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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
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26 May, 4 tweets, 1 min read
Dominic Cummings doing his best John Dean impersonation
146% likelihood that Cummings will extravagantly cosplay every high level whistleblower scene he's watched from 1990s US movies
2 minutes of Sedat Peker is vastly more informative and entertaining than 20 hours of Dominic Cummings
I know who I'd worry about more

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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
25 May
Where RIA uses anywheres vs somewheres arguments to explain how ordinary hardworking Russians apparently appreciated the heating and free meals of Gulag camps in ways that soft cosmopolitan intellectuals could never understand
"For elites the Gulag may have been an uncomfortable contrast to Hotel Astoria and Metropol, but for 100 000s of normal people, as paradox as it sounds, it was a source of upward mobility"

We've hit peak populism.
The Gulag system as a solution to dealing with labour shortages while avoiding migration
Read 5 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
24 May
If the EU wants to paralyse the Belarus economy all it needs to do is offer easy access to work permits in the Schengen area for skilled Belarusian industrial and tech workers
If the UK government wants to show solidarity to Belarusians it could always make it easier for them to travel to and find work in the UK
Guys, the brain drain from Belarus is already happening. It's being accelerated by the end of a fragile equilibrium before 2020 where the regime left people to live their lives as long as they didn't challenge dictatorship.
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
23 May
In a superheated social media-driven discourse the actions of autocracies generate expectations of swift and brutal retaliation from democracies that they could only fulfill if they were autocracies
Forcing governments to think about all the angles, consult with one another and then coordinate a form of retaliation based on democratic consensus is what European integration under the rule of law is designed to ensure
Those territories around or near EU borders where EU and EU member state security institutions face the least internal checks and balances are where they behave in ways most difficult to differentiate from autocracies
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
5 May
Peer of the realm that claimed the EU is weak now disappointed that the EU is not nice.

"It's so unfair" is not the language of great power status.
Many in the UK are still struggling to adjust to a world in which the EU asserts its interests against a neighbouring state.

For different ideological reasons both Brexiter ultras as well as many core Remainers are going to struggle with asymmetries of power between UK and EU
For neighbour states the EU is not always in the right. Like other hegemons it can blunder and prioritise internal politics over regional interest.

But to influence EU direction, a neighbour needs to pick its fights and build goodwill among potential friends within the EU
Read 5 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
4 May
MoUs are only the first step to a deal, not so much the final deal.
If you go through the document, like most MoUs it is heavy on declarations of intent and light on final frameworks
Claiming MoUs are a firmer framework than they actually are is one of my pet peeves, from arms deals to migration negotiations
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
4 May
It is fascinating to see how in England's information space the results of a byelection in a single seat with Hartlepool are drawing as much media attention and generating as much heated debate as a Scottish election that could determine the future unity of the British state
It's almost as if the UK is already drifting into some form of post-British politics where the fate and concerns of "Red Wall" or "cosmopolitan urban" voters in England is discussed as if it is disconnected from the choices of voters in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
It's also fascinating to see that in all the ponderous thinkpieces about Red Wall voters and vox-popping interviews of Hartlepool voters, the squadron of journalists that have descended on Teesside don't seem to have asked anyone what they think about the survival of the UK Union
Read 4 tweets

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