the three vee test

The three vee test is a cynical formula for finding leverage over people in public life: venery, venality, and vanity. Introduced by Victor Warlove as a way to assess policemen, it reduces possible vulnerabilities to appetite, money, and pride, then treats those vulnerabilities as openings for pressure. Its brisk, memorable form makes the test sound almost like practical wisdom; the surrounding conversation reveals the coercive purpose beneath that polish.

The formula and its logic

Warlove introduces the phrase while arguing that police officers, like politicians, are rarely beyond reproach. He asks Timothy Gedye whether he recalls the test, and Gedye confirms that Warlove has mentioned it before. Warlove then supplies its three terms: “Venery, venality, vanity.” The sequence is compact and alliterative, a mnemonic that turns a broad suspicion about human weakness into a portable rule of thumb.

The three terms name distinct kinds of susceptibility. Venery points towards sexual appetite, venality towards financial or material gain, and vanity towards self-regard. Warlove does not offer a formal procedure, evidence threshold, or account of how an official should be assessed. Instead, his explanation is pragmatic and openly instrumental: “If they flunk out on one you always get them on another.” The point is not to establish that a particular person has committed a particular wrong. It is to assume that failure in one domain can be replaced by a vulnerability in another, so that pressure remains possible even when one approach fails.

That confidence is the test’s defining feature. It treats integrity not as a quality to investigate fairly but as an obstacle to be bypassed. The framework does not ask whether an officer has acted properly; it asks where an officer might be made to yield. Its categories therefore reveal as much about Warlove’s own understanding of power as they do about the people he wants to influence.

From cynical maxim to proposed action

The phrase appears in a conversation about applying pressure to authorities. Warlove first objects to the prospect of “Action,” saying he dislikes it and asking why good old pressure would not suffice. When told that this case is different, he invokes the three vee test and argues that Mid-Yorkshire should not be exempt from the weaknesses he attributes to the rest of the world. He also points to a “Special Relationship” between an American woman and a Yorkshire police officer, presenting that connection as another possible avenue of influence.

The exchange distinguishes ordinary pressure from the more serious step the speakers call action. Warlove’s maxim helps make pressure sound routine: if an official will not yield through one weakness, another can supposedly be found. Yet the discussion itself supplies a complication. His interlocutor says the relationship in question involves trust and warns that the officer’s seemingly unpromising outward appearance conceals considerable intelligence. Warlove’s confident generalisation is thus set against a specific claim that this officer cannot be read or handled so easily.

The conversation also invokes Gaw Sempernel, who retired early and later became honorary consul in Thessaloniki. The speaker says the Northern officer contributed substantially to Sempernel’s downfall. This is offered as evidence that the officer has already had consequences for someone’s prospects, not as proof that Sempernel was brought down through any of the three vulnerabilities. The distinction matters: the text presents Warlove’s formula as a strategy and a belief, while withholding any demonstration that the test has successfully identified a weakness in the officer under discussion.

Hoblitt and the limits of the test

The formula returns when the conversation turns to what Victor Kafka might reveal and the potential harm his disclosures could cause. Warlove’s informant considers Hoblitt reliable, and the other speaker agrees that he is an excellent fellow. Warlove then describes Hoblitt as rock-like, adding that he has all three vees and perhaps a few more. The remark converts the earlier list into a diagnosis: in Warlove’s view, Hoblitt possesses multiple points of susceptibility and can therefore be trusted to serve the proposed course of action.

But the exchange does not establish what Hoblitt has done, which vulnerability matters, or what action will follow. Warlove’s assessment remains an assertion, and the abrupt decision to proceed does not validate the test as an objective measure. The final concern in the conversation is whether the incorruptible officer will ask questions. That concern leaves the central conflict unresolved: a method built on presumed universal weakness faces a person whom the speakers themselves describe as unusually resistant to influence.

The expression’s narrative force lies in that contrast. The three vee test is memorable because it compresses a cynical theory of human conduct into three words, but its apparent neatness conceals uncertainty about whether any particular person fits the scheme. By placing the maxim beside references to trust, an officer’s demonstrated impact on another career, and the prospect of questions, the passage shows how a vocabulary of practical pressure can become a rationale for action—and how confidently applied categories may fail to account for integrity.