Concrete Achievements

Blog

  • Links from the week of 2 November 2020

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • This is a good read by ⁦@duncanrobinson⁩ – but the missing element is money.

    This is a good read by ⁦@duncanrobinson⁩ – but the missing element is money. Charles I and Louis XVI were both brought down because the had to get their Parliaments’ consent to taxes. economist.com/europe/2020/10…

    National governments have the whip hand for several reasons but one big one is that in the end they have to raise the money to write the cheques for parliament. This is why own resources and competences are so important.

    If the EU is to become more democratic that doesn’t just mean more popular participation (in elections and in between) and a stronger « European public sphere » – it also means power for the institutions to do things and raise the money for them.

  • Fascinating indeed. What strikes me is that this U.K.

    Fascinating indeed. What strikes me is that this U.K. government’s brand is Brexit – and when the Brexit disaster reveals itself, quickly in January and/or slowly over coming years, they have no credibility left. twitter.com/anandMenon1/st…

    That makes any attempt to blame-shift onto spiteful Europeans, treacherous remoaners, Covid etc, instantly less credible. “Oh yeah remember how they messed up Covid/FSM/etc, it’s the same with Brexit.”

    That eighty seat majority (which will be defended in the fourteenth year of Tory-led government) is not much to shout about.

  • Today’s chaos as Ade says – bad political judgement crashing into a bad political…

    Today’s chaos as Ade says – bad political judgement crashing into a bad political structure. twitter.com/Adewunmi/statu…

    Belgium’s « institutional lasagne » has had its disagreements during the crisis but for the most part the federal gvt or provincial governors have done lockdowns and the government has maintained and extended our equivalent to furlough.

    The idea that Bruges and Ghent, say, or even Bruges and Charleroi would have to negotiate with the centre to be able to support businesses and individuals is just hallucinatory. It would be unworkable centralisation in a country five times smaller than England.

  • Links from the week of 12 October 2020

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Good for it to start, but it will need adaptive structures, particularly around citizen…

    Good for it to start, but it will need adaptive structures, particularly around citizen engagement, that can develop and connect to new initiatives over the 18-24 month run of the #COFOE twitter.com/schwarzmar/sta…

    It won’t be good enough if it’s either a single citizen assembly type process with no horizontal or vertical connectivity – or if there is too tight a prescription of process at the start. This area is developing fast – and as long as the connections are clear

    the detail can be left more flexible.

  • Links from the week of 5 October 2020

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.

  • Do the pragmatic deal in Brussels, present it as a glorious victory over evil Foreigns…

    Do the pragmatic deal in Brussels, present it as a glorious victory over evil Foreigns back in London. That feels familiar, somehow… twitter.com/DmitryOpines/s…

    Though unlike @DmitryOpines I think that there is an argument a deal is worse politics (though better economics). The deal is so think that Kent blockages, customs paperwork etc will still happen – but with Boris’s Brilliant Deal the UK Gvt will have to defend it.

    In a No Deal scenario, it would all be bundled up in No Deal, the treacherous Foreigns could be blamed for it, and the Evading Responsibility Group (that is what ERG stands for, isn’t it?) would be happy that they aren’t asked to deliver their false utopia.

  • #bepol sidebar. The troubles of GLB have strong “Sideshow Bob standing on rakes” energy…

    #bepol sidebar. The troubles of GLB have strong “Sideshow Bob standing on rakes” energy, but it’s interesting to me how such a self-consciously 21st-century leader is getting smacked in the head by Belgian insistence on collegiality.

    There’s definitely a model where political parties are ephemeral things built around strong personalities (this is presumably the French model referred to by the unnamed third MR grandee). You see it in the UK as farce, but in PR systems it’s a real possibility.

    But there’s also a wider and more associative model, which is the polar opposite – where one person with a taste for Twitter doesn’t rule the roost alone. What you lose in clarity of message you can gain in breadth of vision and length of connection, I would argue.

    But it needs parties that can act in formation more than follow-my-leader, and 20+ years of consumerist politics don’t help.

  • Links from the week of 28 September 2020

    Articles, reports and other links I shared on Twitter this week.