Breaking Britain: A Podcast about the Politics of a Disunited Kingdom

As part of the Europe's Borderlands research group at the King's College London European Studies Department, this podcast series will take a deeper look at how the United Kingdom's crisis of unity will affect the nations on the islands of Britain and Ireland. In this episode, recorded on 20 January 2021, we will look at how the constitutional structures of the United Kingdom have been transformed by the devolution of power to the Scottish Parliament as well as the Assembly in Northern Ireland and the Senedd in Wales.

To help explore the impact devolution has had on the interactions between member nations of the UK, this week we've been joined by Professor Nicola McEwen. As Professor of Territorial Politics and Co-Director of the ESRC Centre of Constitutional Change at the University of Edinburgh, as well as Senior Research Fellow at the UK in A Changing Europe Initiative, she has  conducted extensive research in the fields of territorial politics, nationalism and multi-level government. In publications such as The Territorial Politics of Welfare (Routledge, 2009) or  ‘Brexit and Scotland: between Two Unions’ in British Politics (2018, Vol 13/1),  Professor McEwen has developed new perspectives on the strengths and vulnerabilities of devolved forms of government in ways that can bring extensive insights into how the UK's constitutional order will respond to the pressures it now faces.

The background music is by Brother Monsplaisir, and the production for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield. 

As part of the Europe's Borderlands research group at the King's College London European Studies Department, this podcast series will take a deeper look at how the United Kingdom's crisis of unity will affect the nations on the islands of Britain and Ireland. In this opening episode we will explore the historical legacies that have fuelled support for nationalist movements in Scotland as well as Northern Ireland, and how the impact of these legacies might affect a changing UK as well as an increasingly powerful European Union.

This week's show, recorded on 17 January, we are honoured to have Peter Geoghegan as our guest, who as investigations editor for OpenDemocracy has covered some of the key factors destabilising the politics of the British state. In his acclaimed Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics, Peter set out how a surge of undisclosed donations have reshaped British politics. In The People's Referendum: Why Scotland will Never Be the Same Again he provided a compelling argument for how the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence fundamentally transformed British politics. As a incisive observer of the politics of the islands of Britain and Ireland, Peter is the ideal guide for our journey through the past century of political endings and beginnings that have brought the British state close to breaking point.

The background music is by Brother Monsplaisir, and the production work for this podcast was by Daniel Mansfield.