Brexit Crazyness Continues

The British Supreme Court ruled today that Boris Johnson unlawfully advised the Queen to prorogue Parliament. And because the advice was unlawful, the act was therefore unlawful. And because the act was unlawful, the effects of said act were unlawful. And because the effects were unlawful, said effects are null and void. So, you know, prorogation never happened.

So the Prime Minister has misled the Queen. He has failed to pass all but one bill in Parliament (it was a bill for the restoration of the Palace of Westminster totally unrelated to Brexit). He lost three seats, one via a by-election and two by defecting MPs. And then he purged 21 MPs from his party to completely obliterate his working majority. In any other year, this would be cause for the immediate resignation of the Prime Minister. Instead he is sticking around in New York to give a speech about, what else, Brexit, before flying back to London tonight (Eastern US time).

So what’s next? Who really knows. This has never before happened in the history of the United Kingdom. But one possible option is that the opposition parties may hold a no confidence vote. But there will be significant pressure against that, because, as my graphic shows, any election that would likely result, would mean Brexit happening with Parliament dissolved. And that would, ahem, defeat the entire purpose of preventing a No Deal Brexit. Consequently, a no confidence vote or general election is unlikely. (Unless, the opposition and Tory rebels can agree to a non-Jeremy Corbyn caretake prime minister, e.g. Ken Clarke or Margaret Beckett.)

Omnishambles. Even Iannucci couldn't have made this stuff up.
Omnishambles. Even Iannucci couldn’t have made this stuff up.

Regardless, get ready for a crazy day of Parliamentary procedure tomorrow.

Prorogation of Parliament

If you’re among my British/European audience, you are probably well aware Boris Johnson has prorogued, or suspended, Parliament. He and cabinet ministers stated it was a normal, average-length prorogation to prepare for a Queen’s Speech. (The Queen’s Speech is the formal opening of a new session of Parliament that sets out a new legislative agenda and formally closes/kills any unpassed legislation from the old session.) Except that in documents revealed in a Scottish court case, we now know that the real reason was to shut down Parliament to prevent it from interfering in Boris’ plans for a No Deal Brexit. And just this morning the Scottish High Court did indeed rule that the prorogation is illegal. The case now moves to the UK Supreme Court.

But I want to focus on the other claim, that this is a prorogation of average length. Thankfully instead of having to do a week’s hard slog of data, the House of Lords Library posted the data for me. At least since 1900, and that works well enough for me. And so here we go.

Back to the 1930s?
Back to the 1930s?

So yeah, this is not an average prorogument. If you look at only proroguments that do not precede a general election—you need time for the campaigning and then hosting the actual election in those cases—this is the longest prorogument since 1930. (Also, a Parliament does not necessarily need to be prorogued before it is dissolved before an election. And that happened quite often in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.)

And as I point out in the graphic, Parliament was prorogued during the depths of World War II to start new legislative sessions. But in those cases, Parliament opened the very next day, during a time of national crisis. One could certainly make the argument that Brexit is a national crisis. So wherefore the extraordinarily long prorogument? Well, quite simply, Brexit.

Credit for the piece goes to me.

The Trilemma Remains for Boris

This is a repost of sorts, but it is important. Now prime minister, Boris Johnson had an opportunity to seek a more reasonable approach to Brexit. Unfortunately, he is drawing even harder red lines than his predecessor, Theresa May. And that brings us back to my Brexit trilemma graphic from back in March.

Essentially, Johnson wants three things that are mutually—or whatever the word is for three, maybe tri-mutually—semi-exclusive. In other words, of the three red lines, the United Kingdom can only have two, because those two then make the third impossible.

Doing the same thing but expecting results…pick two already, Boris.
Doing the same thing but expecting results…pick two already, Boris.

I made the first version of this back in March. Sad it still applies.

Credit for the piece goes to me.

It’s Boris Time, Baby

Today Boris Johnson begins his premiership as the next prime minister of the United Kingdom. He might not be popular with the wide body of the British population, but he is quite popular with the Conservative base.

The Economist looked at how Boris polled on several traits, e.g. being more honest than most politicians, compared to his prime minister predecessors before they entered office. And despite being broadly unpopular outside the Tories, he still polls better than most of his predecessors.

Boris rates higher than many previous prime ministers before they came to power
Boris rates higher than many previous prime ministers before they came to power

Design wise, it’s a straight-forward use of small multiples and bar charts. I find the use of the light blue bar a nice device to highlight Boris’ position amongst his peers.

But now we see where Boris goes, most importantly on Brexit.

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist graphics department.

The Rent Is Too Bloody High

This is a graphic from the Guardian that sort of mystified me at first. The article it supports details how the rising rents across England are hurting the rural youth so much so they elect to stay in their small towns instead of moving to the big city.

But all those segments?
But all those segments?

The first thing I noticed is that there really is no description of the data. We have a chart looking at something from 1997 and comparing it to 2018. The title is more of a sentence describing the first pair of bars. And from that title we can infer that these bars are income changes for the specified move, e.g. Sunderland to York, for the specified year. But a casual reader might not pick up on that casual description.

Then we have the issue of the bars themselves. What sort of range are we looking at? What is the min? The max? That too is implied by the data presented in the bars. Well, technically not the bars, but in the numbers at the end of each bar. I will spare you the usual rant about numbers in graphics defeating the purpose of graphics and organisation vs. visual relationship. Instead, the numbers here are essential because we can use them to suss out the scale of the grey bars. After looking at a few bars, we can tell that the white lines separating the grey boxes are most likely 10% increments. And from that we can gather the minimum is about -40% and the maximum 100%. But instead of making the reader work to figure this out, would not some min/max labels at the bottom of the chart be far clearer?

And then there is the issue of the grey boxes/bars themselves. Why are they there in the first place? If the dataset were more about an unmet value, say reservoirs in towns were only at x% of capacity, the grey bars could relate the overall capacity and the coloured bars the actual values. But here, income is not a capacity or similar type of value. It could expand well beyond the 100% or decline beyond the -40%. These bars imply the values are trapped within these ranges. I would instead drop the grey bars entirely and let the coloured bars exist on their own.

Overall this is a confusing graphic for a fascinating article. I wish the graphic had been a little bit clearer.

Credit for the piece goes to the Guardian’s graphics department.

British English vs. Irish English

The United Kingdom is known for having a large number of accents in a—compared to the United States—relatively small space. But then you add in Ireland and you have an entirely new level of linguistic diversity. Josh Katz, who several years ago made waves for his work on the differences in the States, completed some work for the New York Times on those differences between the UK and Ireland.

You might know this as tag. At least I do.
You might know this as tag. At least I do.

Why do I bring it up? Well, your author is going on holiday again, this time back to London. I will be maybe taking some day trips to places outside the capital and maybe I will confirm some of these findings. But if you want, you can take the quiz and see where you fall compared to Katz’s findings.

And it does pretty well. It identified me as being clearly not from the British Isles.

Maybe I'm secretly Cornish?
Maybe I’m secretly Cornish?

But depending upon how you answer a particular question, the article will show you how your answer compares.  Let’s take my answer for scone. In that, I am more Irish.

Or you can just call them fantastic and delicious.
Or you can just call them fantastic and delicious.

Credit for the piece goes to Josh Katz.

The Tory Leadership Race: The Favourite and All the Also Rans

This piece was published Monday, so it’s one round out of date, but it still holds true. It looks at the betting odds of each of the candidates looking to enter No. 10 Downing Street. And yeah, it’s going to be Boris.

That's a pretty sizable gap
That’s a pretty sizable gap

The thing that strikes me as odd about this piece however, is note the size of the circles. Why are they larger for Boris Johnson and Rory Stewart? It cannot be proportional to their odds of victory or else Boris’ head would be…even bigger. Is that even possible? Maybe it relates to their predicted placement of first and second, the two of which go to the broader Tory party for a vote. It’s really unclear and deserves some explanation.

The graphic also includes a standard line chart. It falls down because of spaghettification in that all those also rans have about the same odds, i.e. slim, to beat Boris.

Perhaps the most interesting thing to follow is who will be the other person on the ballot. But then who remembers Andrea Leadsom was the runner up to Theresa May?

Credit for the piece goes to the Economist graphics department.

The Tory Leadership Process

Today is another day in the Tory leadership election that will eventually see approximately 120,000 members of the Conservative Party electing the next prime minister of the 66,000,000 people living in the United Kingdom. The remaining candidates need at least 33 votes from MPs to move on. Those and/or the last place candidate will be eliminated. The question today is whether Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, and Rory Stewart can move to the next round along with the front runner Boris Johnson and his two not-really-close-but-someone-has-to-be-a-significant competitors, Jeremy Hunt and Michael Gove.

But what happens after today’s vote? The BBC created a graphic explaining it all.

Oh yeah, and Brexit is still happening.
Oh yeah, and Brexit is still happening.

It’s a simple concept: a calendar that uses shades and outline boxes to highlight particular dates.

But the elephant in this particular Westminster cloakroom is that the Tories are using all this time whilst the Brexit clock keeps ticking down to 31 October.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

Britain Bombing in Eurovision

Last weekend was not only the Game of Thrones finale, but also the Eurovision final. For the Americans not familiar with it, it’s a part music, part theatrics competition between all European countries and then sometimes guest countries like Australia or Israel. The winner is chosen by the total number of points their act receives. The UK, as one of the largest countries in Europe, is one of the few countries that is guaranteed a spot.

But that doesn’t mean the UK performs well. Last weekend, the UK bombed. The winner, the Netherlands, scored 498 points. The UK? 11. But the UK has been terrible for years now. And unlike in American baseball, it’s not because tanking gets you coveted draft picks for new talent. The BBC charted the placement of the British entries since its last win in 1997, the height of Cool Britannia.

Consistently bad over the last several years
Consistently bad over the last several years

Design wise, I wonder about the horizontal movement of places. A top-to-bottom movement might make more sense. The labelling here is also a bit too much. My eye immediately settles on the black text for the years, as their tight spacing creates a dark field that overpowers the otherwise nice light blue–dark blue contrast in the graphic. Maybe the beginning and end years could have been labelled with some key intervals, say every five years?

Similarly, the use of the ordinal number over the cardinal on the right hand side puts more emphasis on the labelling than the graphic itself. Here, however, the designers wisely chose a grey for the text so as not to overpower the graphic. But I wonder if the use of a cardinal number could have reduced the extra bits of text at the end and drive more focus to the graphic.

Overall, it’s a neat graphic. But I think a few small tweaks could improve the design. Unfortunately for the UK, they are more than just a few small tweaks away from winning Eurovision 2020.

Credit for the piece goes to the BBC graphics department.

How Does the UK View Their Political Parties?

The United Kingdom crashes out of the European Union on Friday. That means there is no deal to safeguard continuity of trading arrangements, healthcare, air traffic control, security and intelligence deals, &c. Oh, and it will likely wreck the economy. No big deal, Theresa. But what do UK voters think about their leading political parties in this climate? Thankfully Politico is starting to collect some survey data from areas of marginal constituencies, what Americans might call battleground districts, ahead of the eventual next election.

And it turns out the Tories aren’t doing well. Though it’s not like Labour is performing any better, because polling indicates the public sees Corbyn as an even worse leader than Theresa May. But this post is more to talk about the visualisation of the results.

Of course I naturally wonder the perception of the smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats or Change UK (the Independent Group)
Of course I naturally wonder the perception of the smaller parties like the Liberal Democrats or Change UK (the Independent Group)

The graphics above are a screenshot where blue represents the Conservatives (Tories) and red Labour. The key thing about these results is that the questions were framed around a 0–10 scale. But look at the axes. Everything looks nice and evenly spread, until you realise the maximum on the y-axis is only six. The minimum is two. It gives the wrong impression that things are spread out neatly around the midpoint, which here appears to be four. But what happens if you plot it on a full axis? Well, the awfulness of the parties becomes more readily apparent.

Neither party looks very good here…
Neither party looks very good here…

Labour might be scoring around a five on Health, but its score is pretty miserable in these other two categories. And don’t worry, the article has more.  But this quick reimagination goes to show you how important placing an axis’ minimum and maximum values can be.

Credit for the piece goes to the Politico graphics department.