It's led in no small part to what happened yesterday. I covered Brexit for four years, and the legal commentary was never this bad. Lots of other crap, yes, but the legal commentary was always at least arguable.
There’s a lot of pungent truth in this, but I think that the attrition of professional reputation through some individuals’ infatuation with their own social media performance isn’t the entire explanation in this instance.
First, with many honourable exceptions, deadlines, laziness and ignorance combine to lead journalists to fail to consult experts who are accessible and willing to talk to them at the drop of a tweet or direct message, and without dragging their soapbox into the room with them.
Second, this subject involves two areas of law: gender recognition and equality law, and devolved and reserved matters as between the Parliament of Scotland at Holyrood and the UK Parliament at Westminster. Both of these involve complex and technical statutory provisions. Both are also highly inflammatory topics, with hyoer-partisans on all sides. In the law of gender recognition and equality, a significant judgment in the Court of Session (For Women Scotland 2) only days before the final legislative stage of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill at Holyrood, was not debated or digested in that process. As regards the devolution settlement, the UK government’s power of veto over a Holyrood Bill is a virgin power, exercised for the first time here. So there is new material in territory where in any event (some) fools rush in and wiser people tread with caution. Especially those who already have entrenched and familiar views on either of the legal issues, or on Westminster and its personalities, or have form for cluelessness and incoherence in their work.
Thirdly, there is some discernible foregrounding of men and elbowing aside of women at work here, as Dr Michael Foran, the University of Glasgow academic whose recent work appears to have been influential on the government’s decision to exercise the s35 veto, has himself pointed out. On 14 January 2023 he tweeted
“ ... it really should be said that women have been raising these issues for years and don’t seem to have been taken seriously. I recognise that I brought some devolution aspects to the table but really I’ve not said much new here at all”
This was in reply to a thread started by a human rights lawyer and prolific commentator, also male, who had referenced Michael Foran’s work and said
“I’m looking for commentary on the Scottish gender recognition bill. ... Anything else out there?”
As anyone who had been paying any attention to the subject would know, there was a great deal “out there”, much of it written by women policy analysts and lawyers. QED
Thanks for that fabulous fleshing out of your Twitter observations!
In his (more recently written) afterward to the paperback edition of Madness of Crowds (the hardback came out in 2019, and the paperback in 2021 IIRC) Douglas Murray observed that he was convinced there was a form of sexism mixed (very unpleasantly) with envy in the way trans activists behave towards left-leaning women who oppose them (while generally leaving Tory critics of both sexes alone, a pattern not broken until Lloyd Russell-Moyle's behaviour in the Commons this week).
Murray is even less likely to out himself as a feminist than me, and is a lot more heavily involved in this debate than I am, so if he has noticed this, then I suspect it's genuine.
What I wonder now is if the behaviour of the trans activists Murray describes has cross-pollinated, as it were, with mainstream journalism. Because last week's clueless behaviour on both issues you discuss was very bad, worse than all the legal commentary around Brexit, which was generally at least arguable.
Interesting. I don’t really have anything that isn’t merely impressionistic to add, save that this sounds plausible. I did look more deeply at some of the “progressive” commentary about Kate Bingham, appointed to lead the government’s Vaccine Task Force in April 2020 and six months later the subject of a Sunday Times politics article criticising her for reasons that later turned out to be wholly insubstantial. This was followed by activism from the Good Law Project in adding her appointment to a claim they then had running about cronyism in pandemic public appointments, and very much building on the wide assumption that a “Tory wife” had no relevant competence to bring to the role (for which she was in fact eminently qualified). They withdrew the challenge to her appointment before trial, in which they failed to prove any of the remaining cronyism allegations. But the Guardian eagerly published their narrative and many high follower Twitter voices (of liberal men whose knowledge of the UK biotechnology industry was less than nothing) were prolific and widely amplified, all in the same vein. I challenged a number of them, finding their adherence to an utterly outdated and sexist view of a middle aged woman who had had an outstanding career and was a role model for women and girls in science pretty depressing. So I think it is not far beneath the surface for far too many of them.
The problem is that when I read or hear, experts say, I translate to say or read - some experts, whose opinions I like, say.
I now assume that all experts say commentary is pretty worthless as it will reflect the editorial line - the party line - of the site that publishes the piece.
9 months ago, the Uk was going to be the fastest growing economy in the G7. Now the forecasts are (or were a couple of months ago) for a recession. Which should I trust, if any?
There are experts and experts, and subject matter and subject matter. Economic forecasting is a very different sort of thing from descriptive commentary explaining the technical operation of law, or the effect of a chain of legal reasoning on a judge’s decision, in a way that gets it across accurately but you don’t have to be a lawyer to understand. As I mentioned, this particular story spans two areas of law: gender recognition and equality, and Scottish devolution, which is essentially an aspect of constitutional law. Both are complex. There are people tweeting about it with strong, genuine credentials in these areas. Some are not lawyers but policy analysts who understand the law well and who have been working on the policy underlying this Bill for years. And others are bandwagon jumpers, and even if you don’t know or can’t spot which is which at a glance, I think it’s usually possible to work it out from attentive reading, and from checking their published credentials
One of the reasons I did not speculate in my CapX piece about where this may land in litigation terms is precisely because there is no information from the future, and Section 35 has never been used before.
I was still able to provide a decent(ish) explanation of the constitutional law aspects.
Economic forecasting, by contrast, is basically crystal-ball gazing, and not even particularly well-informed. I said last year on some telly show or another that the Bank of England and Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts should appear in the same part of the paper as Mystic Meg, and I stand by that remark!
Unfortunately, I think you are much more forensic in looking for bandwagon jumpers that most. I have seen some truly appalling errors of basic law today by someone who is lauded as "leading" and "expert" and I think the general education of people about our legal system is such they will still hang on the every incorrect word despite it being corrected by others.
"...it’s genuinely difficult to know when something is true or real..."
Increasingly, it seems that those that pedal in BS for likes, are patently aware of this struggle and utterly indifferent about being 'found out'. The tsunami of tribal support for each and every jibe lifts them up and carries them on to their next great pronouncement.
Excellent post. One thing I think also plays into all this is that there is a general lack of public understanding of genuine expertise / relevant knowledge as opposed to self-awarded expert status. There seems to be a breed of "expert" that actually just have an eye on a media-type career broadcasting to echo chambers who mistake the fact they agree with the "expert" for expertise and lap it up.
There is almost certainly money and "prestige" in it for the people who do it, but it harms the quality of genuine debate and the educating effect that would have.
Lorenzo and I are working on a podcast to go with this substack, and I still do periodic commentary on various outlets. I've got one coming out tonight with Andrew Doyle (BBC R4; 11pm, but available on iPlayer afterwards if you wish to listen at a more civilised hour), a livestream later in the same month, ABC Radio National in March, and various podcasts over the same period. All will be linked and promoted here.
I was finding weekly spots (for which I do a lot of preparation - I'm no good as a "bluffer") too much to combine with writing my fourth book and my usual legal commentary.
Great piece Helen and I do fear that respect for the profession may reach the lows of Universities and that would be no good for anyone!
It's led in no small part to what happened yesterday. I covered Brexit for four years, and the legal commentary was never this bad. Lots of other crap, yes, but the legal commentary was always at least arguable.
There’s a lot of pungent truth in this, but I think that the attrition of professional reputation through some individuals’ infatuation with their own social media performance isn’t the entire explanation in this instance.
First, with many honourable exceptions, deadlines, laziness and ignorance combine to lead journalists to fail to consult experts who are accessible and willing to talk to them at the drop of a tweet or direct message, and without dragging their soapbox into the room with them.
Second, this subject involves two areas of law: gender recognition and equality law, and devolved and reserved matters as between the Parliament of Scotland at Holyrood and the UK Parliament at Westminster. Both of these involve complex and technical statutory provisions. Both are also highly inflammatory topics, with hyoer-partisans on all sides. In the law of gender recognition and equality, a significant judgment in the Court of Session (For Women Scotland 2) only days before the final legislative stage of the Gender Recognition Reform Bill at Holyrood, was not debated or digested in that process. As regards the devolution settlement, the UK government’s power of veto over a Holyrood Bill is a virgin power, exercised for the first time here. So there is new material in territory where in any event (some) fools rush in and wiser people tread with caution. Especially those who already have entrenched and familiar views on either of the legal issues, or on Westminster and its personalities, or have form for cluelessness and incoherence in their work.
Thirdly, there is some discernible foregrounding of men and elbowing aside of women at work here, as Dr Michael Foran, the University of Glasgow academic whose recent work appears to have been influential on the government’s decision to exercise the s35 veto, has himself pointed out. On 14 January 2023 he tweeted
“ ... it really should be said that women have been raising these issues for years and don’t seem to have been taken seriously. I recognise that I brought some devolution aspects to the table but really I’ve not said much new here at all”
This was in reply to a thread started by a human rights lawyer and prolific commentator, also male, who had referenced Michael Foran’s work and said
“I’m looking for commentary on the Scottish gender recognition bill. ... Anything else out there?”
As anyone who had been paying any attention to the subject would know, there was a great deal “out there”, much of it written by women policy analysts and lawyers. QED
Thanks for that fabulous fleshing out of your Twitter observations!
In his (more recently written) afterward to the paperback edition of Madness of Crowds (the hardback came out in 2019, and the paperback in 2021 IIRC) Douglas Murray observed that he was convinced there was a form of sexism mixed (very unpleasantly) with envy in the way trans activists behave towards left-leaning women who oppose them (while generally leaving Tory critics of both sexes alone, a pattern not broken until Lloyd Russell-Moyle's behaviour in the Commons this week).
Murray is even less likely to out himself as a feminist than me, and is a lot more heavily involved in this debate than I am, so if he has noticed this, then I suspect it's genuine.
What I wonder now is if the behaviour of the trans activists Murray describes has cross-pollinated, as it were, with mainstream journalism. Because last week's clueless behaviour on both issues you discuss was very bad, worse than all the legal commentary around Brexit, which was generally at least arguable.
Interesting. I don’t really have anything that isn’t merely impressionistic to add, save that this sounds plausible. I did look more deeply at some of the “progressive” commentary about Kate Bingham, appointed to lead the government’s Vaccine Task Force in April 2020 and six months later the subject of a Sunday Times politics article criticising her for reasons that later turned out to be wholly insubstantial. This was followed by activism from the Good Law Project in adding her appointment to a claim they then had running about cronyism in pandemic public appointments, and very much building on the wide assumption that a “Tory wife” had no relevant competence to bring to the role (for which she was in fact eminently qualified). They withdrew the challenge to her appointment before trial, in which they failed to prove any of the remaining cronyism allegations. But the Guardian eagerly published their narrative and many high follower Twitter voices (of liberal men whose knowledge of the UK biotechnology industry was less than nothing) were prolific and widely amplified, all in the same vein. I challenged a number of them, finding their adherence to an utterly outdated and sexist view of a middle aged woman who had had an outstanding career and was a role model for women and girls in science pretty depressing. So I think it is not far beneath the surface for far too many of them.
The problem is that when I read or hear, experts say, I translate to say or read - some experts, whose opinions I like, say.
I now assume that all experts say commentary is pretty worthless as it will reflect the editorial line - the party line - of the site that publishes the piece.
9 months ago, the Uk was going to be the fastest growing economy in the G7. Now the forecasts are (or were a couple of months ago) for a recession. Which should I trust, if any?
Economic forecasts of all kinds should always be treated with the utmost caution.
There are experts and experts, and subject matter and subject matter. Economic forecasting is a very different sort of thing from descriptive commentary explaining the technical operation of law, or the effect of a chain of legal reasoning on a judge’s decision, in a way that gets it across accurately but you don’t have to be a lawyer to understand. As I mentioned, this particular story spans two areas of law: gender recognition and equality, and Scottish devolution, which is essentially an aspect of constitutional law. Both are complex. There are people tweeting about it with strong, genuine credentials in these areas. Some are not lawyers but policy analysts who understand the law well and who have been working on the policy underlying this Bill for years. And others are bandwagon jumpers, and even if you don’t know or can’t spot which is which at a glance, I think it’s usually possible to work it out from attentive reading, and from checking their published credentials
One of the reasons I did not speculate in my CapX piece about where this may land in litigation terms is precisely because there is no information from the future, and Section 35 has never been used before.
I was still able to provide a decent(ish) explanation of the constitutional law aspects.
Economic forecasting, by contrast, is basically crystal-ball gazing, and not even particularly well-informed. I said last year on some telly show or another that the Bank of England and Institute for Fiscal Studies forecasts should appear in the same part of the paper as Mystic Meg, and I stand by that remark!
Unfortunately, I think you are much more forensic in looking for bandwagon jumpers that most. I have seen some truly appalling errors of basic law today by someone who is lauded as "leading" and "expert" and I think the general education of people about our legal system is such they will still hang on the every incorrect word despite it being corrected by others.
Superb as always.
"...it’s genuinely difficult to know when something is true or real..."
Increasingly, it seems that those that pedal in BS for likes, are patently aware of this struggle and utterly indifferent about being 'found out'. The tsunami of tribal support for each and every jibe lifts them up and carries them on to their next great pronouncement.
Excellent post. One thing I think also plays into all this is that there is a general lack of public understanding of genuine expertise / relevant knowledge as opposed to self-awarded expert status. There seems to be a breed of "expert" that actually just have an eye on a media-type career broadcasting to echo chambers who mistake the fact they agree with the "expert" for expertise and lap it up.
There is almost certainly money and "prestige" in it for the people who do it, but it harms the quality of genuine debate and the educating effect that would have.
There's another pithy Australian phrase used to describe people who do that: "rent-a-gob". Also needs wide propagation.
I always learned something when I listened to you with Mike Graham . Where can I listen to you now?
Lorenzo and I are working on a podcast to go with this substack, and I still do periodic commentary on various outlets. I've got one coming out tonight with Andrew Doyle (BBC R4; 11pm, but available on iPlayer afterwards if you wish to listen at a more civilised hour), a livestream later in the same month, ABC Radio National in March, and various podcasts over the same period. All will be linked and promoted here.
I was finding weekly spots (for which I do a lot of preparation - I'm no good as a "bluffer") too much to combine with writing my fourth book and my usual legal commentary.