fund-raiser in the temple. And don’t worry about them — they’ve already got health care access.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul, puzzled.

“Why, they can pray for a cure,” Pious Paul explained. “I call that universal health care access.”

Jesus turned to the 10 lepers. “Rise and go,” he told them. “Your faith has made you well.” Then he turned back to Pious Paul, saying, “Let me tell you the story of the good Samaritan.

“A man was attacked by robbers who stripped him of clothes, beat him and left him half dead. A minister passed down this same road, and when he saw the injured man, he crossed to the other side and hurried on. So did a rich man who claimed to serve God. But then a despised Samaritan came by and took pity on the injured man. He bandaged his wounds and put the man on his own donkey and paid an innkeeper to nurse him to health. So which of these three should we follow?”

“Those who had mercy on him,” Pious Paul said promptly.

Jesus nodded. “So go ——”

“I mean the first two,” Pious Paul interjected. “For the Samaritan’s work is unsustainable and sends the wrong message. It teaches travelers to take dangerous roads, knowing that others will rescue them from self-destructive behaviors. This Samaritan also seems to think it right to redistribute money from those who are successful and give it to losers. That’s socialism! Meanwhile, if the rich man keeps his money, he can invest it and create jobs. So it’s an act of mercy for the rich man to hurry on and ignore the robbery victim.”

 “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven,” Jesus mused to himself. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter heaven.”

“Let me teach you about love, Jesus — tough love!” Pious Paul explained. “You need a sustainable pro-business model. And you need to give people freedom, Jesus, the freedom to suffer misery and poverty.”

“The Lord God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor,” Jesus replied, emphasizing the last two words. Then he turned to a paralyzed beggar at his feet. “Stand up!” Jesus told the man. “Pick up your mat and go home.” As the man danced about joyfully, Pious Paul rolled his eyes dismissively.

“Look, Jesus, you have rare talent, and it should be rewarded,” Pious Paul said. “I have a partner, The Donald, who would like to work with you: He’d set up a lovely hospital, and the rich would come and pay for you to heal them. You’d get a percentage, and it’d be a real money-spinner. Overhead would be minimal because every morning you could multiply some loaves and fishes. You could strike it rich!”

“Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the kingdom of God,” Jesus said. “But woe to you who are rich, for you have already received comfort.”

“Oh, come on, Jesus,” Pious Paul protested. “Don’t go socialist on me again. Please don’t encourage class warfare. The best way to help the needy is to give public money to the rich. That then inspires the poor to work harder, galvanizes the sick to become healthy, forces the lepers to solve their own problems rather than kick back and depend on others. That’s why any realistic health plan has to focus on providing less coverage for the poor, and big tax benefits for the rich. When millions of people lose health care, that’s when a country is great again!”

“From everyone who has been given much,” Jesus told him, “much will be required.”

“Well, sure, this hospital would have a foundation to do some charity work. Maybe commissioning portraits of The Donald to hang in the entrance. But let’s drop this bleeding heart nonsense about health care as a human right, and see it as a financial opportunity to reward investors. In this partnership, 62 percent of the benefits would go to the top 0.6 percent — perfect for a health care plan.”

Jesus turned to Pious Paul on his left and said: “Be gone! For I was hungry and you gave me no food; I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink; and I was sick, and you did not help me.”127COMMENTS

“But, Lord,” protested Pious Paul of Ryan, “when did I see you hungry or thirsty or sick and refuse to help you? I drop your name everywhere. And I’m pro-life!”

“Truly, I say to you,” Jesus responded, “as you did not help the homeless, the sick — as you did not help the least of these, you did not help me.”

Oxford comma helps drivers win dispute about overtime pay

Elena Cresci in The Guardian

Never let it be said that punctuation doesn’t matter.

In Maine, the much-disputed Oxford comma has helped a group of dairy drivers in a dispute with a company about overtime pay.

The Oxford comma is used before the words “and” or “or” in a list of three or more things. Also known as the serial comma, its aficionados say it clarifies sentences in which things are listed.

As Grammarly notes, the sentences “I love my parents, Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty” and “I love my parents, Lady Gaga, and Humpty Dumpty” are a little different. Without a comma, it looks like the parents in question are, in fact, Lady Gaga and Humpty Dumpty.

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on the one hand I love the #oxfordcomma, on the other hand these sentences truly are SO GOOD

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In a judgment that will delight Oxford comma enthusiasts everywhere, a US court of appeals sided with delivery drivers for Oakhurst Dairy because the lack of a comma made part of Maine’s overtime laws too ambiguous.

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United States Court of Appeals
For the First Circuit, No. 16-1901 (March 13, 2017), Judge Barron:

The Oxford Comma is important.

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The state’s law says the following activities do not count for overtime pay:

The canning, processing, preserving, freezing, drying, marketing, storing, packing for shipment or distribution of:

(1) Agricultural produce;
(2) Meat and fish products; and
(3) Perishable foods.

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The drivers argued, due to a lack of a comma between “packing for shipment” and “or distribution”, the law refers to the single activity of “packing”, not to “packing” and “distribution” as two separate activities. As the drivers distribute – but do not pack – the goods, this would make them eligible for overtime pay.

Previously, a district court had ruled in the dairy company’s favour, who argued that the legislation “unambiguously” identified the two as separate activities exempt from overtime pay. But the appeals judge sided with the drivers.

Circuit judge David J. Barron wrote:

We conclude that the exemption’s scope is actually not so clear in this regard. And because, under Maine law, ambiguities in the state’s wage and hour laws must be construed liberally in order to accomplish their remedial purpose, we adopt the drivers’ narrower reading of the exemption.

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AP style fans, we know you'll appreciate an #APStyleHaiku about Oxford commas. You can write, count and share, too. https://twitter.com/nathanfrontiero/status/753708777862418432 …

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The Oxford comma ignites considerable passion among its proponents and opponents. In 2011, when it was wrongly reported that the Oxford comma was being dropped by the University of Oxford style guide, there was uproar.

“Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?” opens one Vampire Weekend song.

The Guardian style guide has the following to say about Oxford commas:

a comma before the final “and” in lists: straightforward ones (he ate ham, eggs and chips) do not need one, but sometimes it can help the reader (he ate cereal, kippers, bacon, eggs, toast and marmalade, and tea).

Sometimes it is essential: compare

I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis, and JK Rowling

with

I dedicate this book to my parents, Martin Amis and JK Rowling

Theresa May must not trigger article 50 before these vital questions are answered

Carole Cadwalldr in The Guardian

Is Brexit the will of the people? And if so, which people exactly? There are many disquieting questions to be asked about world events right now. But, in the week in which Theresa May received parliament’s approval to trigger article 50 and send us crashing out of the European Union, there are none more compelling and urgent than about the integrity of our entire democratic system.

The questions that remain unanswered are not about party infighting, and not even about Brexit. The issue is this: did foreign individuals or powers, acting covertly, subvert our democracy?

There are mounting and deeply disquieting questions about the role “dark money” may have played during last year’s EU referendum; and about whether the use of offshore jurisdictions, loopholes in European and North American data laws, undeclared foreign donors, a closed, all-powerful technological system (Facebook) and an antiquated and hopelessly out-of-touch oversight body has undermined the very foundations of our electoral system. 

This is what we know: the Electoral Commission is still assessing claims that potentially illegal donations were made; the information commissioner is investigating “possible illegal” use of data; the heads of MI6 and GCHQ have both voiced unprecedented warnings about foreign interference in our democratic systems; the government has refused to elaborate on what these are; one of the leave campaigns has admitted the undeclared support and help of the American hedge fund billionaire who backed Trump; the Crown Prosecution Service is being asked to mount a criminal investigation; and questions have been raised about possible unlawful collaboration between different elements of the leave campaign.

And this all leads to the next question: are we really going to allow article 50 to be triggered when we don’t even know if the referendum was freely, fairly and legally conducted?

Even if you back Brexit, even if you can’t wait for Theresa May to pull the article 50 trigger, this should be the cause of serious concern. Yes, maybe this vote went the way you wanted. But what about the next?


MI6 and GCHQ have both voiced warnings about foreign interference in our democratic systems

This weekend brought two startling warnings from two entirely different quarters. The first from the man who invented the world wide web, Tim Berners-Lee, who said he was “extremely worried” about the future of democracy; that data harvesting was being used to “chilling” effect; that political targeting on the basis of it was “unethical”; and that the internet had been weaponised and was being used against us.

The second came from GCHQ, whose National Cyber Security Centre head has written to the main political parties warning of hostile interference. This was months after the head of the MI6, Alex Younger, made an unprecedented speech warning of “cyber attacks, propaganda or subversion of the democratic process”. And he added: “The risks at stake are profound and represent a fundamental threat to our sovereignty. They should be a concern to all those who share democratic values.”

Three months on, May’s government has refused to tell us what those risks are. What does Younger know? Why has parliament not been told? Who is investigating, and when will we know the results? Where is Dominic Grieve, the head of the intelligence select committee, in all this? And how can any of us have any trust in the democratic process when vital information is being kept from us?

Watchdog to launch inquiry into misuse of data in politics



We do know that Russian interests interfered in the US election. That has been catalogued by the National Security Agency, the CIA and the FBI. And that the beneficiary of that interference was Donald Trump. We know that Trump, his campaign strategist Steve Bannon, and the billionaire who funded his campaign, Robert Mercer, all have long-standing, close ties to Nigel Farage, Arron Banks and last year’s Leave.eu campaign. We know that the data company Cambridge Analytica, owned by Mercer and with Steve Bannon on the board, undertook work for Leave.eu.

We know that Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL, employed a Canadian individual – Zackary Massingham – to undertake work for it. We know Massingham is a director of a company called AggregateIQ, and that Vote Leave – the official leave campaign – paid AggregateIQ £3.5m to do its profiling and Facebook advertising. We know it paid AggregateIQ a further £725,000 on behalf of two other organisations – one of which was a 23-year-old student who worked in Vote Leave’s office. And we know Northern Ireland’s Democraticlse we know: that the law demands that coordinated campaigns declare their expenditure and are subject to a strict combined limit. Yet here we see four different campaigns using the same tiny Canadian company based thousands of miles and seven time zones away. Coincidence? And this same company, AggregateIQ, has direct links (through Massingham) to the company used by the separate campaign Leave.eu.

However, we don’t know what contact, if any, there was between these five campaigns, or if employing a North American company (in a jurisdiction known for its far less stringent laws on both data protection and financial disclosure) had other benefits. But we do know that data is power: Facebook admitted last week that it can use data to swing elections – for the right price.

All the individuals and organisations deny any wrongdoing. But there are too many questions. There may be straightforward explanations but they have to be asked, addressed and answered.

If May triggers article 50 before we have those answers, we won’t know if Brexit is the will of the people or if it’s the result of a determined foreign actor, or actors, undermining our entire democratic system.

Theresa May is dragging the UK under. This time Scotland must cut the rope

George Monbiot in The Guardian

Here is the question the people of Scotland will face in the next independence referendum: when England falls out of the boat like a block of concrete, do you want your foot tied to it?

It would be foolish to deny that there are risks in leaving the United Kingdom. Scotland’s economy is weak, not least because it has failed to wean itself off North Sea oil. There are major questions, not yet resolved, about the currency it would use; its trading relationship with the rump of the UK; and its association with the European Union, which it’s likely to try to rejoin.

But the risks of staying are as great or greater. Ministers are already trying to reconcile us to the possibility of falling out of the EU without a deal. If this happens, Britain would be the only one of the G20 nations without special access to EU trade – “a very destructive outcome leading to mutually assured damage for the EU and the UK”, according to the Commons foreign affairs committee. As the government has a weak hand, an obsession with past glories and an apparent yearning for a heroic gesture of self-destruction, this is not an unlikely result.

On the eve of the first independence referendum, in September 2014, David Cameron exhorted the people of Scotland to ask themselves: “Will my family and I truly be better off by going it alone? Will we really be more safe and secure?” Thanks to his machinations, the probable answer is now: yes.

In admonishing Scotland for seeking to protect itself from this chaos, the government applies a simple rule: whatever you say about Britain’s relationship with Europe, say the opposite about Scotland’s relationship with Britain.

In her speech to the Scottish Conservatives’ spring conference, Theresa May observed that “one of the driving forces behind the union’s creation was the remorseless logic that greater economic strength and security come from being united”. She was talking about the UK, but the same remorseless logic applies to the EU. In this case, however, she believes that our strength and security will be enhanced by leaving. “Politics is not a game, and government is not a platform from which to pursue constitutional obsessions,” she stormed – to which you can only assent.

A Conservative member of the Scottish parliament, Jamie Greene, complains that a new referendum “would force people to vote blind on the biggest political decision a country could face. That is utterly irresponsible.” This reminds me of something, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.

Before the last Scottish referendum, when the polls suggested that Scotland might choose independence, Boris Johnson, then London mayor, warned that “we are on the verge of an utter catastrophe for this country … No one has thought any of this through.” Now, as foreign secretary, he assures us that “we would be perfectly OK” if Britain leaves the EU without a deal.

  Independence supporters gather in Glasgow’s George Square after Nicola Sturgeon’s call for a second referendum.

The frantic attempts by government and press to delegitimise the decision by the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, to call for a second independence vote fall flat. Her party’s manifesto for the last Scottish election gives her an evident mandate: it would hold another referendum “if there is a significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against our will”.

Contrast this with May’s position. She has no mandate, from either the general election or the referendum, for leaving the single market and the European customs union. Her intransigence over these issues bends the Conservative manifesto’s pledge to “strengthen and improve devolution for each part of our United Kingdom”.

Her failure to consult the governments of Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland before unilaterally deciding that the UK would leave the single market, and her refusal to respond to the paper the Scottish government produced exploring possible options for a continued engagement with the EU after Brexit testify to a relationship characterised by paternalism and contempt.

You can see the same attitude in the London-based newspapers. As the last referendum approached, they treated Scotland like an ungrateful servant. “What spoilt, selfish, childlike fools those Scots are … They simply don’t have a clue how lucky they are,” Melanie Reid sniffed in the Times. Now the charge is scheming opportunism. “We hope the Scottish people call Sturgeon out for her cynical, self-interested game-playing,” rages the Sun’s English edition. If you want to know what cynical, self-interested game-playing looks like, read the Sun’s Scottish edition. It says the opposite, contrasting the risks of independence with “the stick-on certainty of decades of Tory rule with nothing to soften it”, if Scotland remains within the UK.

Whenever I visit Scotland, I’m reminded that Britain is politically dead from the neck down. South of the border, we tolerate repeated assaults on the commonweal. As the self-hating state destroys its own power to distribute wealth, support public services and protect the NHS from ruin; as it rips up the rules protecting workers, the living world, our food, water and the very air we breathe; as disabled people are pushed off a cliff and poor people are evicted from their homes, we stand and stare. As the trade minister colludes with the dark money network on both sides of the Atlantic, threatening much that remains, we shake our heads then turn away.

Sure, there are some protests. There is plenty of dissent on social media; but our response is pathetic in comparison with the scale of what we face. The Labour opposition is divided, directionless and currently completely useless. But north of the border politics is everywhere, charged with hope, anger and a fierce desire for change. Again and again, this change is thwarted by the dead weight of Westminster. Who would remain tethered to this block, especially as the boat begins to list?

Scotland could wait to find out what happens after Brexit, though it is hard to see any likely outcome other than more of this and worse. Or it could cut the rope, pull itself back into the boat, and sail towards a hopeful if uncertain future. I know which option I would take.