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31 Dec 20, 7 tweets, 6 min read
Like @ProfTimBale, I'll be standing down shortly as Co-Director of the @MileEndInst. It's been one of the best parts of my job in recent years, so thanks to the brilliant @ProfTimBale & @sofiacusano and to everyone who took part in our events. A few lockdown highlights follow...
Our "Future of British Democracy" series explored reform of the Civil Service, the future of the House of Lords, "Corruption and the British State", and reform of Judicial Review. All our webinars are freely available on our YouTube channel.
Our event on "New Directions in Black British History" showcased the fabulous work of @DeannaLyncook, @oliviawyatt1999 and @hisnameissatya, with a discussion led by @rob__waters.
Our new podcast, led by @ProfTimBale, featured @Dannythefink, @youngvulgarian, @debmattinson, @robfordmancs, @ProfSobolewska & many more. I especially enjoyed marking 30 years of German Reunification with William Waldegrave & Christina von Hodenberg.
The podcast also tackled subjects like the history of anti-Semitism, in this fascinating discussion between @MiriERubin and @Freedland.
Other highlights included @DrSophieHarman's brilliant YouTube series on "Global Health Security and Pandemics", and blogposts on everything from Boris Johnson's first year as prime ministers to the winners of our first undergraduate research prize.
Thanks to everyone who came to our events & to all who gave up their time to speak, write or film for us. The @MileEndInst has been a fantastic part of my life in recent years (there may be one last event to come...), & I can't wait to see what the new team does in the future.

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Robert Saunders Profile picture
30 Dec 20
The big story in Parliament today really isn't which of three bad options the Opposition parties will choose. It is the absolute travesty of parliamentary democracy that is about to play out: a microcosm of the shattering effect Brexit has had on our constitution. [THREAD]
MPs are being asked to shovel through, in a single day, a bill that was published yesterday, implementing a treaty agreed six days ago, which comes into force tomorrow night. The European Communities Act 1972 was debated in Parliament for 300 hours. Today's bill will get about 5.
MPs will have at most four minutes to speak on a trade agreement covering more than 1,200 pages. Few will have had time to read it anyway, and their votes will mostly be cast by the Whips. The entire charade will be over shortly after lunch.
Read 9 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
18 Dec 20
It is right to ask *why* industries like fishing have declined. The problem is the blithe assumption that the answer must always be "because of the EU". The problems facing the UK fishing industry long predate EU membership, and will not be magically solved by Brexit. [THREAD]
1. Fishing had been declining for much of the twentieth century. The number of UK fishermen more than halved in mid-century: from nearly 48,000 in 1938 to 21,000 in 1970. By 1970 - the year *before* the UK signed the Treaty of Accession - fishing made up less than 0.1% of UK GDP.
2. That decline had many causes. A century of over-fishing had left stocks dangerously depleted. Younger generations were moving out, in search of safer and better-paid work inland. And the "Cod Wars" with Iceland (1958-76) triggered the collapse of the Atlantic trawler fleet.
Read 17 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
11 Dec 20
The 1970s was a decade of serious anxiety about food supplies. Norman Tebbit, of all people, urged the government to consider rationing basic foodstuffs. That played a significant role in the decision to join the EEC, and raises some important questions today. [THREAD]
2. The UK has not been able to feed itself since the early C19th. Even for an industrial economy, it is unusually dependent on imported food. And by the 1970s, a mixture of bad harvests, population growth, inflation & the collapse of Commonwealth agreements was starting to bite.
3. In 1974, for example, Caribbean sugar imports dropped by a third, as producers abandoned Commonwealth trade agreements and sold to more lucrative markets elsewhere. Supermarkets introduced informal rationing, and consumer organisations urged the public to stop buying sugar.
Read 15 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
9 Dec 20
The Brexit negotiations have been such a disaster because Britain never had a serious debate about what it most wanted to achieve. Instead, ministers spent years pretending no trade-offs were necessary. We could have everything we wanted, if we only had the courage to believe.
Ministers boasted, repeatedly, that we could have unlimited sovereignty, frictionless trade, full access to the Single Market & "the exact same benefits" as the CU. Compromise was not a way to achieve the things we most valued, but a surrender of our ability to have it all.
As Ben Jackson wrote in 2019, Conservatives have drawn a dangerous lesson from the Thatcher years. "Compromise" and "negotiation" are dismissed as signs of weakness, not as a way to achieve the most advantageous outcome in a world we do not control. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.11…
Read 6 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
6 Dec 20
It doesn't speak well of our democracy that the most important question in British politics depends entirely on the decision of one man. If Johnson agrees a deal, it happens. If he doesn't, tough. MPs, ministers, the public are all just bystanders, waiting to hear what he decides
As @stephenkb explains in this thread, a trade deal does not need parliamentary approval. If a deal requires changes in domestic law, Parliament may have to vote on those changes - but even there the votes can (and will) be carefully limited.
Concentrating power in the hands of the PM isn't just undemocratic. As @DavidHenigUK points out, it has shut down any serious discussion about what a trade deal *should* do. We've abandoned policy debate for punditry, trying to guess what Johnson might do.
Read 4 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
5 Dec 20
This is a brilliant article by @rafaelbehr on why we may be looking in the wrong direction for the dangers to liberal democracy. In looking back to old & familiar dangers, we may miss the new forces that are eating at the foundations of our democracy.[1/5] prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/you-h…
As @rafaelbehr argues, what "really challenges the stability of democracy" is not a specific ideology, but a "digital infrastructure" that "facilitates polarisation, sorting people into irreconcilable tribes & spinning them off towards the most extreme iteration of any opinion".
What drives Trump, Johnson & co is not some highly disciplined, common purpose, akin to fascism, but the destruction of any possibility of a common purpose beyond self-gratification. Their lack of seriousness is not a lucky glitch, but intrinsic to the phenomenon they represent.
Read 5 tweets

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