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Robert Saunders Profile picture
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7 Dec, 4 tweets, 2 min read
"Few voters in the west have ever seen their domestic politics go catastrophically, life-endangeringly wrong. The appetite for political risk is therefore only natural".

Good piece by Janan Ganesh, on what happens when we forget that democracy is fragile. ft.com/content/7d9dee…
Angela Merkel issued a similar warning in October: "In history there is a recurring pattern where people begin to deal recklessly with [political] structures when the generations that created those structures are no longer alive". thetimes.co.uk/article/europe…
Ivan Rogers is another who has sounded the alarm: "we are dealing with a political generation which has no serious experience of bad times and is frankly cavalier about precipitating events they cannot then control, but feel they might exploit". news.liverpool.ac.uk/2018/12/13/ful…
Democracy is not the default state of humanity: it is fragile, historically unusual and requires careful tending. You can't smash it up on a drunken night out, then write a cheque to repair the damage. As I argued here, we forget that at our peril.

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More from @redhistorian

Robert Saunders Profile picture
6 Nov
"The Conservative Party has been accused of ... systematically offering seats in the House of Lords to a select group of multimillionaire donors".

"An ex-party chairman said: “once you pay your £3 million, you get your peerage”". thetimes.co.uk/article/new-to…
"22 of the Conservative party’s main financial backers have been given peerages since 2010. ... Together they have given £54 million to the party".

"Since Johnson became prime minister 96 peers have been created". That's nearly 1 in 8 of the entire House in just two years.
A peerage brings a vote for life on the laws by which we are governed. It should not be used as a political slush fund for the governing party.

For more on this story, see this @openDemocracy investigation by @SAThevoz. opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-…
Read 4 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
27 Oct
You'd hope we might have learned by now that referendums on abstract principles, in which no one has to take responsibility for the consequences, and from which wildly different policies can all claim a mandate, are a really, really bad idea.
To deny a referendum is to be accused of elitism. But the problem isn't the public or its right to make decisions. It's about which democratic tools we use, to ensure politicians are judged on the laws & taxes they impose,not on abstract pledges divorced from the practice of govt
If the vote was lost, would any action on climate change be against "the will of the people"? If it won, would an MP who proposed a different way of doing it be a "saboteur"?How would we know whether it was a "full", "jobs first" or "red, white & blue" NetZero that had a mandate?
Read 5 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
19 Oct
"Nations reel and stagger on their way; they make hideous mistakes; they commit frightful wrongs; they do great and beautiful things. And shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all this, so far as the truth is ascertainable?"

W.E.B. Du Bois, (1935)
One of Du Bois' many strengths was that he understood *why* nations try to forget the more painful elements of their history. But the result was "that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth".
In an age when new forms of oppression were taking root, romantic versions of history, that refused to look the horror of slavery in the face, actively encouraged people "to embrace and worship the color bar", while "helping to range mankind in ranks of mutual hatred & contempt".
Read 6 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
13 Oct
Even if you accept this view of international relations, these tweets suggest an extraordinary contempt for democratic government at home. Let's take a couple of examples. [Thread]
"Nobody ... incl the PM thought there wd be a US deal".

But Johnson repeatedly told voters that Britain was "first in line" for "a fantastic trade deal". The 2019 manifesto promised a wave of deals "starting with the USA".

If Cummings is right, voters were misled.
"We intended to ditch bits we didn't like".

No one told British voters that. The 2019 manifesto insisted that "we have a great new deal that is ready to go", which would "get Brexit done", secure "friendly relations" with the EU and let the country "move on".

Was that not true?
Read 5 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
7 Aug
This thread highlights a key difference between the US & UK. The UK doesn't have a respectable political tradition, like "republicanism", that can be pitted against "democracy". So authoritarianism has to justify itself in democratic terms, as expressing "the will of the people".
When people talk about the end of "democracy" in Britain, what they usually mean is a shift from "liberal", "parliamentary" & "pluralist" democracy to an "authoritarian" & "executive" version, in which "the people" speak with a single voice & critics are "enemies of the people".
Authoritarianism in Britain invariably comes in democratic clothing: as defending "the will of the people" against "unelected judges", "Remainer Parliaments" "metropolitan elites" and other obstacles to an elected government, pursuing "the people's priorities".
Read 4 tweets
Robert Saunders Profile picture
3 Aug
It's often said that Britain relies on a "good chaps theory of government": that the British constitution only works if operated by "good chaps", who choose to obey the rules.

I think that's wrong. Here's why.

My latest for @prospect_uk [Excerpts follow] prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/has-t…
"Far from trusting politicians to be “good chaps,” British politics was once on a hair-trigger for bad or unconstitutional behaviour". As Lord Acton put it in 1887, “Great men are almost always bad men”. And the presumption of wrongdoing should “increase as the power increases”.
"The problem today is not that leaders have ceased to be “good chaps,” but that we no longer seem to care when they behave badly". We have lost our sense that "bad chaps" matter: and that it is our responsibility to police their conduct.
Read 6 tweets

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