Reposted by Benjamin Thomas
New article! I've written about Paddy Ashdown, 'third way' politics, and the Liberal Democrats' relationship with New Labour in @jbritishstudies.bsky.social
doi.org/10.1017/jbr....
doi.org
Paddy Ashdown’s Third Way: The Liberal Democrats and the Politics of the 1990s | Journal of British Studies | Cambridge Core
Paddy Ashdown’s Third Way: The Liberal Democrats and the Politics of the 1990s - Volume 65
![Brexit as Democratic Crisis: Parliament, People and Prophetic Democracy, 2016–2019*
‘The most precious thing this country has given the world is the idea of parliamentary democracy’.
Boris Johnson, June 2016
‘We have been paralysed by a broken Parliament that simply refused to deliver Brexit’.
Boris Johnson, November 2019
‘this … [is] a vastly more democratic Parliament, because it will not waste the nation’s time in deadlock, division and delay’.
Boris Johnson, December 2019
The vote to leave the European Union, on 23 June 2016, struck British politics like a volcanic eruption. Within hours of the result the Prime Minister had resigned, the Leader of the Opposition was fighting for his survival and a three-year contest had begun that threatened to consume both major parties. The struggle to ‘Get Brexit Done’ triggered two general elections, three leadership contests, two historic court cases and an attempt to suspend Parliament. It saw judges cast as ‘enemies of the people’ and Members of Parliament as ‘saboteurs’ to be ‘crushed’, while bringing terms like ‘the will of the people’ into mainstream political usage. ‘Brexit’ was more than a policy dilemma—more, even, than a contest for power. It raised fundamental questions about how Britain was governed, who made decisions and what it meant to be a democratic state. For its supporters, Brexit became a test of Britain’s democratic credentials and of the willingness of those in power to accept defeat at the polls. For its critics, it had sent a ‘wrecking ball’ crashing through ‘democratic norms and institutions’. Amid claims of Russian interference, campaign-finance violations and the abuse of parliamentary procedure, it became almost routine to say that democracy had been ‘hijacked’, that a ‘coup d’état’ was afoot or that one side or other was trying ‘to shut down democracy’.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cixgmtrg7nzy4gkmyfeosaox/bafkreibnqtgvhow35t3lpugbjlj3fc5cdjf2nshebv4kv37q765njrsngu)
