Portrait. On Brexit, Anand Menon claims "Very strong opinions". The most amazing thing is that we may have known this professor of European politics at King’s College in London for years, even having interviewed him several times for The world, without knowing them, and barely being able to guess them. How to stay above the fray – and what a fray! – Brexit when your country, deeply cut in two, never stops tearing itself apart? A fortiori when your job consists precisely in explaining day after day, for five years, to public opinion and to political actors the stakes of the chaotic divorce with the European Union?
"I'm supposed to say what reality looks like, not express my preferences. " The man who directs and embodies “UK in a changing Europe” (UKCE), a permanent network of British academics constituted as a resource center on relations with the continent, is the opposite of the cold and insensitive being suggested by definition he gives of his job.
Omnipresent in the media, brilliant speaker, contributor as compulsive as malicious to Twitter, where he is followed by 43,000 subscribers, this lively and humorous pedagogue performs a function that has been dramatically neglected by British politicians, all trends combined: explain the ins and outs of the innumerable links between the United Kingdom and the European Union and the concrete consequences of breaking them. " Being a social science researcher has always involved a duty for me: explaining our knowledge and our work on subjects that shape their lives to as many people as possible, and helping them to make informed choices, He explains. When we complain that people don't listen to the experts, we forget that it's not just people's fault. Many academics believe that being brilliant means being impenetrable. "
Maverick
The UKCE adventure began in 2014 at the University of Edinburgh, when the British equivalent of the CNRS subsidized a small team of researchers responsible for disseminating data and analyzes concerning the issues of the referendum on the independence of Scotland. In the wake of this successful experience, the idea of renewing it about relations with Europe was born. At the time, Prime Minister David Cameron had promised a Brexit referendum, but no one thought he would ever act because he ruled with the liberal Democrats (LibDem), pro-Europeans and hostile to this project.
