robertsaunders.bsky.social
Historian of modern Britain, singer and political nerd. Author of "Yes to Europe! The 1975 Referendum & Seventies Britain". "A jaw-dislocating page turner"(Andrew Marr). Deputy-director @mileendinstitute.bsky.social, Reader @QMHistory
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Evensong and the choral tradition. Some of the most stunning music ever written - by composers from across the world, over hundreds of years - sung by brilliantly trained choirs every day in churches and chapels across the country. And you can walk in for free.
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Double congratulations, Dr Goldsmith! Hope there have been floats, balloons and ticker-tape parades through the streets of Cambridge.
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Trump illustrates a truth that used to be better understood: that it's easier to destroy than to build, and that - as JS Mill noted - "the maintenance of society at all" is "a very difficult task, actually achieved, in however imperfect a manner ... against the strongest obstacles".
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The problem is that Trump offers false hope. He pours out a toxic cocktail of brag, bluster, bullying & scapegoating, designed to stoke fear and hatred & to turn people against one another when the bluster and reality collide. There isn't a social democratic version of that politics which can work.
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I've thought for a long time that the monarchy is most likely to end in Britain, not because of pressure from republicans, but because the royals themselves are no longer willing to endure the life it imposes.
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They are not offering the same. What they’re offering may not be enough, it might be wrong in some cases, but on investment, infrastructure, housing, tax, climate, Europe, NHS, public pay, defence, private schooling, Rwanda etc etc it manifestly is not the same. We feed Reform when we pretend it is.
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Wanted to share this opening remark from @casmudde.bsky.social's talk on how to deal with the flurry of news and daily reasons for outrage we're all faced with. I'm not saying this is necessarily the way to go for everybody, but, being one of those terminally online people, it did resonate with me.
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Yes, the premise of a country too preoccupied with sport and music hall to notice a military take-over reads a little differently in the present moment!
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Very glad you enjoyed it! I love the way the invading generals all end up on the music hall stage.
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Mix of celebrity scandal, spending review (hostile), Gibraltar (betrayal), Pete Hegseth...
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Very sorry to hear that.
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Lots of adverts of the "you won't believe what happened next..." kind; Pete Hegseth promising to defend America from disorder; quite a lot on the spending review (mostly hostile); lots of "betrayal over Gibraltar"; some pictures of cars...
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Our fractured media realities are a wider problem. But "president's goons assault an elected Senator, force him to the floor & handcuff him" is a big thing to be vanishing.
And if I miss a story here, it's because no one I follow has posted it; not because an algorithm is choosing what to show me.
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It's true, of course, that MPs could still vote "no confidence" in the govt, but the sanctions against doing that are very high (which is why it's now so rare). Cabinet resignations, or the threat thereof, have become a surrogate for that,so we'd need to think through the consequences of change here
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But losing the confidence of Parliament matters less if a PM can fill the Cabinet from outside it. And those cabinet members would owe their positions entirely to the PM: they'd have no independent powerbase & no reason to look to a future after the PM. So this would have significant effects. [...]
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There's a case for that, but it would significantly increase the patronage powers of the prime minister. Boris Johnson fell because he had to stock his cabinet from Members of Parliament, and could no longer do so. Ending that requirement would remove a significant parliamentary constraint on the PM
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A counterpoint might be that the real power Frost and Hannan wielded came from the Conservative majority in the House of Commons - and that the most effective challenge and scrutiny during the period of their ascendancy came from the Lords.
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It's an old photo...
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I suppose they both rest on the idea of the "occult", in the sense of something "hidden".
Conspiracy theories are all about manifesting hidden forces - murky "elites", operating unseen; dark plots around vaccines or 5G - that *you've* penetrated but others haven't.
It's politics as ghost-hunting.
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"I see the higher course, and I approve it. I take the lower".
(Digging back into memories of A-Level Latin...)
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But even they cross the sea to the West eventually...
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Thank you! Very glad you're enjoying it.
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There's a reason most religions conceive of immortality as something that happens in a separate, transcendent realm beyond earth.
Imagine a world with no room for the young; no arc of life from youth to old age. Just rich men refusing to die,"stretched thin, like butter scraped over too much bread"
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There is indeed! You can sign up here: www.qmul.ac.uk/mei/contact-... It would be great to see you at future events!
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Bovril had long marketed itself as the drink that kept the British Army marching.
This advert, from the Boer War, claimed that General Roberts' march to Kimberley and Bloemfontein spelt out the word "Bovril" on the map.
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Will DM...
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I think the combination of multi-party politics & First Past the Post is almost indefensible. It is absurd that a government elected on 34% of the vote has one of the largest majorities in history, & most Labour MPs and party members would be outraged if Reform won a majority on that kind of figure.
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Some time between 7 and 8. I'm about to go out, so may delete this until I can find it later.
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I know it sounds boring but when constitutional, legal, and governmental processes aren’t properly understood, it means we lack the tools to adequately respond- or perhaps even grasp- when those very processes are the things being abused.