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12 Apr, 4 tweets, 2 min read
"The erosion of Britain's democracy, and of the liberties of our citizens, is likely to continue and even accelerate unless there is radical constitutional reform". Prescient piece from 1989 by Shirley Williams, whose death was announced today.
This was prescient too: on the dangers of “a constitution that does nothing to check the executive or to balance its power against that of the legislature”. “The doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty has become the doctrine of the sovereignty of the executive”.
The effect of the Northern Ireland "Troubles" on civil liberties in Britain rarely gets the attention it deserves. As we saw again during the "War on Terror", a state of war is rarely hospitable to liberty. The rule of law in Britain was another beneficiary of the peace process.
(She might not have drawn the same contrast with the US in the wake of the Patriot Act, Trump & the militarised policing of BLM. But that reinforces her point about the impact of war on liberty. See this excellent piece by @PatPorter76 & @JeanneMorefiel1) newstatesman.com/world/north-am…

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Robert Saunders Profile picture
13 Apr
This is a desperately silly question.Polls have to move beyond this childishness.

I'd like a party that's inspired by the best of our history while learning from its failings; that builds on what's good & improves what's bad;that wants Britain to be better tomorrow than today.1/
A nation's history is a tissue of different events, personalities, peoples & processes stretched across centuries. It is built, like all things human, out of "the crooked timber of humanity", embracing every shade of good & ill. You can't just tick a box marked "pride" or "shame"
If I am to feel "proud" of Alan Turing, must I also feel proud of those who hounded him to death? Must pride in Chartists or suffragettes involve pride in those who locked them up and force-fed them? Must I choose between celebrating slavery or denigrating Shakespeare?
Read 5 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
13 Apr
One of the biggest dangers to the Union today is the Westminster model at its core: a "winner-takes-all" contest between two overwhelmingly English parties, propped up by an archaic electoral system. If we want to rebuild a Union of consent, we should start here. [THREAD]
2. Britain's "winner-takes-all" system assumes two broad parties that alternate in govt. Until 2015, Scotland mostly fitted that model. The "Big Two" usually won >80% of MPs, & in 11 out of 18 elections from 1945-2010, the biggest party at Westminster won the most Scottish seats. Image
3. Scotland had a visible presence, not just in the governing parties at Westminster, but in Cabinet. Scotland supplied Prime Ministers, Chancellors, Foreign & Defence Secretaries, including major figures like Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Malcolm Rifkind, Donald Dewar and John Smith Image
Read 12 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
31 Mar
This should be a much bigger story than it is: as part of its crack-down on asylum, the Home Office ignored health warnings & detained hundreds of asylum-seekers in overcrowded and insanitary military barracks. More than half contracted Covid. ft.com/content/d7bb7c…
Public Health England warned in advance about "the COVID-safety of the accommodation". "Given the cramped communal conditions...once one person was infected a large-scale outbreak was virtually inevitable". The Fire Safety Inspectorate raised "serious concerns about fire safety".
A report by the Independent Inspectorate found that a third of residents felt suicidal. "People at high risk of self-harm were located in a decrepit ‘isolation block’ which we considered unfit for habitation". gov.uk/government/new…
Read 5 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
29 Mar
Into the second hour of my first attempt at baking in some years. Recipe says "Preparation Time: 10 minutes". In what? Dog years?
Apparently the next bit needs a brush. Who knew?
I suspect the words "It's the thought that counts" are going to get an airing.
Read 5 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
21 Mar
Orwell once wrote: "In England all the boasting & flag-wagging is done by small minorities. The patriotism of ordinary people is not vocal".

Like so much modern Toryism, this salute-the-flag stuff is imported from the US Republican Party. It owes little to any British tradition.
Orwell was a man who took patriotism seriously. But as he went on to argue, the ability to laugh at performative displays of patriotism, especially by those in authority, was something in which patriots themselves should take pride, as a defence of "English" traditions of liberty
As it happens, I'm one of those who thinks patriotism can be progressive &that the Left should stop ceding this ground. I'm hoping to write something on this. But enough of the loyalty tests, the performative patriotism & the "my way or the highway" tweets like this from Tory MPs
Read 4 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
21 Mar
Why are there still hereditary peers in Parliament? Why is Lords reform "the Bermuda Triangle of British politics"?

The House of Lords is back in the news, so here's an article I wrote for the @NewStatesman on the history of Lords reform. Extracts follow. newstatesman.com/politics/uk/20…
Most of the hereditary peers were expelled by the Blair govt in 1999. That Act significantly improved the Lords. For the first time in a century, it no longer had an in-built Tory majority. It became a more expert, independent-minded Chamber, more confident in challenging govt.
The 92 hereditary peers that survived were intended partly as a security for the Tory Party, and partly as a guarantee that further reform of the Lords would follow. With Johnson ballooning the number of Tory life peers, the first goal is now redundant. The second clearly failed.
Read 7 tweets

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