Chris Bertram's avatar

Chris Bertram

@crookedfootball.bsky.social

1863 followers 1576 following 2015 posts

Political philosophy and theory, migration, refugees, Rousseau, photography, French literature, Crooked Timber, books, Bristol ... Wrote "Do States Have the Right to Exclude Immigrants" (Wiley/Polity, 2018).

Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Esther Duflo on the future of the French left

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Ronaldo is the Joe Biden of international football

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Disney are pulling the plug on Biden, I'm told they think Mickey Mouse would stand a better chance

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Reposted by Chris Bertram

Taniel 's avatar Taniel @taniel.bsky.social
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Explosive reporting in Le Monde confirms what was apparent all week: Macron resisted the emergence of anti-far-right front after round 1. His PM, Attal, forced it as a fait accompli, & pressured for drop outs to block RN. Even then, Macron made some phone calls to undercut it.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Germany planning to win by crippling their opponents?

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Greens won one Bristol seat and are in 2nd place in all the others (very strong in Bristol E). A template for breakthrough in cities against a backsliding Labour

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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True, but insofar as FPTP incentivises tactical voting and insofar as it actually happens, the mismatch between share of votes and share of seats may not support a robust counterfactual about what would happen under a different system

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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The age profile of the Reform vote will be interesting to see. A good chance that the Tories will hare off after voters who’ll be dead next time and make themselves more vulnerable to Lib Dems in the process

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Very pleased at the Green seats! All 4 target seats and a springboard to more next time, plus some voices to hold Labour to account on climate and human rights

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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and I'd even googled to make sure I spelt Smyth correctly, ah well...

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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My proxy is voting Green for me in Bristol South, I hope, with the good expectation of a second-place finish that will have the Labour MP (the awful apparatchik Karen Smyth) looking over her left shoulder

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Isn't the obvious interim solution for the EU (and other states) to deem expired Belarus documents as valid?

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Reposted by Chris Bertram

ændra.'s avatar ændra. @aendra.com
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I feel the UK dropping from 1st to 17th in the ILGA Rainbow Europe rankings is a bit of an omission in this...

rainbowmap.ilga-europe.org

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Well it does have the advantage of building a political base for rights

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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"it did its job of hostile-framing Labour". Hmm. Personally, I supported a second referendum because I wanted a second referendum. I also voted Labour in 2019.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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I'm old enough to remember when liberal progressives like Ronald Dworkin pushed the line that the US Supreme Court was a fount of supra-democratic wisdom and the the path to equality and justice. Maybe engaging in regular democratic politics to secure liberal aims would have worked out better.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Caroline Nokes probably the most bearable Tory MP. Sacked by Johnson but was about as humane an Immigration Minister as we're likely to get

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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There'much to agree with. But much dubious too. How far is Starmer responsible for every decision taken when he was DPP? Is a barrister bound only to defend people of whom the left approves? Why is supporting a 2nd referendum so bad? Is it true that merely criticizing NATO earns instant expulsion?

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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The Pinochet defence: “I was only giving orders”

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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A sad case, basically. Taken seriously because it suited some bad people to have a former “left intellectual” on their side. Needs help but probably won’t get it.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Liberal democracy probably would have survived if a bunch of students at a US liberal arts college you've never heard of hadn't claimed (in an eerie echo of Mao's Cultural Revolution) that eating pasta amounts to cultural appropriation. I hope you wokies are proud of yourselves.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Blocking and muting propensity report: up, with the possibility of more to come. Bluesky isn't like twitter is now, but it is starting to get closer to the twitter experience of old

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Well they can’t play any worse than they already have

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Reposted by Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Tocqueville writes in ARR about how basic moves in (liberal) political philosophy devised under autocracy. [Then things went badly when chance came to put principles into practice.] No reason not to continue noodling away about justice, democracy, legitimacy under the coming dispensations

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Well, as someone on the left myself, I regard our failure to get people to vote for us as our failure rather than evidence that the hoi polloi aren't worthy of us and should shoulder the blame for our lack of support

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Well, if you think that's what I think then you don't know much about me. Bye.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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No they did not. They validated the nationalist and cultural concerns at the level of symbolic politics (which helped the far right) whilst failing to provide a decent local bus service (for example).

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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And other parts of the RN programme were enacted by Thatcher: the abolition of ius soli, specifically

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Sending postal votes to Germany with envelope requiring posting in France seems to be a thing, from what I’ve heard

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Reposted by Chris Bertram

Neville Morley's avatar Neville Morley @nevillemorley.bsky.social
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Arguably the most significant debate in Roman political thought and its modern reception is whether the wellbeing of a state is guaranteed by constitutional structures (balance of powers, formal constraints and institutions etc.) or by the virtue/character of political actors.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Loved some of the turns of skill from Portugal, but my, some of the players are hard to like

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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The tree of football is watered by Ronaldo’s tears

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Looks like the US coup d’état happened a while back, but the Democrats didn’t notice. Which was rather careless of them

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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I doubt he would have to work with Mélenchon. He'd have to work with someone like Laurent Berger or Raphael Glucksmann with Mélenchon giving (at best) grudging acquiescence before pulling the plug at an opportune moment

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Ravenous ultranationalism is held right across the spectrum in “liberal democracies”, hence Starmer’s secure borders and flag shagging.

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Finished The Ordinal Society. Magnifique! Thinking about connection between Bourdieu’s “twofold truth” and Smith’s impartial spectator in TMS. Slightly pained (as a pol phil)by absence of Rawls and Dworkin from ch7. Dworkin good fit for legitimating alibi @kjhealy.bsky.social @marionf.bsky.social

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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Really? It seems pretty much alive and well in Labour's embrace of fiscal rules etc etc Perhaps we mean different things?

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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I'd find talk about "loonies" and "insane" problematic anyway, but the tacit assumption that sanity lies with further application of centrist managerialism is utterly complacent. Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result and all that?

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Chris Bertram's avatar Chris Bertram @crookedfootball.bsky.social
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I strongly dislike Mélenchon's nationalism and narcissism, and his record on Putin is bad. But LFI is not "anti-immigrant": they are the ones who opposed Macron's immigration law

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