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Robert Saunders Profile picture
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9 Mar, 5 tweets, 2 min read
This by Rees-Mogg suggests an unhappy grasp of history. The point is not that "somebody once said" this. Since 1990 it has been the position of the UK govt itself & a founding assumption of the peace process that London has "no selfish strategic or economic interest in N Ireland"
The "no selfish interest" principle was first set out by Margaret Thatcher's Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Brooke, in November 1990. It was a carefully choreographed speech, designed to send a signal across the Irish Sea, and was approved by Margaret Thatcher herself.
That principle was reiterated by John Major, on behalf of the British government, in the Downing Street Declaration of 1993: a crucial moment on the path to peace. He was backed in Parliament by the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair. cain.ulster.ac.uk/events/peace/d…
It's easy to say the wrong thing on air, but Rees-Mogg now speaks as a minister, not just a private podcaster. It would be helpful if the govt would reaffirm its support for the "no selfish interest" principle, esp. at a time of so many other strains on an ever-fragile process.
For more on this, see the ever-excellent @pmdfoster.

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Robert Saunders Profile picture
5 Mar
So many of our Brexit problems have a common source: the govt's refusal to be honest about the deal it negotiated. It persistently represents its own choices as hostile incursions, to be repelled by a sovereign state. It's a case-study in how dishonesty drives bad policy. THREAD
1. The govt's first key choice was to leave the Single Market & Customs Union. For good or ill, that choice put the UK outside the trade barriers the EU erects to non-members. We knew those barriers existed. (We'd benefited from them in the past). We chose to move outside them.
2. Yet Johnson told voters his deal raised "no non-tariff barriers to trade". To defend that myth, changes on which ministers themselves insisted have to be recast as aggressive acts - "blockades" or "bullying" - against which Britain must now "retaliate". telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/…
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28 Feb
It is painfully apparent that the Universities Minister has not the faintest idea what "decolonising the curriculum" actually means. But this does suggest a problem with the term, which - as @DavidOlusoga warned last year - is easily misrepresented by bad-faith actors.
At its best, the project is about opening out, not cutting down or hiding away. As Olusoga says, it's about "making the curriculum tell everyone's stories".But the language used is commonly misrepresented (or more charitably, misunderstood) as one of purging, toppling & expelling
It's disorientating to be accused of "censoring", "photoshopping", "whitewashing" and "editing" the past, for trying to recover voices and experiences that were previously written out of it - not least by a govt that wants to stop heritage bodies talking about slavery and empire.
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Robert Saunders Profile picture
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"3 million people are estimated not to have official photo ID, with ethnic minorities more at risk". They will "have to contact their council to confirm their ID if they want to vote"

This is shameful legislation, that does nothing to tackle the problems with UK elections.THREAD
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In a democracy, anything that makes it harder to vote - in particular, anything that disadvantages one group of voters - should face an extremely high bar. Compulsory voter ID takes a hammer to 3 million legitimate voters (disproportionately poor & BAME) to crack an imaginary nut
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Robert Saunders Profile picture
25 Jan
The UK is sleepwalking towards a truly dangerous constitutional crisis, in which we no longer agree on how we make democratic decisions or on what constitutes a valid referendum. Its roots lie in the way that we use referendums - and time is running short to fix this. [THREAD]
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Robert Saunders Profile picture
20 Jan
Lots of good advice here for anyone interviewing politicians for academic work. It reminds me of a student whose interviewee (a Labour grandee) began by ordering *two* bottles of wine - one each - "to get things started". The student never could remember what they'd talked about.
More abstracts should look like this.
I've had some great experiences interviewing politicians. Jim Sillars introduced me to the Tunnocks bar. Gyles Brandreth jumped the security cordon and showed me around the National Liberal Club, while a retired peer had spent the morning baking and wanted feedback on her work.
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Robert Saunders Profile picture
17 Jan
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