During 2016, when one or two things were happening in the world, I was doing an undergraduate US history module covering the period from the end of WWII to the end of the Cold War.1 When we studied Richard Nixon, I remember thinking: Oh my God. This man’s biography explains almost everything happening in politics right now.

Since then, I’ve developed a weird fascination with Richard Milhous Nixon.2 He’s a man of inexhaustible contradictions, being simultaneously one of the most sympathetic and least sympathetic presidents America has ever had. He was a flawed and tragic human being, but flawed and tragic characters make the best stories. He was awkward, resentful, disciplined, vengeful, strategic, self-pitying, terrible and brilliant.

Luckily, I now work with someone at Focaldata who shares my weird Nixonmaxxing interest in Tricky Dick. Callum Hunter-Dawson, who is co-authoring with me here, also writes which you should subscribe to immediately for insight on British and American politics with an additional helping of political theory.

Subscribe to Callum here

We’re both of the opinion that Nixon’s career offers a remarkably complete education in modern elections, political science, sociology, media theory, international relations, economics and so much more.

He explains so much, in fact, that this had to be broken into three parts.

This first part covers Nixon’s life before he became president: his childhood, class background, generation, early political rise, use of media, and construction of the coalition that carried him to the White House.

Part two will examine his first term and how he governed through economic disorder, social conflict and the Vietnam War. Part three will cover his (cut short) second term.

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If you don’t like this series, please take it up with my line manager.

Material (in)security in early life shapes your beliefs

Nixon’s family lived under constant financial pressure when he was young. The Nixon home was a small cottage with no electricity until 1916. The babies slept in drawers and the children later bunked together in the attic. His father, Frank, first failed as a citrus farmer and then became a struggling small-business owner running a grocery store and gas station in Whittier, California.

Nixon’s younger brother Arthur died as a child and his older brother Harold died after a long struggle with tuberculosis. In his Nixon biography, John A. Farrell recounts:

His mother came to believe that, with Arthur dead and Harold dying, Dick’s “need to succeed” was driven by a survivor’s remorse. “Unconsciously ... I think that Richard may have felt a kind of guilt that ... he was alive,” Hannah concluded. “It seemed that Richard was trying to be three sons in one, striving even harder than before to make up . . . for our loss.” (Farrell, p. 57)

Due to his success at school, Nixon was offered a place at Harvard but…

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OPEN WIDE FOR SOME SOCCER!!!!

Today, the 2026 World Cup kicks off, jointly hosted by the USA, Canada and Mexico. It’s the first men’s World Cup shared across three countries, and the biggest ever in terms of number of teams competing.

But it also arrives at an awkward moment. Relations between the three have rarely felt this prickly, with tariffs, border rows and political needling never far from the headlines. The tournament has plenty of its own controversies brewing too: rows over ticket prices, whether Iran will be allowed to take part, and America’s immigration enforcement.

At Focaldata, the company I work for, we ran a poll of 1,500 people across the three host nations to find out what they make of the tournament, and of one another. We also asked a question where people could elaborate on their thoughts on the issues we asked about, and have woven their own words in throughout.

Writing “soccer” this many times has not come naturally, but the tournament is in North America, so let’s getting into the spirit.

Good neighbours?

If we start with how each country rates its relationships, the striking thing is the mismatch. None of this is an ideal backdrop for a tournament built on the idea of three countries pulling together.

Americans rate the current state of relations with Canada positively (net +15) and see those with Mexico as roughly neutral. Their neighbours do not see it the same way. Canadians are very gloomy about the state of relations with the USA (-50), and Mexicans lean negative on the same question too (-8). The one relationship everyone agrees is healthy is the one that does not involve Washington: Mexico and Canada rate ties with each other warmly.

“I honestly think the tensions are too high between the three of us. The World Cup will not mend what is broken.” – Canada, 45, Female

“Given the current geopolitics and the conflicts around the world (and by the way the USA is behind every problem) I do worry that something bad could happen and affect this tournament.” – Mexico, 55, Female (translated from Spanish)

One fútbol nation, but not two soccer nations

Then there is the small matter of whether people actually like the sport.

Mexico is soccer mad: 70% say they regularly watch or play. In the USA and Canada, it is closer to one in five (22% and 24%), trailing the NFL, basketball and more. The host nations are, for the most part, not soccer countries.

“I do not care about this in the least. If you like it, that’s great, but it’s just not for me.” – USA, 65, Male

“Soccer is a boring game played with phoney actors.” – Canada, 60, Male

That matters for the atmosphere. When we asked how excited people are about the World Cup, committed soccer fans are buzzing everywhere, scoring around 8 out of 10 on average in all three countries.

The problem for the USA and Canada is simply that there are not many of them. Among the vast majority of people here who do not follow soccer, excitement drops sharply to 3.7 in the USA and just 2.6 in Canada. Even Mexico’s non-fans are warmer than that (4.6).

“It excites me, because the best time for football is coming, and I love watching it.” – Mexico, 25, Female (translated from Spanish)

What is the World Cup for?

FIFA does not sell the World Cup as just a month of football. It pitches it as a lasting legacy for the hosts: jobs, investment, infrastructure and a place on the world stage. So it is worth asking what each public actually wants out of it.

Americans are split, with no single goal commanding the room. Canadians and Mexicans are clearer, and top of both their lists is boosting the national economy (43% in Canada, 47% in Mexico). Mexicans also relish the chance to show off their culture to the world (35%), the sort of soft-power dividend a host gets to enjoy.

“I think it will bring a lot to the economy and to Mexican businesses, and it will boost tourism in Mexico too.” – Mexico, 26, Female (translated from Spanish)

There is one further wrinkle in the American numbers. They are the only public to rank improving relations between the three host nations among their top aspirations. It is a notable thing to want from this tournament, given it is largely American policy driving the strain those relations are under.

“I’m very happy the World Cup is coming to America again. When I was a young woman I worked for the World Cup, I think it was 1993 or 1994. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet people from many different cultures. I know it was a boost to our economy and I hope it helps this time too.” – USA, 66, Female

Ask what could go wrong, though, and the anxieties come out.

For Americans, the biggest fear is political: that Donald Trump overshadows the tournament or uses it for his own ends (31%) or there will be immigration enforcement controversies (25%).

“Hopefully Trump doesn’t ruin it for us.” – USA, 44, Male

Canadians and Mexicans are more focused on prices and costs, particularly that tickets, travel and hotels will simply be too expensive for ordinary fans.

“Too expensive for the average person. It’s criminal.” – Canada, 65, Male

The off-pitch arguments

Finally, specific controversies are already swirling around the tournament.

A few things stand out. Mexicans are the most relaxed about Iran being allowed to compete (net +45), though Americans and Canadians still lean in favour. Mexicans are also the keenest on Mamdani-style discounts giving local residents cheaper access to tickets (+64), though this is overwhelmingly favoured by Americans (+44) and Canadians (+49) too.

“It doesn’t excite me much, because it has become more about business than about the sport.” – Mexico, 45, Male (translated from Spanish)

“I’m glad I don’t live close to any of the venues, because the disruption around the games, parking and traffic congestion, will be terrible.” – Canada, 71, Female

Canadians are the most insistent that FIFA, not taxpayers, should foot the bill for hosting (+64), and the most sceptical that the tournament is worth it if costs overrun (just +7). On most other statements the three countries land in broadly similar territory: widespread agreement that tickets cost too much, and that the spoils will mainly flow to FIFA and big business.

“It’s costing Canadians billions to have some games in Toronto and Vancouver, which is not right, especially when most Canadians cannot afford to buy tickets. FIFA should pay their own way instead of relying on ordinary taxpayers to foot the bill.” – Canada, 59, Male

The takeaway

A month of football will not thaw North America’s frostier mood, and nobody really expects it to. But there are warmer notes. Mexico arrives excited and proud to host, and with reason. They’ve done this twice before, in 1970 and 1986.

Canada and the USA are more cautious. In the US, 1994 was a record-breaking tournament that built a professional league from scratch. But Canada has never hosted, and their anxiety about costs and scepticism about who benefits you’d have to say are well within reason.

The World Cup has a habit of winning people over. If Tim Payne can get 5 million followers overnight, it can too. But with less than 24 hours to go, it has plenty of converting still to do.

Focaldata polled 514 adults in the USA, 588 in Canada and 521 in Mexico. Results are weighted to be nationally representative.

With a new British Prime Minister likely incoming in the next few months, there’s been endless discussion about what our future Dear Leader should do. However, what policies a political leader should enact in office is only half the story. The equally important, but largely ignored, question is how they can implement what they want to do.

It’s very easy to say you want growth, growth, growth / to smash the gangs / to stop the boats / to change the electoral system / to rejoin the EU / mass deportations / to nationalise water companies / a toilet made out of solid gold. It’s much harder to work out how you politically, operationally, bureaucratically, legally and logistically push through such change.

If you want to understand how governments can successfully do big stuff, who should you listen to?

Probably not academic theorists explaining the ideal implementation model in the abstract. Probably not some former politician whose grandest achievement was announcing the announcement of a future announcement. And probably not some random Substacker whose public-sector experience amounts to two chair-moistening1, lanyard-wearing2 and mouse-wriggling3 years at NHS England.4

It makes more sense to study politicians who successfully accomplished transformative change in office. Whatever you think of the substance of their reforms, they showed they could overcome the constraints that every government collides with: bureaucratic inertia and incompetence, organised interest groups, legal challenges, vested interests, media hostility, opposition party scrutiny, and nervous colleagues in their own party.

One of the best examples of this is someone you might not have heard of.

In 1993, former New Zealand finance minister Roger Douglas wrote Unfinished Business, a book explaining how he carried out structural economic reforms in the 1980s.5 Although Douglas is associated with market liberalisation (“Rogernomics”), his book is a practical guide to the mechanics of change in the real world. The methods he describes can, in principle, be used by governments of any stripe: economically left-wing or economically right-wing, socially liberal or socially conservative. It’s about answering how governments can achieve change before political resistance, institutional drift and internal hesitation kill reform off entirely.

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Rogernomics

During the post-WWII period, New Zealand governments of both major parties managed the economy in a highly regulated and protected manner, where the state played a central role. From 1975 to 1984, New Zealand’s prime minister was Robert Muldoon of the centre-right National Party. Muldoon was an economic nationalist who used wage and price controls, tariffs, subsidies and large state-backed industrial projects to try to deal with the economic crises (mainly Britain’s entry into the EEC and the 1973 and 1978–79 oil crises) that were making that old settlement harder to sustain. By the early 1980s, inflation remained high and growth remained low, and in 1984, Muldoon (whilst drunk!) announced an election.6

Unsurprisingly given that context, the opposition Labour Party, led by David Lange, won. However, Labour’s campaign did not clearly foreshadow the scale of the economic revolution that would follow. They campaigned as the party of “change” but its public messages on the economy were mixed and a bit vague.7

Once in government, Lange appointed Roger Douglas as Minister of Finance. In Douglas’s own account, he had come to believe that the old Labour means (protection, subsidies, public ownership and direct controls) were no longer achieving the Labour ends of helping lower-income New Zealanders. His reforms, therefore, went well beyond anything most voters would have expected from Labour’s manifesto. The new government devalued and floated the New Zealand dollar, deregulated financial markets, deregulated business more generally, removed subsidies, reduced import protection, introduced a Goods and Services Tax (GST), cut and simplified income taxes, and privatised state-owned industries.

Over the course of a few years, New Zealand rapidly went from having levels of state intervention and regulation “unparalleled in any other developed Western economy”8 to being one of the most market-oriented economies in the world.9 New Zealand had its own Thatcherite/Reaganite economic revolution… but delivered by a Labour government!

It doesn’t matter whether you think Douglas’s reforms were good or bad, the point is that Douglas was someone who entered government and forced through large change. He didn’t just tinker around the edges, he fundamentally altered the political economy of an entire country in the space of a few years.

At the end of Unfinished Business, he outlines ten practical lessons for anyone in government who is serious about getting big things done and sorting out a country’s structural problems (free abridged versions are available here and here).

There are a few countries I can think of that might need to learn these lessons right now, before it’s too late…

🚨DISCLAIMER: Douglas is not offering a campaign manual for winning elections from opposition. His principles are a guide to using power once you already have it, and getting re-elected from that position.🚨

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1. For quality policies, you need quality people

Douglas starts by arguing that governments rise or fall on the intellectual and moral quality of its personnel. If the people at the centre of decision-making are trapped by old orthodoxies, policy will be stale. If they are highly-skilled, honest, analytically serious and imaginative, they can diagnose problems more clearly and develop better solutions.

“Policy starts with people. It emerges from the quality of their observation, knowledge, analysis, imagination and ability to think laterally so as to develop the widest range of options. Replacing people who cannot or will not adapt to the new environment is pivotal.”

Good policy does not appear out of thin air, but nor is it produced by one individual sitting alone in a room. It emerges from teams of capable and virtuous people. The major culprits for this not happening, Douglas says, are…

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I grew up in a suburb of Stockport and when I was younger, Stockport town centre was, to put it politely, ‘angin. It could have been described using a lot of words beginning with f and s, but “fashionable” and “sought-after” weren’t among them.

This is no longer true. The wider transformation of parts of Greater Manchester in my lifetime has been massive. Stockport is now regularly described (mostly ironically but sometimes unironically) as “the new Berlin.” I know someone not from Greater Manchester who was interested in moving to Edgeley because it had nice coffee shops. Manchester city centre, which once emptied after office hours on weekdays, is now packed with flats, bars, students, cranes, hotels and people who voluntarily pay £8 for a pint. It’s even pretty difficult to get Stockport County tickets these days too.

These are the sorts of sentences that would have sounded like jokes when I was growing up. As Jack Peacock pointed out recently, Stockport finished 12th in the original 2003 Crap Towns, but The Sunday Times named it the best place to live in the North West in 2024.1 There’s no Gail’s Bakery in Stockport town centre yet, but give it time.

• Why did Greater Manchester recover when so many other post-industrial cities struggled?

• Why did Greater Manchester manage to build institutions that function while the wider British state looks incapable of organising a piss-up in a Boddingtons brewery?

• Why did a Labour council become the most aggressively pro-growth, pro-development, pro-FDI political machine in the country?

• And how much credit should go to Andy Burnham?

Greater Manchester’s success is real, but none of it happened by accident. This is my attempt to explain the economic turnaround and what it might tell us about our potential future Dear Leader’s premiership.

Alternatively, if Andy Burnham loses the Makerfield by-election, this article may survive as a strange historical artefact from that brief period when the British political class became extremely interested in Manchester before forgetting about it again.

When the streets are cold and lonely

The City of Manchester’s population fell from 766,311 in 1931 to 392,819 by 2001.2 By the end of the 1970s, Manchester and the surrounding towns were losing 121 manufacturing jobs every working day.3 Within the actual city centre, the resident population (now close to 100,000) was only around 500 in 1990.4 During this time, the city was also being called “Gunchester” because of gang violence.5

This was frustrating, because Greater Manchester clearly had huge potential. It had a strategic location, a large labour market of millions of people within commuting distance, an international airport, serious universities, civic pride, major influence on popular culture, and a name known around the world because of its football team (singular 😏).

This was not an issue only faced by Manchester, at the time. Throughout Britain, the old manufacturing base was dying and nothing substantial was replacing it. Manchester had…

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Oh, boy, how about those election results, eh? When it comes to the established mainstream parties, seats have been lost, vote share has slipped, and their rivals have gained ground in areas once considered safe. Inevitably, this has prompted calls for a strategic rethink in both parties.

There is certainly no shortage of opinion about what they should do next. Personally, though, I think the two mainstream parties are facing fundamentally different political problems, which means they require fundamentally different responses.

So, here is my analysis of what each party should do if it wants to win voters back and recover its position.

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Advice for the mainstream party I support

Many have argued that because we lost seats to a party on the opposite side of the political spectrum, we must therefore move towards that party in order to win those seats back. However, this misunderstands what has actually happened.

A party loses seats to a rival and commentators immediately conclude that voters have shifted directly to them. This analysis is infantile, simplistic and demonstrably wrong. As plenty of others have now tried dutifully to explain, just because you lose seats to a certain party, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost voters to them.

The actual evidence overwhelmingly suggests that my party has haemorrhaged voters to the more ideological party on our own flank. The voters we have actually lost have become disillusioned because they feel the party has abandoned our key principles and stopped articulating a coherent narrative. Their support for the newer party is a demand for our party to become more authentically itself again.

My party’s leadership needs to recognise that these voters have correctly identified real weaknesses, both within the party and in the broader direction of the country. Their underlying diagnosis deserves engagement.

My party spent too long chasing some mythical “median voter” who exists primarily in the imaginations of overpaid and overhyped pollsters. I’m sure these people exist, but there are nowhere near enough of them to build a durable electoral coalition. Parties do not win elections by hollowing out their own identity They win elections by establishing a connection with a base of voters who have the most in common with it.

Successful leaders recognise that you need to give your own side something to feel enthusiastic about. Voters can tell when a party genuinely values and respects the people who support it, and they can also tell when a party is embarrassed by its own electoral base. No party can build lasting success while constantly disparaging the very voters and values that sustain it.

The so-called “moderate” MPs and advisers who championed our failed “median voter strategy” need to show some humility and reflect upon their failure. The party has followed their strategy to the letter and we’re getting hammered out there. Absolutely hammered. A sustained period silence from them is very much what is needed.

Given the position we’re in, we should focus on winning back the voters we’ve lost. The real challenge is expanding our appeal again, not simply clinging defensively to the support we already have.

This means we should absorb the concerns driving support to the party on our flank by presenting their new voters (who are also our old voters) with policies that they support. If we reoccupy that political space, the insurgent party would lose its unique appeal, because its core arguments would be incorporated back into our electoral offer.

Indeed, much of the history of successful politics involves major parties adapting to pressures from their own edges. Parties survive by absorbing energy from emerging movements, not by pretending those movements don’t exist.

In contrast, unsuccessful mainstream parties respond to ideological challengers by treating their former supporters as though they’re morally suspect. The implication is always that the electorate has failed the party, rather than the other way around. This is strategically disastrous. Imagine being a business that loses customers to a competitor, and responds by informing your former customers that they are ignorant and irresponsible. You obviously wouldn’t win back their custom and you wouldn’t remain in business very long! There is a reason people say the customer is always right. Successful organisations adapt to consumer demand.

There’s little evidence that our lost voters actually want the ideological maximalism of their new party. Most people are not searching for the most uncompromising version of a political position available. The reason my party has lost voters to its ideological fringe is not because millions of ordinary people suddenly became extremists overnight. The voters didn’t change, our party did.

Instead, my party should present moderated versions of the policy proposals currently associated with the insurgent movement. That would have the effect of reassuring disillusioned voters that our party understands them, has listened to their concerns and has changed for the better.

Moderation doesn’t mean abandoning the underlying demand. It just means making that demand feel practical, credible and safe enough to support. Most people, when given the choice, will choose the more moderate version of what they want, over the most extreme version available.

After all, Diet Coke has now overtaken sales of regular Coke. People prefer the version of the product that feels lighter and safer, while still fundamentally giving them what they wanted in the first place.

The voters who have drifted away are not gone forever. All the polling suggests that they’re open to returning. Their attachment to the insurgent party is conditional, rather than tribal. We just need to give them a reason to come back to us.

And if electoral arithmetic eventually necessitates some degree of cooperation, that possibility should not be ruled out in advance. Given the electoral system we have, and the increasingly fragmented party landscape, some form of alliance may become a practical necessity. Besides, the dark threat emerging from the other side of the political spectrum means this is not the moment for endless factional purity tests. The times are too serious for that. Parties and movements with overlapping values should be capable of recognising shared interests where they exist in order to stop the much more dangerous forces which are gaining momentum.

Ultimately, what my party needs is confidence in its own traditions and instincts again. It needs a strong purpose and a strong identity. Only then will supporters feel emotionally invested in what the party represents.

And the fact that all of this would mean the mainstream party that I support would start doing things I personally already agree with is purely coincidental.

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Advice for the mainstream party I don’t support

In contrast, the situation facing the mainstream party I don’t support is fundamentally different. I would be much more concerned if I was in their position.

Many people assume that because the decline in this party’s polling has coincided with the rise of a new party on its ideological flank, voters must therefore have moved directly from one to the other. This is a mistake, because what really matters is to look at the actual seats being lost.

This party has lost seats to a party on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Therefore, it has clearly lost its voters to that party too. If Party A loses seats to Party B, then voters must logically have moved from Party A to Party B. It is basic mathematics. None of this is remotely difficult to understand.

And yet, unbelievably, the leadership of this party seems intent on targeting voters in the new party on its ideological fringe. This is clearly a mistaken strategy. What exactly is happening with the moderate MPs in this party? Will they ever speak up? Will they ever rise from their slumber and reclaim the party from the ideological zealots in the leadership who are driving it towards extinction?

The reality is that this party urgently needs to move away from its ideological flank and back towards the political centre. The centre ground is where voters are and where elections are won. Successful political leaders understand that broad coalitions are built through moderation and pragmatism. This is not complicated stuff.

It ultimately doesn’t matter if their committed partisans complain about this. The only voters who truly matter in our system are the median voters in marginal constituencies. Given how badly the public currently views this party, it essentially needs to run against itself. It must present itself as independent from its own past and as a clean break from the ideology that damaged its reputation in the first place.

Claims that the party lost because it was not “authentically itself” are comforting myths that activists tell themselves in order to avoid confronting the need for fundamental change. The argument conveniently implies that the solution is simply “more of the same, but louder.”

Westminster, being Westminster, has managed to completely misunderstand what is happening. Again. Astonishingly, it’s discussed as though the party is only losing voters to its ideological fringe, even though half of its voter losses [citation needed, ed.] are to moderate parties. And yet, this reality is treated almost as an afterthought. The political commentariat continues to stare directly at the evidence and somehow arrive at the exact opposite conclusion.

The median voter theory remains the most well-established explanation for how elections are won in modern democracies. Elections are decided by reassuring apolitical and non-partisan voters who value competence and moderation. That means resisting the pressure to adopt harder positions on economic or social issues simply because smaller parties are attracting attention. Highly motivated minorities can generate enormous visibility online without representing anything close to a genuine electoral majority.

Given the position this party is in, it should also focus on maintaining the support of voters who have remained loyal. It makes little sense to obsess over winning back people who have already defected. If voters have stayed with the party through difficult times, that loyalty should be rewarded rather than taken for granted.

Unfortunately, this party appears determined to move in exactly the wrong direction. Because it’s facing pressure from an insurgent movement on its ideological flank, many within the party seem to believe that they should imitate them and reposition accordingly. This would be a profound strategic mistake and would not win back those voters.

The political science literature is clear on this point: accommodation does not work.

When mainstream parties respond to insurgents by adopting the policies and rhetoric currently championed by those challengers, they end up validating the new party rather than defeating it. By conceding that the rival party is fundamentally correct, you reinforce its worldview and legitimise its arguments. Voters then naturally conclude that if the insurgent party’s ideas are right, they may as well support the original version rather than the imitation. Instead of winning defectors back, accommodation accelerates the drift away.

A mainstream party can never outbid an insurgent movement. Once voters are attracted to a more radical alternative, attempts to mimic its policies appear artificial and unconvincing. After all, why would people choose the Diet Coke version when they have the full-fat version available to them?

The successful response is the opposite. The party should draw a very clear dividing line and argue that the insurgent party’s approach is damaging and unacceptable. People respond to elite and party cues. If a mainstream party consistently signals that a rival movement falls outside the boundaries of responsible politics, voters will internalise that framing and respond accordingly.

And in any case, most of the voters who have defected to the new party are not coming back, regardless. They have been politically radicalised by social media conspiracy theories and constant ideological reinforcement. Their attachment to the new party is emotional and identity-based. No matter what concessions are made, they are unlikely ever to return. The internet has liquefied these people’s brains.

In fact, given how hostile and extreme some of these voters have become, one could reasonably question whether winning them back would even be desirable. Many now seem permanently immersed in a culture of outrage and grievance, where political identity has become less about improving society and more about expressing anger at it. At a certain point, a mainstream party has to ask itself whether endlessly chasing voters who increasingly reject our country’s fundamental values is either politically viable or morally healthy.

Similarly, any suggestion of an electoral pact with the fringe party would be catastrophic. First, the insurgent party has clearly revealed itself as an extremist organisation. Second, it would be politically naïve to cooperate with a movement whose long-term ambition is to replace the party. And third, the growing threat from political extremes means mainstream parties need to stand together against polarisation.

Ultimately, what this party needs is total transformation. It needs to abandon the ideological baggage of its past, distance itself from the instincts that made it unelectable, and move decisively towards the average voter. Only then will the electorate begin to see it once again as part of the moderate centre ground of politics.

And the fact that all of this would mean the mainstream party that I don’t support would start doing things I personally already agree with is purely coincidental.

The polls in the UK at time of writing are showing a very fragmented landscape with five parties all above 10% and the top party at less than 30%. I’m publishing this on the day of the 2026 May local elections and the f-word is something you’re probably going to hear a lot about in the next few weeks.

Given this, it’s renewed the conversation about whether the UK should change it’s voting system to a more proportional one. I’m not going to argue either side of that case, because there are about 1,004 issues I care more about than electoral reform. However, I do care about effective political campaigning and communication:

To that end, I want to take you back to the last time Britain debated changing its voting system: the 2011 AV Referendum!

No, please don’t close this article down, there’s an interesting point in here somewhere.

This referendum took place when I was 16 years old just before my GCSEs. As I sat there trying to work out the symbolism of Curley wearing a glove full of Vaseline, a political broadcast came on the TV.1 It was so bad that I’ve remembered it this whole time. Now, exactly 15 (!!!) years later, I finally have the platform to get off my chest just how bad I thought this advert was and why.

In 2026, it’s still bad, but the passage of time has made it even stranger and now shows how much politics can change in a decade and half.

Ladies and gentlemen, for your consideration…

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0:00 to 0:11

To be fair, it starts out well. We get the authoritative voice and smouldering good looks of (the admittedly not that well known in 2011) Dan Snow. He starts by making a clear and easy to follow argument:

“People say AV is complicated. Well, it’s not. It’s simple, it’s fair, it’s common sense. And we use things like it every day in our normal lives.”

It’s a little accusatory and aggressive to start out, but it gets straight to the point. The language is straightforward and it sets up the rest of the video. He’s making a big promise, though, so he needs to deliver.

0:12 to 0:16

Snow then starts the analogy that carries the rest of the advert.

“Say you and a group of mates want to go for a night out.”

I’ve never understood why he puts such an emphasis on the word “mates”, but otherwise this is solid. Using everyday analogies like this helps make things which are procedural and dull (like the electoral system) feel understandable. If the analogy works, you can map your own experiences onto the argument without thinking too hard about the mechanics underneath.

We’re then briefly introduced to our MATES who are deciding what to do.

“OK, so pub?”

“Yeah.”

“Yep.”

The first 16 seconds do exactly what a good political advert should do. It speaks in familiar language and uses something people immediately understand. Most people watching will have, at some point in their lives, had a discussion about which pub to go to.

Nothing can possa-bly go wrong from here, right?

0:17 to 0:18

Then, at 17 seconds, things start to go south.

I thought we were going to get some coffee.

Eh?! I might be mixing in the wrong circles, but who in the hell goes for a “night out” to a coffee shop?! I understand preferring a quiet coffee to a pub during the day, but this was framed as some big night out (out-out!), not an afternoon chit-chat.

Even if people did want to do this, coffee shops aren’t open late. Most round where I live are shut by 7pm at the latest, which is hardly a night out. Maybe they stay open later where you live, but they’re unlikely to be packed with rambunctious yahoos and hot jazz music at 1:00 a.m.

This makes the characters seem a bit weird. Wanting to go on a night out to a coffee shop is alien to normal experience (unless it’s to an Amsterdam coffee shop, but I don’t think that’s the vibe they’re going for). AV is for people who go on nights out to coffee shops? Well, I don’t go on nights out to coffee shops, so therefore AV isn’t for people like me.

Also, remember that this was 2011. The future abstinent and teetotal Gen Z were still watching Pingu at this point. We are still at the tail-end of the lads lads lads era, so the idea of not going to a pub would have felt even stranger then for young people to do.

Still, it’s only a wobble. The advert could recover.

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0:18 to 0:26

The group sensibly decides to vote.

“OK let’s vote on it. Who wants to go to the pub?”

(Six people put their hands up)

“And who wants coffee?”

(Four people put their hands up)

“Six to Four. Pub it is!”

That looks like a great voting system. It’s simple and effective. You could imagine using it to run a country.

0:27 to 0:35

But Dan Snow returns.

“As long as there only two choices – coffee shop and the pub – the old voting system works fine. But the trouble starts when there are more than two choices.”

So, what he’s really saying is that the problem is the existence of the Lib Dems and that they must be eliminated? More seriously, it’s a strange choice to open by showing the existing system that you want to get rid of working perfectly well. Oh, so the current system can function smoothly under the right conditions? Great, let’s keep it.

0:36 to 1:08

We’re then treated to an interminable discussion from our MATES about where to go next.

“OK, so pub?”

“Yeah, let’s go to Red Lion.”

“Yeah, that sounds great.”

“Oh, that’s right next to The Crown. That’s my favourite pub.

“We go there every single time!”

Hang on a second. I recognise that guy.

It’s Zack Polanski!

I obviously had no idea who he was back in 2011, so it was a bit of a shock when I went back and watched this video. Wikipedia tells me he had acting (and breast enlargement) training around this time, but I’ll leave you to decide whether he got good value for money.

Curiously, in a recent New Statesman interview, Polanski says it was wanting to change the voting system that led him to join the Lib Dems in 2015:

He moved to London after graduating, working in community theatre, the gig economy, and, yes, hypnotherapy. He marched against Iraq, but freely admits he was almost entirely unpolitical until his thirties. It was theatre that began to politicise him.

He was working in a school of drama known as the “Theatre of the Oppressed”, a tradition that grew out of 1970s Brazil and which is popular among activists. He was, he says, “meeting with people who were facing injustice” and then playing them on stage. Yet Polanski’s first foray into politics wasn’t radical at all, but curiously, even subversively unpopular. In 2015, Zack Polanski joined the Lib Dems.

…

“I totally accept it is a very unusual journey into politics,” he tells me. He became a Lib Dem because the party wanted to change the first-past-the-post voting system – an issue that came up time and again at Theatre of the Oppressed workshops. “Once I understood that the voting system was the thing that was stopping people changing the system or getting the outcome they wanted, it felt to me, and still does, in many ways, that the voting system was the thing that really needed changing.” The “thing that shifted” wasn’t his view, but that the Liberal Democrats were, he believed, “the only party that were famous for talking about proportional representation when no one else was interested”. He only realised later that the Greens had the same policy.

This Damascene conversion to the pitfalls of FPTP in 2015 seems somewhat at odds with appearing in an actual political broadcast (!!!) in favour of changing the voting system 4 years before this (which was still just about in his “entirely unpolitical” thirties too). He may well just have appeared in it because he was paid (young struggling actors gotta do what they gotta do, no doubt) but it seems a little coincidental. If there are any journalists reading, it may be something to ask him about.

“Everybody, please, let’s be civilised about this and go to The Anchor.”

“I’m up for The Anchor.”

“What about the coffee?”

“Why would you want coffee??!!”

Yeah, she knows what’s up. Why would you want coffee?! This is making me long for a system where she’s put in charge as absolute dictator.

“Hey, it’s very European. OK, guys?”

I understand what this line is trying to do. It’s a little wink towards Europe and their proportional voting systems. I’m a political anorak, so I get the reference, but almost nobody watching this would. Most viewers would just think he’s being a sarcastic nob.

“Right, let’s vote on it. Who wants to go to the Red Lion?”

“Yeah, definitely.”

“That’s two.”

“Who wants to go to The Crown? Just you.”

“And who wants to go to The Anchor?”

“Three!”

“And who wants coffee?”

“One, two, three, four. Coffee it is!”

I don’t know if it’s just me, but these people are incredibly annoying.

You can tell this advert was made before the Brexit vote, because the whole thing radiates the naivety of university-educated liberals of 2011. Someone in the Yes2AV campaign clearly thought a group of posh student YUPPIE types were the perfect vehicle to appeal to the median voter.

If nothing else, Brexit (and the rise of right-wing populism more generally) has forced people who work in politics to confront the fact that “cool” demographics are vastly outnumbered by “uncool” demographics. This advert ends up as a bit of a relic from the moment just before that realisation hit.

Even then, there’s never any reason given for why I’m supposed to sympathise with or relate to these people. They all seem comfortably well-off (the choice of venue is determined entirely by vibes rather than who can actually afford what), they’re snarky with each other, they don’t seem to particularly like one another, they have bizarre preferences (coffee shop???), and (speaking as a chippy northerner) they are soooooo southern.

Look, I’m really strongly against stereotyping in all its forms, and I’ve got nothing personal against middle-class Surrey student wankers (“How can I be prejudiced against middle-class Surrey student wankers? Some of my friends are middle-class Surrey student wankers.” etc.), but even I have my limits. These people are annoying to me and this is coming from someone who actually shares quite a lot of demographic overlap with them. God knows how these people must have come across to the median voter who is completely alien to them. That’s true in terms of background, personality and even the way they go about choosing a pub.2

This is how they come across:

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1:09 to 1:29

Dan Snow steps back in to explain why what we’ve just seen is a problem.

“So, off you go to the coffee shop, which is a bit of a disappointment given the majority of you wanted to go to the pub. And that’s what we get all too often with our current first past the post voting system.”

Zack Polanski is quietly seething. Vengeance will soon (well, 15 years later) be his.

The problem is that I’m not sure this is a good analogy for AV in the first place. If you actually wanted to do the “night out” metaphor properly, each political party should map onto a genuinely different option for what you’re doing with your evening:

1. Pub

2. Club

3. House party

4. Coffee shop (???)

5. Sharing a bottle of cider and some fags on a park bench

Those are distinct outcomes. You can imagine having different preferences between them, and you can imagine having a second choice that you’d be reasonably happy with if your first choice didn’t win.

What we actually get in this advert is that most people want “the pub” as a broad category, but they’re arguing about which pub. This means that The Red Lion, The Crown and The Anchor are not different political parties, but seem like different candidates within the same party.

That maps much more cleanly onto an open-list proportional representation system than it does AV. In an open-list PR system, you vote for a party, but you can also express a preference for a specific candidate within that party. The party wins a number of seats proportional to its overall support, and then the candidates with the most personal votes within that party get the seats. So if 60% of people want “pub” (e.g. the Labour Party), then pub (Labour) as a category wins most of the representation, but the internal argument about which pub is basically an argument about which individual candidate ends up getting the job (e.g. Andy Burnham or Angeliki Stogia).

This analogy also collapses because, unlike elections, you can easily go to multiple pubs in one night. We’ve already learnt that the Red Lion is literally right next door to The Crown. You can have a couple of pints in the Red Lion, wander 30 seconds down the road, and then end up at The Crown anyway!

Dan snow continues.

“Back in the 1950s, nine out of ten of us voted for the Conservatives or the Labor Party, so 90% of MPs went to Westminster with the backing of the majority of their communities. But now we’re used to choice. We want to choose between more than just two parties. There are now three, four, five parties to choose from.”

At the 2010 election, Labour and the Conservatives took around 65% of the vote. Which means roughly two thirds of voters were, at minimum, willing to tolerate the existing two-party structure. You can argue that 65% isn’t 90% like in the 1950s, but it’s hardly the complete fragmentation Snow is implying (or like we have now). If two parties are still attracting nearly two thirds of the vote between them, it’s not obvious that the system has completely collapsed under the weight of pluralism.

The party most disadvantaged by the system in 2010 was the Liberal Democrats. By the time of the referendum, they’d just torched their credibility over tuition fees. Asking people in 2011 to vote for a system that mainly benefited a party they increasingly despised was a hard sell.

1:38 to 1:50

Dan now makes another point.

“Two thirds of our MPs are sent to Westminster, even though the majority of voters in their constituencies actually voted for somebody else.”

“Mathematical anxiety” is apparently a real and widespread phenomenon, where people switch off the moment percentages start flying around, because they get flashbacks to GCSE maths five minutes before the exam starts. In a campaign broadcast, your job is to reduce cognitive load, not increase it.

“What we need to do is find out people’s preferences, not just their first choice.”

This is a good point, but the problem is how long it takes the advert to get here. If the advert had opened with this argument, the pub/coffee analogy might have worked as a supporting illustration. Instead, by the time this case is finally spelled out, it feels like an afterthought rather than the core message.

1:51 to 2:10

Oh no, back to our MATES.

“Hang on, this isn’t making sense. OK, let’s use common sense. Only you four actually want coffee, everyone else wants to go to the pub.”

“Yeah, look, I know the anchor wasn’t my first choice, but it’s definitely better than having coffee.

“Yeah, to be fair, I’d much rather go to The Anchor.”

“Yeah, so six-four.”

“The Anchor it is.”

“Yaaaayyy!!!!”

At least someone’s happy.

The problem is that this section is meant to demonstrate how AV works, but this isn’t how AV works! In fact, the advert never explains what AV is at all. There’s no explanation of ranking candidates, no mention of putting a 1 next to your first choice and a 2 next to your second. The pub and coffee characters just put their hands up.

If you came to this advert with no prior knowledge of AV, you’d leave without understanding the basic mechanics. You’d know there was something to do with preferences, but not how those preferences are expressed or counted.

And this brings me back to the very first line of the advert. “People say AV is complicated.” Well, maybe they say it’s complicated because you didn’t actually explain how it works. Campaigners should never blame the public for not understanding something that they themselves have failed to communicate properly.

2:11 to 2:30

Dan Snow returns one last time to wrap things up.

“And that’s all AV is. It’s a common sense solution to find out the result that the majority are happy with.”

Are they happy though? The people in the advert mostly look irritated.

“That’s why we use AV or systems like it for nearly all the UK’s other elections, the local mayor elections…”

The phrase “or systems like it” is doing a huge amount of work here. AV itself was already a compromise. Many reformers actually wanted full proportional representation, like the system used for European elections at the time.

The claim about “nearly all” elections is also pretty misleading. The two elections people are overwhelmingly most aware of (general elections and local council elections) both use first past the post. So when viewers hear “we already use systems like AV for most elections”, there’s a decent chance they’ll rightly think: “No we don’t.”

“…even for the leadership of the Conservative and Labor parties. Now if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us.”

You’re asking me to trust the voting system that produced the absolute shower currently leading the Conservative and Labour parties??!! Ordinary voters already disliked political parties and distrusted politicians long before Brexit. We’re two years out from the expenses scandal, after all. So who on Earth thought “this is how party leaders are chosen” was going to function as a compelling sales pitch? It’s like saying: “This is the same oven that keeps burning all the food I cook in it. Now imagine what it could do for your dinner!”3

2:31 to end

The advert races through its final claims.

“AV makes MPs work harder for your vote…”

How? Up to now, we’ve been told AV is fair and sensible. Nobody has explained how it suddenly changes the behaviour of MPs. The pub analogy doesn’t show this at all, because The Anchor didn’t have to “work harder” to win over our MATES’ custom. It was chosen as a compromise because it annoyed the fewest people.

“…cut safe seats for MPs…”

Again, how? This is a serious claim and a potentially persuasive one. It’s dropped in with no explanation and no evidence. If safe seats are a problem, the advert never shows why AV fixes them.

“… gives you more say.”

This is probably true, but it needed to be clearly set out earlier. By this stage, it sounds like another slogan rather than a conclusion drawn from what we’ve just seen.

“Vote Yes to fairer votes on May the 5th.”

We’re back to fairer votes again. By now, the advert has offered several different reasons to support AV, but none of them are fully developed. The result is a complete lack of coherence. From start to finish, there’s no single, consistent case being made. The advert never commits to one clear problem and one clear solution.

By the end, I still don’t know how AV actually works. I’ve spent two and a half minutes watching a group of annoying and weird YUPPIES argue about coffee. I’ve been presented with about five different justifications for reform, three of them crammed into the final ten seconds.

Mercifully, though, that’s the end.

How Not To Sell Electoral Reform

In a previous article, I showed how Aristotle analysed charisma and that he came to the conclusion that it rested on three pillars:

1. Ethos: the speaker’s character and credibility. Do you seem competent, trustworthy and honest?

2. Logos: how much logical sense you are making. Are your arguments clear and reasonable?

3. Pathos: the ability to stir emotions. Are you making people feel something like hope, anger, fear, or humour?

For Aristotle, to be the most persuasive, you had to blend all three of these elements at the same time.

The advert has none of those things.

Ethos

Dan Snow is an ok choice. He’s not bad, but he’s not really magnetic or dynamic enough to compensate for the advert’s deeper problems. He comes across as pretty authoritative, but in 2011 (or now) he wasn’t remotely famous enough to carry a campaign. Bluntly, he’s also a nepo baby (he’s the son of Peter Snow, a BBC television presenter, and is married to the sister of £10 billion net worth Duke of Westminster) which doesn’t exactly scream “median voter appeal”.

As for the MATES… where do you even begin?

Logos

Most obviously, it never actually explains how AV works in practice. Instead, we get a vague pub argument involving people repeatedly putting their hands up. The central analogy itself is confusing and, at several points, actively misleading.

Worse still, the advert keeps jumping between entirely different arguments for reform without ever settling on one coherent case. All of the claims are thrown at the viewer, but none are properly developed.

By the end of the advert, if you didn’t understand how AV worked beforehand, you almost certainly still wouldn’t afterwards.

Pathos

Well, I certainly came away with strong feelings about our MATES, but I’m fairly sure those weren’t the feelings the campaign intended to provoke.

The advert barely even attempts emotional persuasion at all. It never tries to make viewers angry about the current system denying them a meaningful voice, or frustrated at the general uselessness of MPs and political parties. It never creates any fear about what happens if nothing changes: more unresponsive politicians, more scandals, more alienation between voters and Westminster.

Above all, it completely fails to connect electoral reform to the things people actually care about in their everyday lives. There’s nothing about the NHS, policing, schools, housing, wages, immigration or public services generally. The entire debate is an abstract procedural discussion between politically engaged middle-class people arguing about pubs and coffee shops.

The winning NOtoAV campaign understood something much more fundamental: most voters do not care about constitutional machinery in and of itself. They care about whether changing that machinery will make their lives materially better.

Then again, it could have been worse. Here’s an alternative version of the ad that the Yes2AV campaign made but with different MATES. Say what you want about the original but at least:

1. All the mates were the same age and looked like they could have been friends in real life.

2. The sound editing is professional and you can hear what each person is saying.

3. It didn’t use sound effects when people named the pubs.

4. One of the mates wasn’t wearing a Russian fur cap with ear flaps (!!!)

At least Dan Snow says “mates” normally in this version.

How To Sell Electoral Reform

The strange thing is that there had already been a genuinely effective TV advert for electoral reform decades earlier which blended ethos, logos and pathos perfectly.

Here’s John Cleese showing how it should actually be done back in 1987.

It’s funny, it’s clear, and it explains exactly how proportional representation works in plain, direct English without ever sounding patronising or overcomplicated. It anticipates obvious objections and answers them directly.

And, crucially, not a single mention of coffee!

If demands for voting reform continue to grow over the next few years, and you’re trying to persuade the public that change is needed, then for the love of God: Do it like John Cleese, not like our MATES!

Political psychological biases are the mental shortcuts we use when thinking about politics. They quietly shape what we notice and ignore, and how confident we feel about being right.

One common mistake is to learn about biases and then think, “ahh yes, this explains all of my political opponents.” In reality, they apply just as much to you (and me). You can’t escape biases and you’ll always have them (I know I do). Despite this, you can notice them, however uncomfortable that might be, and try not to let them colour your analysis too much (before carrying on as if you were obviously right all along).

Here’s a question for you:

Think of a change or development in politics over the last ten years that you liked and thought was a good thing.

What do you think was the most important cause of it?

Ok, how about this:

Think of a change or development over the last ten years that you disliked and thought was a bad thing.

What do you think was the most important cause of that?

There’s one bias in particular that annoys me more than any other, because it’s so widespread in political analysis and, as far as I’m aware, doesn’t have a specific name:

1. When we explain political changes we like, we tell a story of how it was the organic, bottom-up and genuine expression of what people wanted.

2. When we explain political changes we dislike, we tell a story in which it was the artificial, top-down result of cynical or manipulative elites.

We explain political change using completely different causal models depending on whether we approve of the outcome or not.

I’m going to name this “Motivated Causal Attribution.”

So, you like examples, eh? Well, have all the examples in the world!

Why do many working-class people vote “against their own interests” for right-wing parties?

1. Working-class voters conclude from their own experiences that market-based systems offer better opportunities for advancement than interventionist or bureaucratic alternatives. Working-class people also prioritise issues beyond just their finances and feel that right-wing parties better reflect those non-economic concerns.

2. Elite-controlled institutions promote narratives that obscure class interests and encourage workers to support political movements that ultimately sustain the existing capitalist system. Elites effectively manufacture consent in ways that produce false consciousness among the working-class.

Why are the kids so woke these days?

1. Young people have grown up in more diverse and open societies, with greater exposure to different cultures and identities. Through these social interactions, they have developed a strong commitment to addressing historical injustices and promoting equality for minority groups.

2. Schools, universities and popular culture have championed a narrow and extreme ideological framework centred on identity politics. Young people have had no choice but to be immersed in this through the curriculum, institutional incentives and social pressures, which also prevented them hearing dissenting viewpoints.

Why are young men turning right-wing?

1. Young men’s prospects have worsened, which in turn has led to growing suicide rates, educational underachievement and unemployment. Policies and initiatives in education and the workplace now actually do advantage girls and young women, while the disadvantages faced by boys and young men are either ignored or ridiculed by mainstream (particularly left-wing) politics.

2. Online influencers, political entrepreneurs and algorithm-driven social media platforms have actively cultivated a young male audience with content that weaponises social and cultural changes as an attack on men. These narratives create feelings of grievance and resentment, pulling young men towards extreme right-wing politics.

Why are some people so pro-Palestine?

1. People are responding to the humanitarian suffering of the Palestinian people – particularly children – at the hands of Israel, and are disgusted by the servile response of their own Western governments. Supporting the Palestinian cause becomes, therefore, a moral response to injustice.

2. Social media algorithms, activist campaigns and educational establishments have amplified highly emotive and one-sided portrayals of the conflict. These downplay Israeli security concerns and Palestinian atrocities, while encouraging simplified narratives that mobilise sympathy and outrage.

Why are some people so pro-Israel?

1. People see that Israel is a democratic state which, unlike its neighbours, values women’s and LGBT rights. Given Hamas triggered this conflict on October 7, and the historical legacy of antisemitism and the Holocaust, people feel a moral obligation to support its right to defend itself.

2. Pro-Israel lobbying organisations, alongside powerful Zionists in the media and business, have used their influence to shape public discourse and government action. These captured elite institutions have downplayed Palestinian suffering and amplified Israel’s perspective, all while smearing dissenters with the label of “antisemitism.”

Why are some people so anti-immigration?

1. The public never voted for or supported mass immigration, and are now seeing and feeling its effects in their everyday lives on public services, housing, wages, crime and the social fabric. Calls for stricter controls are therefore a natural response to the failure of multicultural policies.

2. Political parties and media outlets have deliberately amplified immigration as a political issue. They have blown negative stories out of all proportion (and, in some cases, fabricated them) in order to mobilise voters and divert attention from economic inequalities.

What explained the rise of the Tea Party in the USA 2009-10?

1. Ordinary Americans were angry about an overly-expanding federal government following the financial crisis. The Tea Party reflected working people’s frustration with taxes, deficits, bailouts and political elites who protected financial institutions rather than taxpayers.

2. This supposedly grassroots uprising was actually organised (“astroturfed”) by wealthy conservative donors and advocacy groups. Financial backing from these billionaires and coordinated political networks helped amplify and structure the movement in ways that gave the appearance of a bottom-up revolt.

Why did the Green Party win the 2026 Gorton and Denton by-election?

1. Voters wanted to send a message to a Labour government that is failing on the issues that matter to them, but were also uncomfortable with Reform and its candidate. Therefore, voters used their judgement to reason that the Greens were the best vehicle for expressing their values and registering protest.

2. The result was driven by sectarian Muslim bloc family voting within tightly organised community networks. Here, coercive and misogynistic social pressure by husbands and fathers led to a victory for the Greens that would not have occurred otherwise.

Why has the Catholic Church declined in Ireland?

1. That would be an ecumenical matter.

2. You can hardly open a newspaper these days without reading some trendy anti-clerical article written by some bearded lefty!

Which explanation did you find more convincing in each case? If you’re like most people (and me), your answers probably followed a fairly predictable pattern.

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨

One of the articles I most enjoyed writing on this Substack was the one where I used quotes from Marty McFly, “Rowdy” Roddy Piper, Grandpa Simpson, The Rock and Mike from Breaking Bad to explain why increased cultural liberalism in society has not meant culturally liberal parties winning elections consistently:

The other, unanswered side of that story, though, was why right-wing parties winning these elections didn’t mean that they reversed liberal societal trends. This is now my attempt to answer that and I think there’ll be some stuff in here to annoy left and right for different reasons.

It’s my unfortunate responsibility to announce that Marty, Roddy, Abe, Dwayne and Mike were all unavailable this time around. Fortunately, I’ve managed to assemble some suitable last-minute replacements:

• Daft Punk

• Darth Vader

• The Wicked Witch of the West

• Groundskeeper Willie

• Wet Leg

• Emperor Palpatine

• As well as some additional help from Joey Tribbiani, Scrooge, Bob Cratchit, Mr Burns, Ellen DeGeneres, Father Jack Hackett and Ned Flanders’ parents.

Around the World, Around the World, Around the World

The Daft Punk song Around the World uses the phrase “around the world” 144 times (only 80 times on the radio edit) with no other lyrics. To start off, this is my way of drilling into you that the right “losing the culture war” is not confined to any one country, but is happening around the world (around the world, around the world). Not all at once on every issue or in a straight line. However, as a general rule of thumb, developed countries have been getting more culturally liberal.

Ronald Inglehart argued that people’s values are shaped by the conditions they grow up in.1 If you’re raised in a society marked by war and/or material insecurity, you tend to place a high value on order and tradition (i.e. generally socially conservative things). If you’re raised in peace and prosperity, material survival feels secure, which then leads people to care more about things like freedom and self-expression (i.e. generally socially liberal things).

After WWII, the West entered a long period of rising living standards, expanding welfare states and the absence of any existentially-threatening hot wars. As a result, Inglehart argued, each generation ended up more socially liberal because they were “postmaterialist”.

This creates a bind for right-wing governments. Stable, peaceful and prosperous societies are a good thing, but those conditions tend to produce more socially liberal voters. A right-wing party going into an election saying “vote for me and your children will grow up in war-torn poverty so they’ll be marginally less supportive of gay rights when they grow up” is unlikely to win.

Inglehart and Pippa Norris’s book Cultural Backlash pulls together decades of survey evidence from around the world (around the world, around the world).2 In Europe, younger generations are consistently more liberal on issues like immigration, gay rights, secularism and women’s role in the workforce.

This situation arrived sooner in some countries but, regardless, the direction of travel was the same everywhere.3

On most issues, American opinion has also moved steadily in a more liberal direction. Although beliefs on some specific topics haven’t changed much, none of the issues tracked show a sustained shift in a more conservative direction.

All these countries had every kind of government you can imagine and, yet, the long-term trend in social values kept moving in the same direction. That’s why it makes little sense to blame any one right-wing government in any one country for “losing the culture war”. The forces driving changes are rooted in deep, long-term and bottom-up shifts seen around the world (around the world, around the world).

As we’ll see, there were specific things that right-wing governments did that meant they didn’t prevent the increase of social liberalism (and often helped speed it up). But, it’s important to remember that they had broader societal trends running against them, which they could do little about.

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If You Will Not Fight, Then You Will Meet Your Destiny

In Return of the Jedi, Luke refuses to fight his father. Darth Vader, still fully committed to the dark side at this point, tells Luke, “If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny.” He then hurls his lightsaber at Luke, almost striking him.

Right-wing parties winning elections didn’t mean they also won the culture war because most of them didn’t really fight… and are now meeting their destiny by being replaced by right-wing populist parties.

In 2022, Alan Wager, Tim Bale, Philip Cowley and Anand Menon compared what British MPs believe with what voters believe. They found a significant disconnect where politicians were far more socially liberal than their own voters. The average Conservative MP held cultural views similar to the average Labour voter and were more socially liberal than the overall average voter.

On specific questions such as support for the death penalty and whether young people still have respect for traditional values, the average Conservative MP was more socially liberal than the average Labour voter.

Last year, Laurenz Guenther published a study of 27 European countries. Using identical survey questions asked to both citizens and politicians, he found cultural opinion gaps in almost every country. With the exception of Poland and Bulgaria, the average parliamentarian was much more culturally liberal than voters.

Guenther shows that, in 2013, most German voters wanted immigration restricted. However, the average politician in every party wanted it expanded. The AfD, positioning itself explicitly against elite consensus, rose rapidly and established itself as a major party by offering policies that matched voter demand.

A right-wing party whose politicians are liberal on cultural issues is unlikely to fight a culture war on behalf of right-wing voters. Its politicians simply didn’t share the instincts or priorities of the people who elected them. This matters, because if there is demand for culturally conservative policies and established centre-right parties refuse to supply them, that demand doesn’t vanish. Eventually, voters look elsewhere.

By “not fighting the culture war”, I’m not talking about their use of rhetoric. Whinging about “woke” on social media is not fighting a culture war. Promising to “stop the boats” is not the same thing as actually stopping the boats. Being elected on a manifesto pledge to introduce an “Australian-style points-based system to control immigration” is meaningless if you let net migration reach record highs. Talking the talk is not the same thing as walking the walk.

After all, imagine a hypothetical government who does the following:

• Their rhetoric is that climate change is man-made and an existential threat to humanity, and they promise to do all they can for the environment.

• Their outcomes in government are to oversee a massive expansion in the use of fossil fuels and a massive reduction in the use of renewable energy.

Would you consider this an environmentalist government?

For years, the last Conservative government in Britain warned that “woke ideology” had become deeply embedded in the civil service, the BBC, universities, charities and seemingly every other major institution. The obvious problem with these complaints is that they were in government the entire time. If wokeness was allegedly such a grave threat, why didn’t they use state power to do something about it?

Conservative MPs: “Wokeness is a big problem and needs to be stopped.”

Conservative voters: “We agree. What are you going to do about it?”

Conservative MPs: “We’re going to complain about it… on the internet!”

Conservative voters: “But you’re the government. Why aren’t you actually doing something?”

Conservative MPs: 🤷

Electing right-wing parties did not lead to the right winning the culture war because many of those parties were never serious vehicles for fighting the culture war in the first place. However, even if they had tried to fight, they would still have faced some powerful obstacles.

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I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!

At the end of The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West meets her doom.4 Doused with water, she begins to dissolve, shrieking in disbelief as her power evaporates. Something that once appeared permanent is revealed to be fragile.

This is just an excuse for me to use a quote from the slightly less technicolor Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In The Communist Manifesto, they use the phrase “All that is solid melts into air” when describing the effects of capitalism. This line is usually used by others to mean “capitalism is disruptive” and, to be fair, that is what Marx and Engels meant. However, they meant disruptive in the widest possible sense.

They were describing capitalism as a force that doesn’t just change how the economy operates. What Marx and Engels describe as a pre-capitalist economy of “old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency” also supported stable social roles, rooted communities, and other “ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions”. Pre-capitalist society was socially conservative, because it was pre-capitalist. The economy didn’t really change from year-to-year and, therefore, neither did the culture.

A capitalist economy brings constant economic transformation and continually replaces the old ways of doing things. In doing so, these economic changes also destabilise wider society. The transition to a globally-integrated capitalist economy reshaped “the whole relations of society”. Global markets gave production and consumption a “cosmopolitan character” in every country, dissolving national particularities and traditions. This was all, as Marx and Engels point out, much to “the great chagrin of Reactionists”.

In Conservatives Against Capitalism: From the Industrial Revolution to Globalization, Peter Kolozi gives the story of different thinkers and politicians on the right who, for various reasons, grasped that the economic and the non-economic are not separate dimensions that can be mixed and matched at will, but are tightly interrelated.5

For the most part, though, the right liked free-market globalisation and social conservatism, and assumed the two would sit comfortably together. But politics is like making a trifle. Just because you like custard, jam and meat on their own, it doesn’t mean they belong in the same dish.

From the perspective of capitalism, stable traditions, fixed identities and inherited obligations are constraints on economic growth. They impose limits, restrict flexibility and slow the adoption of new economic practices.

Right-wing politicians failed to understand what their own economic thinkers were saying. Thatcher allegedly pulled out a copy of Friedrich Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty from her handbag during a Conservative policy meeting and declared, “This is what we believe.” But Hayek literally wrote a chapter entitled Why I Am Not a Conservative in this book!

In it, he complains that “one of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new.” Instead, he explicitly says that he supports “the liberal position [which] is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead.”

Thatcherite conservatism tried to combine free-market reforms whilst preserving traditional social norms. But a system that rewards experimentation, mobility and disruption in the economy will do the same in culture and society. Norman Tebbit, speaking in 2009, had to acknowledged the effects of “winning” the miner’s strike:

Many of these [mining] communities were completely devastated, with people out of work turning to drugs and no real man’s work because all the jobs had gone. There is no doubt that this led to a breakdown in these communities with families breaking up and youths going out of control. The scale of the closures went too far. The damage done to those communities was enormous as a result of the strike.6

Right-wing governments lost the culture war because they tried to stop the melting while turning up the heat! Globalised capitalism demands mobility, flexibility and disruption. Social conservatism depends on rootedness, continuity and restraint. It’s impossible to fully defend traditional ways of life under an economic system that destroys the conditions required for those ways of life to survive.

After all, who is the more “conservative” here:

• The arch-capitalist Ebenezer Scrooge demanding his employees work on Christmas Day in order to maximise profits?

• Bob Cratchit who wants the day off to go to church and spend a religious festival with his nuclear family?

Is what Mr Burns is saying here “conservative”?

Family, religion, friendship. These are the three demons you must slay if you wish to succeed in business. When opportunity knocks, you don’t want to be driving to the maternity hospital or sitting in some phony-baloney church or synagogue.

This contradiction operates for the other side too. The liberal-left support economic policies which need people to accept limits, obey rules and subordinate their individual desires to collective needs. At the same time, they reject all of this in the cultural sphere where individual autonomy, self-definition, freedom from inherited constraint and not being told what to do by The Man™ are treated as central values. But large-scale redistribution, regulation and welfare systems all depend on compliance with rules, discipline and self-denial. If authority and social norms are consistently treated as illegitimate in culture, it becomes harder to justify why people should defer to them in economic life.

You can’t have your custard/jam/meat trifle and eat it too.7

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Willie Hears Ya, Willie Don’t Care

Even if right-wing governments had been fully committed to fighting the culture war and abandoned globalised free-market economics, they still would have run into the fact that culture wars are fought in… well, you know… culture.

In the last few years alone, we’ve seen culture war flashpoints across film, television, advertising, music, sport and other cultural institutions which sit outside or at arm’s length from democratic government control. Governments can complain, criticise and make demands, but they can’t direct outcomes. A right-wing government can say to a cultural institution “stop being woke” but that institution can reply “I hear you but I don’t care” and be within its rights to do so.

This has been helpful for the progressive side of the culture war, because institutions that control popular culture are staffed by people whose values are systematically very distant from a socially conservative (and often the median) voter. Daniel Oesch’s research in Europe looks at the beliefs of people whose job is “socio-cultural professional.” He found that they cluster strongly at the liberal end of the cultural spectrum in all the countries he studied. This group was also far less likely than any other class to support right-wing populists.8

Siobhan McAndrew, Dave O’Brien and Mark Taylor showed that workers in Britain in the creative and cultural industries were the most socially liberal of any occupational group. They were also significantly more likely to support Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, to report dissatisfaction with the Leave result and to identify politically with Remain voters.9

In the US, analysis of public voter records indicate that professions closely tied to cultural institutions (such as media, entertainment, education and the arts) skew overwhelmingly Democratic.10

This matters, because popular culture can shape beliefs through normalising certain attitudes and making others feel unacceptable. Over time, this can shift public opinion without the need for laws or elections. By the time an moral issue reaches the legislature, the cultural groundwork has already been laid elsewhere.11

In his 2002 book The Prime Time Closet: A History of Gays and Lesbians on TV, Stephen Tropiano chronicles the representation of LGBT characters on American TV from the 1950s to the Millennium. Early depictions of homosexuality as a pathology had changed dramatically by the end of the period, culminating in Ellen DeGeneres’s 1997 coming-out episode and the 1998 premiere of Will & Grace. Tropiano argued that TV profoundly shaped public perceptions, especially for Americans with limited personal exposure to LGBT people. Early negative depictions reinforced stigma, while later positive depictions contributed to broader societal acceptance.

This impact was noted by Joe Biden in 2012 when he first stated his support for same-sex marriage:

When things really begin to change is when the social culture changes. I think Will & Grace probably did more to educate the American public [about LGBT people] than almost anything anybody’s ever done so far. And I think people fear that which is different. Now they're beginning to understand.

TV shows did not single-handedly cause social change. Support for same-sex marriage rose around the world (around the world, around the world) at roughly the same time, including in countries that never got Will & Grace.

What was key was that social conservatives didn’t have any influence in these media institutions. Even a determined right-wing government would have struggled to “win” a culture war fought on terrain it didn’t control, against institutions that didn’t share its values and using tools it couldn’t easily deploy.

The right, belatedly, realised this. Before he died in 2012, one of the biggest (and most successful) right-wing culture warriors was Andrew Breitbart. He was best known for founding the website Breitbart News but was also well know for his saying “politics is downstream from culture”.12 Here is Breitbart talking in 2010:

The left is smart enough to understand that the way to change a political system is through its cultural systems. So you look at the conservative movement—working the levers of power, creating think tanks, and trying to get people elected in different places—while the left is taking over Hollywood, the music industry, the churches. They did it through academia; they did it with K-12. You look back at the last forty years, and people didn’t put up a fight.13

Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with Breitbart’s politics, he was right that culture tends to move first and politics follows later, and he was right that “trying to get people elected” is not the same thing as trying to shape popular culture. For decades, the right largely focused on the former while neglecting the latter.

In the short-term, this could be electorally advantageous. Liberal excesses in popular culture proved useful as a campaign tool, as the right could position itself as the voice of “normal people” reacting against elite cultural weirdness.

But riding backlash is not the same thing as winning a culture war. The right became good at converting cultural change into votes, while remaining largely absent from the institutions producing that change. This allowed it to win elections, but it meant that the underlying long-term cultural direction of travel continued.

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Shhh! Do you wanna get sued?

While governments could not directly control what private media companies choose to produce, right-wing governments should have at least been able to control government-run institutions, right?

In Treehouse of Horror V, the Simpsons are hired as winter caretakers at Mr Burns’ mountain lodge. Groundskeeper Willie discovers that Bart can read his mind and tells him he has “the Shinning.” Bart asks if he means “Shining,” like the Stephen King novel/film. Willie leans in and hisses, “Shhh! Do you wanna get sued?”

The threat of legal action and getting sued changes behaviour. People don’t need to agree with a law to obey it, they just need to believe that ignoring/violating it carries risk.

Long before right-wing governments took office, left-leaning governments had written the legal environment in ways that strongly shape how public institutions behave. These laws did not explicitly instruct public bodies to be “woke” but they did raise the legal costs of not being woke. Once that incentive structure was in place, it led those institutions to do things that social conservatives hated.

In the UK, the Equality Act 2010, passed at the very end of the New Labour government, aimed to expand anti-discrimination protections. It did this, but also had far wider downstream effects. One important part of the act for the culture war is Section 149 (the Public Sector Equality Duty).

Please don’t fall asleep or skip, but I’m about to go into detail about legal wording of act of parliament.

Section 149 is a rule about how the state must act when it makes decisions:

(1) A public authority must, in the exercise of its functions, have due regard to the need to—
(a) eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act;
(b) advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it;
(c) foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it.

A “public authority” means government departments, councils, NHS organisations, police forces, schools, universities, regulators and many organisations carrying out public functions. This covers a huge and influential part of how the country is run.

The phrase “in the exercise of its functions” is extremely wide. It doesn’t mean only when a public authority is dealing with discrimination cases, but covers whenever it is doing its job. That includes making policy, setting budgets, restructuring services, closing or opening facilities, commissioning services, writing guidance, designing public programmes, hiring staff, and making strategic decisions.

“Have due regard” means that equality must be consciously considered before decisions are made and in a way that can later be shown.

In plain English, Section 149 means that almost every decision made by almost every arm of the state must be demonstrably filtered through “equality” considerations in advance as a built-in condition of lawful decision-making and with paperwork to prove it.

That’s a big deal!

The first requirement, subsection (1)(a), is to “eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct that is prohibited by or under this Act”. The word “eliminate” goes far beyond simply avoiding discrimination and pushes bodies towards introducing measures that actively reshape behaviour, norms and outcomes in order to reduce the risk that discrimination might occur in the future.

The second requirement, subsection (1)(b), is to “advance equality of opportunity between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”. The law explains what that means:

(a) remove or minimise disadvantages suffered by persons who share a relevant protected characteristic that are connected to that characteristic;
(b) take steps to meet the needs of persons who share a relevant protected characteristic that are different from the needs of persons who do not share it;
(c) encourage persons who share a relevant protected characteristic to participate in public life or in any other activity in which participation by such persons is disproportionately low.

This is a major shift away from neutrality or “treating everybody equally”. To comply, organisations must collect data, analyse participation, look at outcomes and make judgments about who is doing worse and why. Without this information, they cannot show that they have had “due regard”. This is why identity categories become central to public administration. You cannot “advance equality of opportunity” without identifying which groups lack it.

The third requirement, subsection (1)(c), is to “foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic and persons who do not share it”. This means:

(a) tackle prejudice, and
(b) promote understanding.

That gives public bodies wide discretion, but it also creates risk. If complaints are made, a public authority may be asked what it did to “tackle prejudice” and “promote understanding.” As a result, public bodies are incentivised to take visible action. Because the duty is ongoing and permanent, public bodies build it into their systems. Equality impact assessments, equality objectives, monitoring frameworks and dedicated staff roles exist because organisations need a reliable way to show that they have had due regard. Once these systems exist, they don’t shrink, because removing them increases legal risk.

Whether you politically agree with it or oppose it, Section 149 is not a minor thing. It changes how public bodies think and what they prioritise. Once “equality” actions become a condition of law, the safest institutional response is always to over-comply, document everything and align visibly with whatever the “current thing” is. There is no legal risk in doing more than necessary, but huge legal risk in doing too little.

The next time you see a public body doing something “woke”, don’t automatically assume it’s a rogue ideological member of the HR staff nefariously plotting to undermine Western civilisation from within the Department of Agriculture. It may simply be the end result of Section 149 and the legal compliance team getting the department to act in a way that minimises the risk of being sued.

Right-wing governments chose not to remove those legal frameworks (or, more probably, preferred blabbing about “woke civil servants” in The Sun to understanding how power and the law actually work). By leaving the rules unchanged, they left the incentive structure intact and, over time, those behaviours became institutionalised in public bodies. Governments can shout, posture and complain, but unless they change the legal rules that govern incentives and liability, outcomes won’t change.

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Mummy, daddy, look at me / I went to school and I got a degree / All my friends call it the big D / I went to school and I got the big D

If you don’t get that reference, take 3 minutes and 27 seconds out of your day and listen to this:

In the last decade, universities have sat at the centre of culture war anxiety. Right-wing commentators complain that students go in normal and come out radicalised. The response from higher education is to insist that universities merely attract liberal people, rather than creating them. Academics usually say something like: “I can’t even convince my students to attend lectures, let alone convince them to change their political beliefs.”

Ralph Scott has published two useful papers on this question.14 In the first, he finds a clear pattern that going to university reduces social conservatism (what political scientists label “authoritarianism”). Even after accounting for background characteristics, prior attitudes and selection effects, graduates who get the big D consistently turn more socially liberal than non-graduates.

Interestingly, he also finds that university tends to make people more economically right-wing. That might sound like good news for the right, but as I’ve argued, this could accelerate the decline of social conservatism rather than halting it.

In his second paper, he finds the strongest evidence for a learning effect. Graduates of arts, humanities and social science subjects become significantly more socially liberal than those who got the big D in STEM or vocational subjects.

In other words, while all graduates tend to liberalise, what you study matters. The political gap between graduates and non-graduates is not just about who goes to university, but also about what is learned during these “impressionable years”.

Entire disciplines are built around questioning tradition, deconstructing norms and treating hierarchy as objects of suspicion. If you immerse people in that environment at exactly the point when their worldviews are still forming, you shouldn’t be surprised by the results.

In the UK, Tony Blair’s ambition to send 50% of young people to university was finally met in 2019, after nine years of Conservative government.15 A whole generation passed through institutions that the evidence shows reliably make people more socially liberal, while a right-wing government was in office loudly lamenting the liberal values those institutions produce.

There is a further irony in the UK. For years, the Conservative government froze tuition fees, which meant a steady decline in university funding. As a side effect, it created a massive incentive for universities to recruit as many overseas students as humanly possible, charging them full fees of £27,000+ a year.

However, more international students getting the 大 D meant campuses became more cosmopolitan. More cosmopolitan campuses meant more day-to-day contact between British and international students. These British students made friends with, lived with, formed professional networks with, shagged, married (but hopefully not killed) people from all over the world. Such intergroup contact is one of the most reliable mechanisms for building trust and increasing mutual understanding between different peoples.16

So the right didn’t just fail to stop universities acting as engines of cultural liberalism. In Britain, it arguably helped university students become even more cosmopolitan and liberal than they otherwise would have been!

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You Have Paid the Price for Your Lack of Vision!

Finally, if I had to sum up why the right lost the culture war (other than trends seen around the world, around the world, around the world working against them), it’s that they lacked vision.

On the one hand, many politicians in centre-right parties were themselves socially liberal, didn’t want to fight a culture war and didn’t understand why their voters cared so much about it.

On the other hand, their politicians who were culturally conservative mistook rhetoric and performance for strategy. Complaining loudly about “woke” on Twitter became a substitute for doing anything about it. Even when they identified institutional dynamics working against them, they didn’t develop a serious plan to counter them, even in areas entirely within their power to change. Or they got worked-up about trivial stuff which both voters didn’t care about and didn’t matter in the long-term of the culture. Dominic Cummings summed this up well in one of his blogs:

The idea that the next PM should focus on talking about American media preoccupations like icecream makers’ nutty politics is another signal of fundamental non-seriousness and the desire of MPs to talk about what the media wants, not what voters want. Such nonsense fits the Telegraph’s desire for clicks but it’s useless as a message for the country.17

In this article, though, I’ve been talking about centre-right governments. Could right-wing populist governments be different?

Firstly, while they can’t change the around the world (around the world, around the world) bottom-up trends, there is now a growing cohort in the electorate that grew up in conditions of post-2008 economic stagnation, Covid-19 lockdowns and geopolitical instability. They, therefore, were not socialised in the post-WWII sense of security and certainty. These conditions could produce a post-post-materialist voting bloc that is less socially liberal and more open to socially conservative politics.

Secondly, right-wing populists are less wedded to globalised free-market economics than their centre-right predecessors, with tariffs and economic nationalism a core part of their platform. If Marx and Engels were right, then, if the actually implement reduced global market integration, it should make the melting stop (or at least happen less quickly).

Thirdly and crucially, right-wing populists are genuinely up for fighting the culture war in a way that centre-right governments never were.

Executive orders early in Trump’s second term targeted gender recognition, “radical indoctrination” in schools and DEI initiatives in government bodies. The Trump administration has also been putting an unprecedented degree of (formal and informal) pressure on major cultural institutions from the media18 to universities.19 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has certainly, to put it mildly, been enforcing immigration and customs in the last year.

What matters is that this is not just rhetoric. These actions use government power to enforce and institutionalise right-wing cultural objectives. They actively seek to reshape institutional incentives, reallocate funding and influence the prevailing values inside cultural institutions. That is a different magnitude to anything that centre-right governments attempted. Where centre-right parties tended to treat culture war grievances as a rhetorical way to win an election, right-wing populists treat them as governing priorities.

In Trump’s second term, this has been based largely on Project 2025. This is a sprawling document by the Heritage Foundation conservative think tank which outlines multiple policy, legal and regulatory reforms aimed at winning the US culture war. It covers the courts, civil service, education, immigration, media and much, much more.20 According to a Project 2025 tracker, Trump has so far implemented over half of what was in the original document.

Whatever you think about Project 2025, it’s not just a list of complaints about liberalism or a vague wish-list of what conservatives would like to see. It’s a document of specific policies with a detailed plan for how to implement them by using (and in many cases expanding) the power of the federal government. It cannot be accused of lacking vision.

All of this is likely to trigger (and already has triggered) an electoral backlash. Democrats are using Trump’s cultural excesses to campaign against him, harnessing the backlash in a way that will very likely help them in the midterm elections in November.

But that dynamic is the reverse of what we’ve seen for the past decades. Previously, centre-right governments won elections campaigning against liberal culture, even as they lost the culture war. Now, right-wing populists are actively contesting the cultural terrain and achieving major policy victories, even if doing so loses them elections.

This poses a fundamental question for right-wing voters and politicians: do you want a world where you win elections but lose culture, or one where you face electoral backlash because you achieve your cultural objectives?

That trade-off between short-term political success and long-term cultural influence is not unique to the right. You can see a mirror-image version of it on the left, where “moderates” complain that woke excesses lose elections. However, those same excesses helped liberals win the culture war in the first place. Culture wars are won by people pushing ideas that are outside what the median voter wants, not by triangulation.

I’m not saying that right-wing populist governments will win the culture war. As I hope is clear by now, the bottom-up around the world (around the world, around the world) trends are at least as important as anything elites do from the top-down.

However, I do think right-wing populist governments will try to win the culture war and will achieve many policy victories in the process. Those victories will trigger a backlash, and that backlash will help the left win elections in response.

You need to remember to zoom out. Who is winning elections and which direction society is moving are not necessarily the same. The right spent decades proving you can win office while losing the culture and the left spent decades proving the opposite. I don’t know whether left and right will now switch places here, but if they do, it will be a reminder that political victory and cultural victory are different things.

In 2025, academics Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte and Markus Wagner published a very fun paper showing how people love projecting their own politics onto fictional characters. Unsurprisingly, everybody tends to think that the good guys agree with them politically and the bad buys support the other side.1

I could spend this whole article arguing about whether Homer Simpson is a MAGA Trump supporter or not, but we don’t have to rely on vibes alone. We know roughly how old characters in The Simpsons are, whether they work, their education, income, religion, race, family situation etc. For those demographics, we have decades of real survey data on how people like that actually voted.

If there’s one thing I like more than political data analysis, it’s The Simpsons.2 So, this piece is me finally getting to live out the dream of combining the two. Using American National Election Studies (ANES) data, I model how characters from The Simpsons would have voted in every US presidential election since 1972.

It sounds silly, but it also turns out to be very revealing about US politics. When you track Homer, Marge, Mr Burns and the rest across time, you learn how the demographic coalitions of the Democratic and Republican parties have often completely rearranged themselves over the last 50 years.3

Homer Simpson

• Male

• White

• Age 38

• Some college education

• Working

• Lives in a union household

• Homeowner

• Married

Homer looks like the typical swing voter in the 20th century. For his demographic profile, the predicted vote share mirrors the country as a whole in this period. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won 50.1% of the national vote to Gerald Ford’s 48.0%. Among Homer’s demographic, Carter edges it 51.6% to 48.4%. In 1984, Ronald Reagan’s landslide victory is slightly exaggerated: Reagan wins 58.8% nationally, but 62.4% among Homer’s group.

There were early signs of populism. In 1992, Ross Perot wins a plurality among Homer’s demographic, even though he comes third nationally. By 1996 (the year The Simpsons runs the “Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos” halloween special of that election) Homer’s voting profile again looks close to the national picture. Bill Clinton wins 49.2% nationally and 45.5% among Homer’s demographic.

The big change comes in the 21st century. From 2000 onwards, Homer stops being a swing voter and becomes a much more reliable Republican. Even in 2008, when Obama won comfortably with 52.9% of the national vote, Homer’s demographic backed McCain 65.0%. By 2020 the gap is even wider. Joe Biden wins the election with 51.3% of the vote, but Homer’s demographic votes 70.1% for Donald Trump and just 27.3% for Biden.

At this point, Homer’s profile looks tailor-made for modern Republican politics: White, male, lower-middle-class, union-connected but not precarious, doing OK but not especially comfortable, living outside big metropolitan centres, and deeply sceptical of elites. This is the Trump voter. Not the poorest Americans, but not the winners of globalisation either. People who have a house, a job and a sense of status, but are worried about losing it.

There is also a cultural element too. Homer is, quite literally, the kind of person a Harvard-educated writers’ room makes jokes about. His tastes are bad, his opinions are blunt and his impulses are unrefined. In the hands of the golden-era Simpsons writers, this was done sympathetically. Homer was the protagonist you were meant to root for, human, with his heart in the right place.

However, in the hands of modern Democratic politicians (who seem to lack even basic emotional intelligence) this same figure becomes something else: an embarrassing problem to be managed or corrected. In short, a deplorable.

That feeling of being mocked by people who think they know better turns politics into a choice between those who sneer and those who at least promise to defend you and your social status.

If you want one book to understand how this happened, I cannot recommend Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland strongly enough. On the surface, it’s a book about Richard Nixon’s electoral success in 1968 and 1972. Underneath that, it’s about how the US split into two broad cultural camps: the “Franklins” and the “Orthogonians”.4

The Franklins are educated professionals, comfortable with expertise, institutions and social change, and increasingly dominant in the Democratic Party. The Orthogonians are lower-middle-class homeowners and workers: people who value order and effort, and who are deeply sensitive to being talked down to.

Over time, the Democrats came to sound and look more like the Franklins. Not just in policy, but in tone, language and cultural signals. As that happened, voters like Homer (Orthogonians who had once been reliable parts of the New Deal coalition) began to drift away, because the party stopped feeling like it was on their side. That slow cultural realignment was something Nixon first exploited and later Republicans perfected.

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Marge Simpson

• Female

• White

• Also aged 38 (they were in the same school year)

• High school education

• Homemaker

• Lives in a union household

• Homeowner

• Married

Like Homer, Marge is a swing voter through much of the 20th century, even if she tended to lean a little more Democratic. In 1976, Jimmy Carter won 50.1% of the national vote, but Marge’s demographic backed him by 54.9%. In 1988, Michael Dukakis won just 45.7% nationally, yet Marge’s demographic voted 55.1% for him.

There are limits to this, though. Despite Lisa suggesting Marge voted for Carter again in 1980, her real-world demographic tended to not. That year, Ronald Reagan won 50.7% nationally, but Marge’s demographic voted 54.6% for Reagan.

However, like Homer, she was still very much a swing voter, responsive to context and candidates rather than locked into a party. As with Homer, though, the big shift comes in the 21st century.

From 2000 onwards, Marge’s demographic moves sharply to the right. The most extreme example is 2016 where Donald Trump won 46.1% of the national vote, but 77.2% of people like Marge.

Why did Marge become so Republican in the 21st century? I think the key is that “high school-educated homemaker” means something very different in 1972 than it does in 2024. In the late 20th century, this category covered a large and socially broad slice of the population. Many women left school at 18, did not work full-time after marriage, and households could survive on a single income. That meant Marge’s demographic included a wide range of women with a, therefore, wide range of political views.

Over time, educational expansion and women’s increased participation in the workforce dramatically shrink this group. By the 21st century, being a high school-educated homemaker is no longer typical. It is now coded with cultural conservatism, traditional gender roles and Republican identity.

In modern terms, Marge Simpson looks a lot like a “trad wife”.

That helps explain the sharp rightward turn after 2000. In 2020 and 2024, however, Trump still wins this group comfortably (68.8% in 2020 and 62.2% in 2024) but the Republican margin clearly narrows. Marge remains disproportionately Republican, albeit less so.

Marge is also now cross-pressured. Her education level and work status pull her towards the Republicans, but her race and gender now pulls her in the opposite direction. Since 2016, White women in particular have shifted away from the Republican Party and towards the Democrats. In 2024, when the Democratic presidential vote fell nationally, it rose among White women.

Marge is a neat encapsulation of that tension. At the moment, the Republican pull still wins out, but it’s weakening.

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Mr Burns

• Male

• White

• Age 75+

• Working

• Homeowner

• Unmarried

• Lives in a non-union household

• College education

• Household income in the 96th to 100th percentile

Before looking at Mr Burns’s voting profile, there’s an important caveat that the ANES data does not include a variable for business ownership. If it did, it would almost certainly push Burns further towards the Republicans and reduce his Democratic vote share.

With that in mind, the results are still striking.

Yep, Mr Burns is now a Democrat!

Until very recently, Mr Burns was overwhelmingly Republican. In 1972, his demographic backs Richard Nixon by 89.9%. In 1984, Ronald Reagan wins 83.7% of this group. Even the early 21st century, Mr Burns’s demographic votes 83.1% for John McCain in 2008.

This is exactly what you would expect. For decades, White, college-educated, very high-income voters were the backbone of the Republican Party. That was true when The Simpsons first aired in 1989, and it remained true throughout the show’s golden era.

Then something changes. After 2008, Republican support collapses. In 2012, Mitt Romney still wins a majority, but it drops sharply to 57.4%. Donald Trump then accelerates the decline. In 2016, Mr Burns’s demographic gives Trump just 50.8%, by 2020 that falls to 34.0% and, in 2024, it reaches a low of just 19.1%.

From 2008 to 2024, Republican support among this group drops by roughly 64-points. Even allowing for the missing business-ownership variable, the direction of travel is unmistakable.

What Burns shows is just how changed the politics of White, college-educated, high-income voters have become. For much of modern American history, this group was synonymous with Republicanism. Today, it’s one of the Democrats’ strongest constituencies.

Donald Trump’s style, rhetoric and disdain for institutions are highly effective at mobilising lower-middle-class voters like Homer. He speaks in plain language, treats politics as a personal fight, and frames conflict in terms of winners and losers rather than processes and norms. For voters who feel ignored, talked down to, or culturally sidelined, this reads as authenticity. At the same time, that same style actively repels people like Mr Burns. Wealthy, college-educated, institutionally embedded voters are comfortable operating within elite norms, not burning them down.

There is a useful parallel inside The Simpsons itself. When Mr Burns meets Larry (his biological son) he is deeply embarrassed, because Larry does not behave like the elite. He is uncouth, loud, unpolished, indiscreet and incapable of operating within the social codes Burns takes for granted. Burns ultimately rejects him not because Larry threatens his wealth, but because he threatens his sense of status.

Trump plays a similar role in American politics. He may promise tax cuts and deregulation, but his manner, language and disregard for institutional etiquette make him feel like Larry Burns in the Oval Office. For voters like Mr Burns, that is intolerable.

This realignment is not just about Trump, but also about how the Democratic Party has changed. By 2016, there was no serious risk that a Democratic victory would produce some fundamental or irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of the working-class. The party was culturally liberal but economically cautious, rhetorically pro-redistribution but institutionally deferential. Its leadership was deeply intertwined with professional, financial and legal elites.5

That matters for voters like Mr Burns, because supporting Democrats no longer carries a credible threat to their material interests. In fact, the Democrats increasingly look like the party of global integration, and technocratic management, which are things that suit high-income, highly educated voters perfectly well.

In The Simpsons’ early years, Burns’s politics were obvious and stable. Today, they are also obvious and stable, but in the complete opposite direction. In a single generation, one of the most reliable Republican demographics in American politics has crossed the aisle.

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Ned Flanders

• Male

• White

• Age 60

• Working

• Homeowner

• Married

• Lives in a non-union household

• Protestant

• Attends church every week

Some things in American politics really haven’t changed, though. White Protestants who attend church every week remain one of the most solidly Republican groups in the electorate. When we model Ned Flanders’ demographic profile across elections, the numbers barely move over half a century. In 1972, this group backed Richard Nixon by 90.2%. Forty years later, in 2012, they backed Mitt Romney by 89.7%.

There’s a modest softening in the Trump era. Republican support falls to 84.1% in 2020 and 76.9% in 2024. But, even after that decline, this remains one of the most reliably Republican demographics in the United States.

Most books on religious voting tend to focus on White evangelicals, which can be misleading in Ned’s case, because Ned is a mainline Protestant. The distinction matters, because mainline Protestants are often more institutional and historically more politically swing-y.6

Despite this, Ned is still a good example of a socially conservative religious voter. This is the story told, from different angles, in Tim Alberta’s The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory and Kristin Kobes Du Mez’s Jesus and John Wayne.7 They agree on the core point: conservative Christianity became politically mobilised in response to cultural change. From the 1960s onwards, a series of Supreme Court decisions and congressional actions pulled religious Christians into politics. School prayer, abortion, sexual permissiveness, gay rights and the broader cultural liberalisation of American life convinced many church leaders that neutrality was no longer an option. Politics became about defending a moral order.

That mobilisation facilitated the Republican Party’s strategy of “fusionism”: a coalition that combined social conservatives, free-market capitalists, and military hawks. Each group got something it cared deeply about, and together they formed a durable winning bloc.

Ned fits cleanly into that coalition. As a devout Protestant, social conservatism is central to his identity. As a small business owner, he is also naturally sympathetic to free-market capitalism and suspicious of regulation and unions.

If there’s movement here recently, it’s at the margins. The Trump-era does introduce some discomfort among gentler, more civically minded Protestants, but not enough to break the bond. For voters like Ned Flanders, the Republican Party remains the natural political expression of their values and has been for a very long time.

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Carl Carlson

• Black

• Male

• Age 35-44

• College education

• Working

• Lives in a union household

• Unmarried

If Ned Flanders is the most stable Republican, Carl Carlson is the most stable Democrat. The lowest Democratic vote share for Carl’s demographic is 91.9%, in 1980. The highest is a near–North Korean 99.6% in 2008, Barack Obama’s first election.

Unlike Homer or Mr Burns, there is no real “turning point” here. Carl is college educated, is in a union and has a master’s degree. All of those traits correlate with Democratic voting, but the main driver is race.

In Ismail K. White and Chryl N. Laird’s Steadfast Democrats, they argue that Black political unity cannot be understood in purely ideological terms. Instead, it’s rooted in the specific social experience of being Black in America.8 As they point out, Black Americans are, by a large margin, the most politically unified racial group in the United States. Since the civil rights era, between 80-90% have consistently identified as Democrats. This is especially striking because nearly a third of Black Americans identify as ideologically conservative.

White and Laird argue that centuries of slavery, segregation and discrimination forced Black Americans to develop unusually strong social bonds as a means of survival and resistance. Those bonds did not disappear after the civil rights movement, but continued to produce and enforce political norms. One of those norms was the expectation that supporting the Democratic Party is part of the collective struggle for equality.

In this framework, party choice is not just an individual preference. Black voters are uniquely influenced by the social expectations of other Black Americans to prioritise the group’s long-term interests over short-term ideological alignment. Supporting the Democratic Party becomes a way of affirming group solidarity in the face of ongoing racial inequality.

Carl embodies this dynamic. He is educated, employed, union-connected and socially integrated. However, his political behaviour is almost entirely fixed. This is not because he has never changed his views, but because race (and the social meaning attached to it) remains the most powerful political identity shaping his vote.

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Abe Simpson

• Male

• White

• Age 75+

• High school education

• Retired

• Unmarried

On the surface, Abe looks like a fairly typical Republican voter: an older white male without a college degree. In 1972, his demographic backed Richard Nixon by 73.9% and in 2016, it backed Donald Trump by 65.9%.

But Abe’s voting profile has an interesting wrinkle. Between roughly 1988 and 2000, his demographic becomes noticeably more Democratic than before or after. In 1992, Bill Clinton won 43.0% of the national vote, but won 50.0% among Abe’s demographic. In 2000, Al Gore won 48.4% nationally, but 53.6% among this group.

To understand why, you need to separate three things that are often confused: age effects, period effects and cohort (generational) effects.

• Age effects are about where you are in the life cycle (i.e. how old you are).

• Period effects are about what is happening at a particular moment. Recessions, scandals or popular leaders happen to everyone at once.

• Cohort effects are about when you were born (i.e. what generation you are part of).

When we look at voters aged 75+, the age category stays the same, but the people inside it change from election to election. From the late 1980s through to 2000, the 75+ group was dominated by the “Greatest Generation”.

Generations formed by the same historical experiences often carry those political instincts with them for life. This generation grew up under Republican President Herbert Hoover, whose administration became synonymous with economic collapse. They then experienced the New Deal and victory in World War II under the Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt. As a result, the Greatest Generation developed a durable attachment to the Democratic Party that did not fade with age.

Political scientist Patrick Fisher has studied these generational effects in detail. He finds that, late in their lives, members of the Greatest Generation actually became more supportive of Democratic presidential candidates than they had been earlier.9

Fischer concludes:

At the end of the Twentieth Century, in fact, it was more accurate to view the country’s oldest citizens—the Greatest Generation—as voters whose memories of the Great Depression and World War II lead them to have a lasting faith in the government activism and those more supportive of the Democratic Party. In the 1996 and 2000 presidential elections, for example, the oldest Americans were actually the age group most likely to vote Democratic.

That is what we see in Abe’s data. Once the Greatest Generation begins to pass out of the electorate, the 75+ group changes. It becomes dominated by cohorts shaped less by the Depression and New Deal, and more by post-war prosperity, Cold War conservatism and later cultural backlash. Abe’s demographic shifts back towards the Republicans.

The lesson here is that age matters, but generation can matter just as much. Abe Simpson’s voting record is a reminder that voters carry the political imprint of their formative years with them, and that when generations move through the electorate, the politics of “old age” can change completely.

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Waylon Smithers

• Male

• White

• Age 35-44

• Working

• Unmarried

• College education

• LGBT

There is the limitation that the ANES only begins asking about sexual orientation in 2008, so we can only observe Smithers’s true demographic profile from that point onwards. Even with that constraint, the picture is clear.

Like Carl, Smithers is a staunch Democrat. From 2008 onwards, his demographic votes overwhelmingly for Democratic presidential candidates, with very little variation. The Democratic vote share ranges from 84.3% in 2012 to 88.1% in 2020.

This is not just about party voting. Being LGBT is associated with a broader cluster of left-leaning political beliefs. Political scientist Philip Edward Jones shows that LGBT Americans are distinctively more liberal than otherwise similar straight respondents. Across multiple surveys, LGBT respondents are more supportive of government-provided health insurance, more strongly opposed to the death penalty, more likely to oppose Donald Trump’s travel ban, and more likely to oppose Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.10

The obvious explanation can sound trite, but it’s also true: people tend not to vote for parties that threaten their civil rights.

For LGBT voters, the Republican Party has, for decades, been associated with opposition to same-sex marriage, restrictions on gender identity, and a broader politics of moral regulation. That creates a powerful and durable incentive to support the Democrats, even for voters who might otherwise be cross-pressured by class, income or education.

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It’s Not 1989 Anymore

The Simpsons first aired as a full episode with Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire on 17 December 1989. At that time, many groups (like Homer, Marge and Abe) were genuinely up for grabs, whilst others (like Mr Burns) were seemingly not.

Over the past 37 years, some demographics are broadly similar. Carl is still a rock-solid Democrat and Ned remains a reliable Republican. Others, however, have moved dramatically. Homer drifts from archetypal swing voter to a core part of the Republican base. Mr Burns flips entirely, from caricatured plutocrat Republican to dependable Democrat. Marge has had her politics reshaped by education, work and gender in ways that did not apply in 1989. Even Abe’s story turns out to be less about old age than about which generation happens to be old at a given moment.

These shifts reflect deeper changes in American politics: the collapse of class-based voting, the rise of cultural and identity politics, the sorting of parties by education, and the importance of race, religion and social status in shaping political loyalty.

A lot can change in 37 years.

Demographics can shift just as much as certain shows can decline in quality…

I hope you had a merry Christmas and I wish you a happy new year for 2026!

There are a lot of political predictions for 2026 doing the rounds at the minute, but I want to focus on two with regards to tactical voting. One is incredibly obvious but I feel is still being underpriced. The other is not happening yet, but has the potential to matter in the future.

Tactical voting is when you vote not for your favourite party, but for the party most likely to beat the one you really don’t want to win. At the last general election, this was about getting rid of the incredibly unpopular Conservative government. That meant Labour, Lib Dem, Green, SNP and Plaid supporters lending each other votes depending on the seat.

Eighteen months later, though, we live in a different world. What I now think will become increasingly apparent are two new tactical instincts:

• Anti-Labour tactical voting

• Anti-Gaza independent tactical voting

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Anti-Labour Tactical Voting

This should be bleeding obvious, but I still think the scale of what is about to happen is going under-appreciated.

If you spend any amount of time on Bluesky, you’ll notice that people agree with each other on many things. One of them is that anti-Reform UK voting is going to be a huge motivating factor going forward.

I have no doubt this is broadly correct. Farage is leading in the polls by some distance and him becoming the next prime minister is now the most likely outcome. He’s also not popular outside his core thirty-ish percent of the vote.1 In our current fragmented first past the post system, 30% can absolutely be enough to win a large majority, but only if tactical voting doesn’t kick in. Since Farage advocates for a long list of things that progressives viscerally dislike, stopping him forming a government will obviously motivate a lot of them.

What, as far as I can see, gets way less attention than it should is that just as many (if not more) people will be just as (if not more) motivated to vote against the Labour government. Going into 2026, Labour is not merely “unpopular” or just experiencing some normal mid-term grumpiness. It is historically unpopular for a government that has only been in power for 18 months.

Starmer currently has just a 15% approval rating on YouGov, with 76% thinking he’s doing a bad job.

According to More in Common, he is also by some distance the most unpopular leader compared with Davey, Badenoch and Farage. So, if your tactical voting strategy relies heavily on people being motivated to stop Farage because he is unpopular, it is suboptimal that his main opponent is a lot (a lot!!!) more unpopular than he is. Yes, Labour could change leader, but any replacement is likely to have been in the cabinet and therefore tainted by association.2 Plus, what happened to the Conservatives in the last parliament is hardly a ringing endorsement for the proposition “change your leader and increase your popularity”.

The government as a whole is deeply unpopular with an approval rating on YouGov at 13%. The Truss government was on 8% by the time she left, but saying the current government is less unpopular than Truss is not exactly a high bar to clear. The government is now roughly as unpopular as the previous government was in July 2024 at the time of the election… when it suffered a historic defeat driven by tactical voting against it!

For the median swing voter in the median swing constituency, the logic starts to look familiar. The party in power is failing on the issues that matter most to them (cost of living, immigration, the NHS etc.) so they’re going to vote against the government. The hypothetical danger of a Reform government isn’t much of a threat when you’re currently experiencing the tangible, existing danger of a Labour government.

The same dynamic applies to more partisan voters too. More in Common recently asked people who they would vote against if they had the chance. Mainly, the results show clear “bloc” politics emerging, with a right bloc of Conservatives and Reform and a progressive bloc of Labour, Lib Dems and Greens.3 However, there is now also an increasing willingness among progressive voters to vote against Labour.

21% of Lib Dem supporters say they would vote against Labour and 19% of Green supporters say the same. That is similar to the 18% of Conservatives who would vote against Reform, but it’s much higher than the 5% of Reform voters who would vote against the Conservatives. Instead, 80% (!!!) of Reform voters would vote against Labour.

You could see a version of this at the Caerphilly by-election in October 2025. Progressive votes coalesced around Plaid Cymru and they won. The commentary was that this was driven by anti-Reform tactical voting, which it mainly was. But a vote for Plaid in this election could be used as both a vote against Reform and a vote against Labour.

In Caerphilly, Labour was the incumbent and had won the seat with 46% of the vote at the 2021 Senedd election. On paper, Labour should have been the obvious home for anti-Reform tactical voting, but their double unpopular incumbency (at both Senedd and Westminster level) made them radioactive. Plaid, not tainted by either incumbency, became an acceptable vehicle for people who wanted to stop Reform without endorsing Labour.

It’s one thing to ask a progressive voter to vote for Plaid, the Lib Dems or the Greens. Someone who likes the Greens might think the Lib Dems are a bunch of complacent, bougie Gail’s enthusiasts. Someone who likes the Lib Dems might think the Greens are smelly blue-haired vegans. However, if the alternative is Reform, it won’t be hard to make the case to them to vote tactically, because those parties are not in government and therefore not damaged by incumbency.

It’s a completely different proposition to ask that same voter to back a Labour government they have salient grievances against – whether it’s on the cost of living, welfare, taxation, the environment, Brexit, immigration, crime, Gaza or whatever. These are not abstract disagreements, but real world actions with tangible consequences that the government has done (or not done). If anything, these become reasons to vote against Labour anyway, regardless of who the other option is.

Asking a Green sympathiser to vote Lib Dem, or vice versa, is asking them to compromise on some beliefs and policies. Asking them to vote Labour is asking them to endorse a government they may actively despise.

This matters because Labour holds a landslide number of seats. That means there are 411 seats where:

1. A Labour MP is the incumbent in that seat. This gives opponents something/someone concrete to organise against. It motivates swing voters to kick out the politician representing the party that is currently letting them down. It also encourages Reform and Conservative voters (and Lib Dem, Green, SNP and Plaid voters too if things keep going the way they are) to coordinate around whoever looks like the strongest challenger in that seat in order to really punish Labour.

2. Because they are the incumbent in the seat, Labour will be the party that progressives are told they are supposed to vote for if they want to stop Reform. Some will do it, no doubt, but many will not want to use their vote to explicitly endorse this shower. Instead they’ll stay at home or will go looking for an alternative progressive party that allows them to vote against Reform without endorsing Labour (like what happened in Caerphilly).

Look, I’m not going to make seat-by-seat projections for the 2026 locals or the next general election, but the logic of all this is that Labour is facing a wipeout.

In seats where Labour is not currently first, they can’t rely on “we’re the best way to stop Reform” argument. Given the current state of the polls, it’s no longer obvious that Labour would fill that role even where it finished second last time. That makes it entirely reasonable for anti-Reform voters to conclude that a different party is better placed locally if that is where the local momentum appears to be. Labour does not automatically get a look in just because it once did well there.

At the same time, in the seats Labour already holds, they are being squeezed from both sides. On one side are their ideological opponents and swing voters who simply want the government gone. On the other side are progressive voters who feel no particular urge to rally to Labour’s defence.

Taken together, this is the classic anti-incumbent trap. Labour won’t win new seats because it’s no longer seen as the vehicle for change, and it struggles to hold existing ones because it is now the focus of dissatisfaction. There is anger coming in from outside and very little loyalty holding things together on the inside.

It happened to the Conservatives, so it can happen to Labour.

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Anti-Gaza Independent Tactical Voting

Sectarian voting was seen for the very first time in 2024, which was totally unprecedented in British electoral history.

Well, not quite. British politics has long had more than a bit of a sectarian streak. The Church of England was often quoted as “the Conservative Party at prayer” and Nonconformity was strongly associated with support for the Liberal Party in the 19th century.4 In Glasgow, for decades, voting patterns tracked whether you were a Protestant Conservative or a Catholic Labour voter.5 And I’m not even going to start on Northern Ireland.6

Religion has always been one of the easiest ways to coordinate political behaviour, because it provides a ready-made shared identity, shared networks and shared moral language. This doesn’t make religious / sectarian (choose your phrase depending on your political beliefs) voting a good thing, but it does make it a real thing and one that can and does shape how people act.

According to the 2021 UK census, Muslims made up 6.5% of the UK population.7 However, if you look at the constituencies where Gaza-focused independents (including parties like the Workers Party of Britain), either won or came second in 2024, the Muslim population share is far greater than that with the highest being Bradford West at nearly 60%.

If you have a geographically concentrated religious group with strong feelings about a single overriding issue, coordination becomes relatively easy. At the 2024 general election, the pre-existing social networks of Muslims played a vital role in raising the salience of Gaza, organising opposition to Labour’s response, and was used by independent candidates to campaign.8 The point is that these networks were not created after 7 October 2023. Mosque friendship groups, family WhatsApp chats, parents talking at the school gate, community organisations and informal social ties had existed for years. Because they were already there, mobilisation could begin immediately. There was no need for a central organising authority and no need to build structures from scratch. Information, messaging and cues about who to support could spread quickly through everyday social interactions that were already trusted.

What is talked about far less is what tends to happen next. In almost all previous cases where a particular religion becomes the focal point for a party or candidate, it has triggered a backlash and counter-coordination. Humans are very good at group formation and even better at deciding who is not in the group. You cannot have an in-group without creating an out-group, and once a group feels politically threatened, it starts organising too.

If a constituency is roughly half Muslim, that also means roughly half of it is not Muslim. Once voting patterns begin to align strongly along religious lines, the incentive for the non-Muslim half to coordinate against that bloc becomes very strong.

This is particularly potent because, bluntly, Muslims are not a popular group with the median voter. In 2024, the academics Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte and Alberto López Ortega ran experiments showing that people become more supportive of socially liberal policies when opposition to those policies is framed as coming from Muslim groups rather than from non-religious white British groups.9

Similarly, the same authors found something similar in the Netherlands and Germany where policies supported by Muslim campaigners were supported less.10 A year later, Turnbull-Dugarte, López Ortega and Michael Hunklinger found that in Britain (and Germany, the Netherlands and the United States), the belief that Muslims pose a threat to LGBT+ people is widespread.11

All of this means there is fertile ground for anti-Gaza independent tactical voting to emerge. There is a baseline level of distrust towards Muslims among a significant chunk of the electorate waiting to be activated given the right circumstances.

This isn’t happening now and I don’t think this will happen in 2026. The current Gaza-focused MPs are primarily associated with and campaigning on Gaza itself, which is an issue you don’t need to be Muslim to feel strongly about. If these MPs also spend a lot of their time being competent local constituency MPs (sorting out bin collections and fixing potholes) and focus on broadly universal issues like the cost of living, then the risk of backlash is reduced (though not eliminated).

However, it’s not inconceivable that this changes at some point. There will always be racist agitators attempting to stir up anti-Muslim sentiment, but this “supply” of hostile messaging, rumours and grievance-based narratives is always there. The “demand” from voters will rise if something tangible shifts and enough people feel unsettled or threatened in some way. Backlash is not a given, but neither is it simply manufactured from above.

One path is that these MPs become more religiously assertive in their policy demands in parliament and begin advocating more strongly in favour of positions that sit outside mainstream non-Muslim British opinion. In 2024, for example, Iqbal Mohamed expressed some fairly Shelbyville-esque views on cousin marriage.12 This illustrates the point of what could happen in the future. The contrast between the preferences of Muslim and non-Muslim constituents in these seats becomes sharper and harder to ignore, and non-Muslim voters may start to organise in response.

The other path has nothing to do with the MPs themselves. The wider UK context could become more hostile to Islam following, for example, a terrorist attack. In that situation, Gaza MPs become electoral collateral damage despite doing nothing wrong themselves, because they are perceived as representing “the Muslim community” and that is enough to get people to organise against them.

If either of these things happens, the academic research I mentioned earlier becomes highly relevant. It suggests that non-Muslim voters have a willingness to coordinate against Muslims under certain conditions. However, the research also suggests that (successful) opposition will not present itself in an openly anti-Muslim way, but will be framed in respectable, liberal terms. Voters may justify their choices as defending women’s rights, protecting LGBT+ people, or upholding secular norms.

This framing makes organisation easier, because it allows people to see themselves as acting in defence of liberal values rather than against a minority group. This creates a pathway for tactical voting: voters feel morally justified, the action is socially acceptable and coordination happens through (non-) membership of social groups.

This doesn’t mean Gaza independents can’t win again. They absolutely can, but it does mean they might face an increasingly coordinated opposition in their constituency. The same religious forces that made their initial success possible also make backlash a real possibility.

Watching football on TV in the UK is really expensive and inconvenient. Just in the next few days, you’d need to subscribe to Sky Sports, Disney+, TNT and DAZN (and pay your TV licence) to watch all possible professional English football.

Admittedly, not all of those fixtures are as glamorous as Altrincham vs. Rochdale, but by the time you’ve worked out where the match you want is on, the price you’re paying each year to watch football legally is approaching four figures.

How did we get into this situation? The reasons people usually give are not for me, Clive. They tend to be really unsatisfying and end up with simplistic, one-dimensional and moralising arguments about “greed.” The reality, as I see it, is that we’ve ended up with a system that combines the worst features of monopoly with the worst features of competition. This then incentivises the broadcasters to act (and price) in ways that makes things worse for football fans.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. At the end of this article, I’ve set out two ways to meaningfully improve the experience for fans while maintaining (or even increasing) revenues for clubs.

If you enjoy exploring the intersection of football, economics and politics, why not read out my other articles on similar topics too:

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It Was Just Banter (And an Uncompetitive Monopoly)

In 2005, being an English football fan who wanted to watch the game at home was, by modern standards, simple. You just needed two things: a TV licence and a Sky Sports subscription. With those, you could follow everything that mattered:

• Sky Sports showed live Premier League, Champions League, League Cup, Football League and also some England internationals.

• The BBC showed highlights of the Premier League on Match of the Day, as well as live broadcasts of England internationals, the FA Cup, the World Cup and the Euros.

• ITV shared live broadcasts of the Champions League with Sky, alongside sharing the World Cup and the Euros with the BBC when they were on.

The benefit was that all of this was comprehensive. If a game wasn’t shown on the BBC, ITV or Sky, it wasn’t being shown anywhere else (although good luck trying to watch any women’s football at all on TV at this point). The overall cost in 2005 for a football fan was:

1. £126.50 per year for a TV licence1

2. £33.00 per month (£396 per year) for Sky with Sky Sports2

Adjusted for inflation that would be £932.83 in today’s money.3 That’s not cheap and people were right to complain about the price at the time. Sky had a monopoly on football rights, so were basically able to charge what they wanted. This era is not something to feel particularly nostalgic about...

In 2006, the European Union intervened. The European Commission (correctly) concluded that Sky’s dominance in live Premier League broadcasting restricted competition and, therefore, something needed to be done about it.The remedy they demanded was that rights could no longer be sold as a single block. Instead, they had to be split into separate packages where no single broadcaster would be allowed to buy them all, meaning that at least two different broadcasters would have to share the live rights.4

The theory was that forcing Sky to share the market would cause prices to fall, innovation to increase and, at the end, football fans would be the ones to benefit. This sounds good in theory but, instead, it made things much worse.

To understand why, you have to imagine a scary alternative universe where Kellogg’s Frosties and Taylor Swift’s music become much harder to come by.

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They’re Gonna Taste Great!

Economic competition is powerful because it forces companies to improve:

• If one charges too much, another undercuts it

• If one produces low-quality goods, another offers better ones

• If one offers poor customer service, another wins customers by doing better

Suppose I like Frosties. Almost every supermarket sells the blue box with the tiger on it, which means I can choose where to buy it. This means shops must compete on price, promotions, availability and customer experience to get me to buy it there. Supermarkets also sell their own-brand alternatives, which compete both with the Kellogg’s brand and with each other’s own-brand on price, taste and quality. Whether you live in Oz, mate or the Empire State, consumers have a huge amount of choice. This ability to switch is what creates pressure on shops to lower prices and improve services.

Now, imagine a situation where:

• Tesco is the ONLY shop allowed to sell Frosties

• Sainsbury’s is the ONLY shop allowed to sell Corn Flakes

• Morrisons is the ONLY shop allowed to sell Rice Krispies

Let’s say I live in a house where I like Frosties, my spouse likes Corn Flakes and my child likes Rice Krispies. Under normal competition (like we have in the real world) this is no problem, because we’d go to whichever supermarket is cheapest or most convenient. However, in this universe, things get very annoying, very quickly.

We’d have to go to three different shops to satisfy our three tastes. There’s no competition for the products we want, because Tesco has a complete monopoly on Frosties, Sainsbury’s has a complete monopoly on Corn Flakes and Morrisons has a complete monopoly on Rice Krispies. This would mean we couldn’t compare prices, switch shops, take advantage of promotions, buy everything in one go, or choose based on convenience or service. We’re locked into whatever shop has exclusive rights, so our household shopping becomes expensive and fragmented.

Why would Tesco discount Coco Pops when no competitor can sell them? Why would Sainsbury’s run a promotion on Corn Flakes when they have a captive audience? Why would Morrisons bother improving their customer service on cereal? They wouldn’t, because each supermarket has a mini-monopoly with guaranteed customers.

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They Want a Contract with Real Madrid

For around £10-12 a month, you can access essentially all music that has ever been professionally recorded in one place and this is true regardless of which streaming service you choose. Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music etc. all offer the same core catalogue where the songs are identical regardless of which you subscribe to. Because the content is the same, the platforms are forced to compete on everything else (price, sound quality, playlists, user interface, family plans etc.).

The result is a market that overwhelmingly benefits consumers (it doesn’t particularly benefit the artists, but that’s a story for another day). Almost nobody feels the need to pirate music anymore, because the legal options are cheap, comprehensive and convenient.

Now imagine a different world where one third of Taylor Swift’s catalogue is exclusive to Spotify, another third is only on Apple Music and the remaining third can only be heard on Amazon Music. Technically, you could listen to Taylor Swift with just one subscription, but you’d only ever get part of her music. To hear all of it, you’d need all three services.

Once the catalogue is fragmented, the ability to switch services without losing part of what you love disappears. If Spotify raises prices, worsens its app or fills the experience with ads, a Swiftie cannot simply move to Apple Music, because they’d be giving up access to part of her catalogue. In practice, each platform has a captive audience for the exclusive slice it controls.

Fans would be told they have “choice” because multiple services exist, but in reality they would have none at all. The likely result would be:

• Prices rise, because fans of an artist have no other choice and would need multiple subscriptions to access a complete catalogue

• Quality stagnates, because fans cannot easily switch services without losing access to songs they care about

• Innovation slows, because platforms focus on buying exclusivity rather than improving the user experience

Competition can still work even if different companies sell different products, as long as they are substitutable goods. This means products where consumers care about the broad category, not the specific item, because the two things can be used for the same purpose. For example, if you take a generic shop-brand paracetamol it will have the same effect as a specific brand paracetamol. The same is true of close substitutes like Coca-Cola and Pepsi. Entire marketing departments might exist to persuade people they are different, but when you order a Coke and the waiter asks, “Is Pepsi OK?”, everyone says yes.

It’s not true for music, where if I want to listen to Taylor Swift’s new album, Dua Lipa’s new album isn’t a substitutable good. I don’t just want to listen to female pop music, I specifically want to listen to songs about Travis Kelce’s penis, dammit!

Football is the same as music, because it’s not interchangeable. Instead, each game is unique, time-specific and emotionally tied to particular fans. If your team is playing on Sunday at 2pm, no other match is a substitute. A Liverpool supporter doesn’t regard Burnley v Wolves as an alternative to Liverpool v Manchester City in the way that they regard filling up their car at a BP petrol station versus filling up at Esso. The value of a football match does not come from the fact that it belongs to the general category of “football”, it comes from its specificity.

This is why the era of football broadcasting that the EU ushered in under the banner of competition has made things worse for fans. The regulatory model implicitly assumed that football fans think like this: “Sky Sports shows football, therefore I don’t need TNT or Amazon, because they also show football. It’s all the same.” But no football fan thinks like this, because they want to watch their team (or the big matches) specifically.

• Sky has exclusive matches not shown anywhere else

• TNT has exclusive matches not shown anywhere else

• Amazon has exclusive matches not shown anywhere else

If Sky shows most Premier League matches but TNT is showing the Liverpool match this weekend, then Sky alone is not enough for Liverpool fans. If TNT shows most Champions League matches, but Liverpool’s game is on Amazon this week, then TNT alone is not enough. The existence of another service that also shows “football” is irrelevant if it doesn’t show the match you care about.

That is why fans end up with multiple subscriptions, because the system forces them to chase exclusivity. Each broadcaster has a monopoly over the game that they’re showing, which, to a fan, is something that cannot be substituted.

In 2025, the cost of an English football fan watching all the men’s football that matters is:

1. TV licence: £174.50 per year

2. Sky and Sky Sports: £48 per month (£576 per year)

3. TNT: £30.99 per month (£371.88 per year)

4. Amazon Prime: £8.99 per month (£107.88 per year)

This comes to £1230.26 per year which is almost £300 more expensive than what it cost in 2005 when Sky had a monopoly, even adjusting for inflation. If you’re dedicated, the best price you can do is:

1. TV licence: £174.50 per year

2. NOW TV Sports (giving you access to Sky Sports): £28 per month introductory offer for 6 months but then £34.99 per month thereafter (£377.94 for the first year, £419.88 afterwards)

3. TNT: Black Friday deal in 2025 where you could buy an annual subscription for £305.88 per year.5

4. Amazon Prime: £95 for annual subscription

Which comes to £953.32 per year, which is still £20.49 per year more expensive than it was in 2005 in real terms! And that figure relies on temporary or introductory offers, meaning the price will rise again unless you constantly renegotiate, cancel and resubscribe to multiple services. And that figure also doesn’t include if you want to watch women’s football too, which would involve a Disney+ subscription in order to watch the Champions League.

The “competition” that we have hasn’t led to lower prices because the system introduced competition in the wrong place. Prices fall when firms compete for the same customers by offering the same product, which is what happens with music streaming services.

Football broadcasters, in contrast, are not competing to sell you the same match. They are competing to secure exclusive control over different matches. Once those rights are secured, the competition stops. Each broadcaster becomes a monopolist over its own slice of football and fans have no (legal) alternative if they want to watch those games. Because matches are not substitutable, fans cannot punish high prices by switching to a rival service. When switching means missing your team, it’s not a real choice. Without the ability to switch, price competition can’t function.

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You Don’t Think We’d Get Into a Contract With That Mob? I Wouldn’t Sell Them a Virus

The alternative option open to fans is illegal streaming, which 9% of the UK adult population admit to using to watch sport.6 This makes the Premier League (and Sky, TNT and Amazon) angry and worried, but it’s no good them just saying “Streaming is bad, mkay” or “Please don’t do it, because our bottom line will be hurt.”

Illegal streaming doesn’t thrive because people enjoy poor-quality feeds, pop-up ads, unreliable links, potentially risky websites and streams cutting out every 5 minutes (or so I’ve been told). Illegal streaming thrives because the legal market has removed consumer choice while maximising consumer cost. When the legal way to watch football forces fans into multiple expensive subscriptions, the illegal alternative becomes attractive because it’s the only place to watch everything, without managing three or four services, and without paying at least £1,000 a year.

Something similar happened in the music industry in the early 21st century. In the late 1990s, the CD format was at its peak, the music industry was making huge profits and it looked like the good times would never end. However, one reason for this was because the industry was actively using underhand tactics to get people to not buy singles. Instead, they pushed them to (the much more profitable for them, much more expensive for you) albums, even if people only wanted one or two songs on that album.7

People had to pay £15+ in 1999 prices (that’s £25+ today) for the couple of songs that they actually wanted. Sales looked great, but that was because they had no other choice… until they did.

With legitimate sources not offering what people wanted, they turned to less reputable ones. The internet would have disrupted the music industry regardless, but if they’d given people what they wanted earlier, the appeal of Napster, LimeWire and Pirate Bay would have been much smaller.

Music industry revenues collapsed, reaching their nadir around 2014. Throughout this period, the industry stubbornly clung to models that forced fans to overpay for limited access, while simultaneously ramping up failing litigation and anti-piracy campaigns.

The recovery only started with streaming. For roughly the price of a CD, every month listeners could now access all music ever. It was high-quality, convenient, all-encompassing, and reasonably priced. As Apple Music and Amazon Music entered the market, they competed on price, features and experience. Consumers flocked to it, illegal music consumption declined and legal revenues began to recover.

If football’s leaders are serious about tackling piracy, they need to learn the lessons of the music industry. You can’t prosecute your way out of a broken market. You get rid of piracy by offering a legal product that is comprehensive, high-quality and not prohibitively expensive. Right now, football doesn’t offer that and, as long as it doesn’t, people will continue to use illegal streams – not because they want to, but because the legal way has failed to give them a reasonable alternative.

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Two Solutions

There are two alternative ways to meaningfully improve the football broadcasting experience for fans while maintaining (or increasing) revenues for English teams:

1. Allow multiple broadcasters to show the same matches

2. Allow one broadcaster to show all matches under strict regulation

Solution 1: Multiple Broadcasters Show the Same Matches

This first solution most closely resembles how music streaming currently works and would produce actual market competition. Here, every Premier League match that the league chooses to show live would be licensed as part of a single, complete catalogue. Any broadcaster that meets the technical, financial and/or regulatory requirements could buy one. Once they do, they can show every live match that the Premier League has made available domestically (the same principle and process can be used for Champions League broadcasting too).

From the fan’s perspective, this is transformational. You only need to subscribe to one platform. Every match is there and you never discover that the one you want to watch is on a different service. The competition shifts to where it belongs: between broadcasters who would have to fight to be one fans want to subscribe to. They would compete on price, streaming quality, reliability, commentary, analysis, user interface, device support, highlights etc.

I can easily imagine the different options that would become available:

1. A basic, cheap option, where the broadcast starts five minutes before kick-off. You get a commentator who goes through the teams and form. You get the whole match, but just minimal highlights at half-time and full-time.

2. A mid-price option, with longer pre- and post-match coverage, interviews, a presenter and analyst giving studio insights, and a full commentary team.

3. A premium, high-priced option, offering extended pre-match build-up, in-depth tactical analysis from top pundits, UHD streaming, lots of highlights, and post-match coverage with detailed interviews and breakdowns.

Which one would you subscribe to? The point is that it would finally be your choice! You would decide based on what matters most to you and you would have the power to switch providers if you want something different, which is how real competition should work.

At first glance, it might seem like the Premier League would make less money domestically under a Spotify-style model. After all, today’s system is built around exclusive rights and bidding wars, and exclusivity usually drives prices up. However, the current system only works as long as fans tolerate it. The risk is that it slowly erodes the audience, drives people to illegal streams and weakens the league’s cultural reach.

Under a non-exclusive, full-catalogue licensing model, the easier it is to watch matches legally, the larger and more engaged the audience becomes. Lower barriers to entry would likely increase total viewership:

• Your existing audience watches more matches

• Fans who were previously watching via dodgy means (net income to you: £0) are now paying legally (net income to you: something!)

• You expand the number of fans overall

The initial income from selling broadcasting licences might be lower, but this expanded audience would have positive knock-on effects for other revenue streams: higher advertising value, higher merchandise sales, stronger sponsorship appeal, greater relevance among younger fans, and a healthier ecosystem around clubs and players.

Even if a reformed domestic system did result in lower UK television revenue, the Premier League is no longer as dependent on domestic broadcasting income as it once was. The Premier League is now a global product, with huge audiences and lucrative deals across Asia, North America, Africa and the Middle East. If the Premier League were to accept a different domestic revenue structure, it would have even stronger incentives to maximise its international markets and lean into the area where its growth potential is greatest.

Solution 2: One Broadcaster Showing All Matches, Under Strict Regulation

The second, alternative solution is to create a regulated monopoly for football broadcasting. Under this model, a single broadcaster would hold the rights to all domestic matches, consolidating the product into one place (like Sky used to have), meaning fans would only need one subscription to access every game. This monopoly, though, would be tightly regulated to prevent abuse: regulators would control pricing, enforce service quality standards, mandate minimum coverage, ensure accessibility across devices and prevent the broadcaster from charging excessive fees.

From the fan perspective, there is no juggling multiple services, no uncertainty about where a match is shown and no administrative hassle with changing provider like in Solution 1. One subscription gives you access to the entire league in a simple, convenient and transparent way.

From a commercial perspective, a regulated monopoly can be both efficient and profitable. The Premier League’s domestic broadcast rights are currently worth around £1.7 billion per year.8 In a regulated monopoly model, this would be the amount the single broadcaster would pay for the full package, ensuring that the Premier League receives the same revenue as under the current system. To prevent abuse of monopoly power, that fee could be indexed to inflation, so the broadcaster cannot exploit price increases arbitrarily.

The broadcaster’s subscription price to fans could similarly be regulated and indexed to inflation, ensuring a reasonable and predictable cost. Regulators could allow the broadcaster to earn modest profit margins (say around 10%) but no more. This creates a sustainable commercial model that rewards efficiency without exploiting the captive audience. The result is a system where fans pay one fair price for access to every match, the Premier League retains its full domestic revenue and the broadcaster earns a predictable return.

On the more negative side, this all starts to sound a little familiar (and a little worrying) if you think about other regulated monopolies in the UK, like the railways. The government awards a long-term contract for a monopoly on a major route. The company collects fares, passengers have no choice of operator and service quality is dreadful. Trains are late, overcrowded and expensive, despite regulators, performance targets and oversight. Even with monitoring and incentives built into the contract, the system struggles to consistently deliver a good experience for users.

There is no guarantee that regulation alone will produce high-quality service. Monopolies, by their nature, tend to reduce incentives for improvement because there is no immediate competitive pressure. Fans may get access to every match, but they could still be stuck with a broadcaster that under-delivers.

Not to out myself too much as a heartless capitalist pigdog, but Solution 1 is my favourite. Consistent service quality comes from the disciple of market competition, where consumers can switch providers if they are unhappy. Without that real choice, a regulated monopoly would probably fall short of providing the experience that fans demand. However, both Solution 1 and Solution 2 are much more preferable to what we put up with today.

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So, Will This Ever Happen?

No, of course not.

The current system works perfectly for all the powerful players. It’s effectively a licence to print money. Who in their right mind would voluntarily give that up? As long as the money keeps rolling in, there’s no incentive for them to change.

To be clear, this is not me saying that the Premier League, Sky, TNT or Amazon are “bad people” for charging what they do. They are simply acting in a way that aligns with the incentives the system gives them. It encourages maximising revenue from exclusivity and fragmentation, and that’s exactly what they do.

If you want to change the outcomes in football broadcasting (lower prices, higher quality), you have to change the incentives for broadcasters. That could happen through real competition for viewers or through a regulated monopoly. Either approach would push broadcasters to produce a service that fans actually want.

Until then, a man can dream, though. A man can dream…

In September, the Lib Dems posted this:

On the one hand, it’s a fair point. The BBC is the national broadcaster, paid for by a mandatory licence fee, so it has a duty to have balanced coverage. When the quantity of one party’s coverage is so disproportionate, it’s absolutely right to ask what’s going on.

On the other hand, though, there was something that straight away felt off to me:

1. Reform are leading in all opinion polls, so it makes sense that Farage gets attention (yes, there’s a chicken-and-egg problem here, but let’s just ignore that for now)

2. There’s something really unedifying about a fully grown adult complaining they’re not getting enough attention

3. The BBC isn’t everything in a fragmented media landscape. The idea that airtime on one broadcaster is the sole measure of political visibility is outdated

Fundamentally, though, what struck me most was the assumption behind the campaign: that it’s a scandal if the media prefers to cover someone charismatic.

Charisma and the ability to command attention is a fundamental skill for a political leader to have. You need it to get people to notice you, to make convincing arguments and to move public opinion to your side. If you’re not getting attention, you have to go out do something so that people can’t look away.

Complaining might pressure the BBC into giving you more airtime, but even if you did get equal coverage, quantity isn’t the same as quality. Giving an insomnia-curing Lib Dem politician the same number of minutes as Farage is unlikely to do much.

What matters is natural, earned attention. That’s the kind that comes from people wanting to listen, share and react to what you’re saying. That can’t be demanded or allocated, it can only be attained through presence and persistence.

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God-Given Talent?

The word “charisma” comes from the Greek word “charis,” meaning grace or favour. To the ancient Greeks, charisma was something bestowed upon a person by divine providence.

Plato grumbled about charisma in The Republic. His argument was that people are too easily swayed by emotion and eloquence. Like a latter-day #fbpe bore, Plato thought politics should be ruled by reason and those who know what is good (i.e. people like himself, obviously).

Aristotle, more practical and less snobby, took a different approach in Rhetoric. He didn’t dismiss persuasion, but analysed how it worked. He came to the conclusion that it rested on three pillars:

1. Ethos: the speaker’s character and credibility. Do you seem competent, trustworthy and honest?

2. Pathos: the ability to stir emotions. Are you making people feel something like hope, anger, fear, or humour?

3. Logos: how much logical sense you are making. Are your arguments clear and reasonable?

For Aristotle, charisma was about blending all three of these elements at the same time.

The German sociologist Max Weber revisited the idea of charisma and described three types of authority:

1. Traditional authority: from long-standing customs like kings passing down power

2. Legal-rational authority: based on rules and systems, such as modern bureaucracies

3. Charismatic authority: from a leader’s personal charm, vision or ability to connect with people

Weber argued that, unlike traditional or legal-rational authority which rest on institutions, charisma depends on the person. People follow a charismatic leader not because of the law, but because the leader has inspired them to do so.

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If I Could Just Say a Few Words, I’d Be a Better Public Speaker

One of the oldest ways for politicians to get attention and win support is through speeches. Aristotle argued that a persuasive speech blends ethos, pathos and logos. When those three things align, you gain the ability to make language move people. Weber also saw speeches as central to charismatic authority. A great speech, in Weber’s terms, is an act of leadership because it creates belief amongst the listeners.

One famous example is William Jennings Bryan, who ran for president of the United States in 1896. Before then, he was a fairly obscure congressman from Nebraska, but he changed American politics with a single speech.

At the time, the country was gripped by a debate about whether the country’s money should be backed by both gold and silver, or by gold alone. That sounds boring, but it mattered hugely to people’s lives. The gold standard kept money tight and prices low, which benefited bankers and creditors. Farmers and workers wanted silver added to the system because it would expand the money supply and raise prices, making their debts easier to pay.

Bryan took up the cause of silver, but he framed it not as an economic technicality, but as a moral struggle between the people and the elites. At the Democratic National Convention, he delivered what became known as the “Cross of Gold” speech, ending with a line that electrified the hall:

You shall not press down upon the brow of labour this crown of thorns. You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.

He turned a dry economic debate into an emotional drama, where monetary policy was a matter of justice, and people couldn’t help but pay attention.1

Bryan didn’t win the election, but he showed the power of a charismatic speech to transform politics. The ideas he championed fed directly into the Progressive Era and later the New Deal. Bryan succeeded because he embodied ethos (he seemed honest and rooted), pathos (he stirred anger and hope) and logos (he made a logical economic case). It showed that charisma is not about style over substance. It’s the bridge between ideas and people that turns policy into passion.

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You Had Your Time, You Had the Power

Radio meant a leader’s voice could now reach millions at once. Media theorist Marshall McLuhan argued that radio created a new kind of intimate politics, because it allowed a politician to speak as if they were talking directly to you.2

McLuhan described radio as a “hot” medium. By that, he meant it engages one sense (hearing) in a deep, concentrated way. It pulls you into the tone, rhythm and emotion of the voice. A warm, steady voice could calm a frightened public and a fiery one could rouse them to action.

Franklin Roosevelt mastered radio with his short “Fireside Chats.”3 His first, in 1933, came during as he took over as president during the Great Depression. Instead of reading a stiff policy statement, FDR explained in plain English why he had temporarily closed the banks and what his government was doing to fix them.

Seriously, go and click on the video above and have a listen. He takes a complex financial problem and talks about it in a way that anyone can follow. There’s no jargon or spin, and he doesn’t dumb it down. Instead, he met the public where they were, and sounded like a man who understood the problem and had it under control.

The next day, people lined up not to withdraw their money, but to redeposit it. FDR was so good because he combined McLuhan’s vocal charisma with Aristotle’s rhetoric:

1. His warm, steady voice built trust (ethos)

2. His stories about ordinary Americans stirred emotions (pathos)

3. His clear explanations made policies sound logical (logos)

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Teacher, Mother, Secret Lover

McLuhan argued that television changed politics just as profoundly as radio had a generation earlier. He called TV a “cool” medium, drawing you in gently rather than hitting you over the head. McLuhan believed, therefore, that television favoured “cool” politicians, meaning relaxed, telegenic personalities who could engage emotions subtly rather than dramatically.

In contrast, a fiery or aggressive speaker (who might have thrived giving in-person speeches or delivering passionate radio addresses) would come across as overbearing and threatening on camera.

McLuhan predicted that politics would become image-driven. The camera, he said, would turn politicians into performers, meaning that what mattered wasn’t just what they said, but how they appeared saying it.

In the 1960 US presidential debate between Kennedy and Nixon, radio listeners thought the two men were evenly matched, or that Nixon had the stronger arguments. On television, Kennedy appeared calm, tanned and confident, but Nixon looked pale and sweaty. The contrast was striking and TV viewers thought Kennedy won the debate.4

People say this shows television’s shallow side and that it rewards good looks over substance, but I think that misses the point. Television didn’t make people shallow, it gave them more information. They could now see facial expressions, posture and body language, which are the subtle cues humans have evolved to read instinctively.

People who watched on TV thought Nixon seemed shifty and untrustworthy… and they were right! His later presidency proved that their instincts were correct! The television made people more accurate in their assessments.

Another way TV changed things was campaign adverts. In 1984, Ronald Reagan’s re-election team hired people who actually knew what they were doing to make his ads. They brought in Hollywood and Madison Avenue professionals (later dubbed the “Tuesday Team”), assembling a team with experience in consumer ads for brands like Pepsi. Crucially, they wanted to move beyond the static and boring way political ads had been done previously.5

First, the team focused on positive messaging to highlight America’s recovery. They hired professional directors to craft polished, evocative visuals. The ads were tested in focus groups to ensure credibility and avoid exaggerating the recovery’s impact. To maximise reach, the team launched the campaign with network roadblocks, saturating airtime across the three major networks of the time. All of this was revolutionary at the time.

The result was the “Morning in America” ad. It painted a sunny vision of the economy, showing heartwarming scenes of weddings, flag-raising and workers returning to their jobs.

The team also mixed positive and negative. “The Bear” used a simple metaphor to argue for a strong defence policy against the Soviet Union’s lurking threat. The ad subtly supported Reagan’s robust approach to national security without directly attacking opponents.

They also directly and explicitly targeted Walter Mondale. One negative ad featured a worker, a farmer and a mother, with a voiceover asking how they would cope with Mondale’s tax policies. These ads tapped into voters’ fears of economic strain, leveraging loss aversion to undermine Mondale’s credibility.6

Again, all of these combined Aristotle’s key features of charisma:

1. A warm, steady voice to built trust (ethos)

2. Scenes of ordinary Americans or the threat of a wandering predator stirred emotions (pathos)

3. The arguments made during the ads make the case for Reagan and against Mondale (logos)

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Make ‘Em Laugh

Humour is perhaps the most powerful (or, at least, underrated) ingredient of political charisma and attention-seeking. Humour in day-to-day social interactions increases feelings of closeness, boosts the perceived likability of the communicator and motivates audiences to engage further.7 All of this applies to politics too, where a funny politician builds connections, signals confidence and makes them more memorable in a crowded, often serious landscape.

Have I Got News for You served as a stage for politicians to showcase their wit, launching careers in the process (much to the chagrin of its hosts). Boris Johnson’s ability to laugh at himself and play up his eccentric persona, turned potential flaws into strengths. He used humour to deflect criticism and project a likeable, roguish image.

Another politician who mastered the art of humour was Charles Kennedy. His nickname (“Chat Show Charlie” ) was coined as an insult by detractors who thought his frequent TV appearances frivolous. What a bunch of fools!

Chat shows of that era were watched by millions of (non-political) voters. Being good in that format meant you reached a new audience and allowed people to see you as a well-rounded human being.

Kennedy’s dry, understated humour showed that he didn’t take himself too seriously and made him one of the most likeable figures in British politics. When he appeared on shows, he wasn’t trying to be a comedian but he came across as witty, decent and humane… because that’s what he actually was.

Humour in politics isn’t a gimmick, it’s a form of social intelligence. It shows a leader can read a room, react in real time and handle pressure without panic. People laugh not at a politician, but with them, and that shared moment of laughter can be the beginning of trust.

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The Internet? Is That Thing Still Around?

In 2004, Howard Dean showed what the internet could do for politics. A year earlier, his campaign to be the Democratic Party’s nominee for president was broke, small and barely known. Then Joe Trippi joined as campaign manager. Trippi had worked in Silicon Valley and had seen how open-source communities could build projects through collaboration.8

Dean’s campaign was the first time the internet turned a movement of individuals into a political force. His team invented or began to exploit things we now take for granted: targeted email fundraising, online video updates, digital meet-ups and search ads. They did it all with clunky tools by today’s standards, figuring things out as they went along. By the start of 2004, Dean had raised more money than any Democrat before him.9

After a disappointing result in the Iowa caucuses, Dean gave a speech to his supporters. As he listed the states they’d fight in next, he let out a primal yell into the microphone.

McLuhan said television was a “cool” medium that rewarded calmness and control. Dean’s scream was the opposite of that. The same emotion that thrilled a live crowd repelled a mass audience.

The “Dean Scream” clip went viral and became one of the first political memes. Overnight, the campaign that had mastered the internet was undone by it.

The internet giveth, and the internet taketh away.

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A Million Dollars Isn’t Cool. You Know What’s Cool?

For politicians, instead of relying on journalists or television producers, social media meant that they could speak directly to voters. Yes, FDR had done this with his fireside chats, but those were one-way broadcasts. The public could listen, but not reply. Social media is different because it collapses the distance between leader and audience.

Used well, social media can build attention faster than any other medium. It rewards speed, humour and authenticity. A single clip, quote or meme can travel further than a month of traditional campaigning.

Like Reagan’s Tuesday Team, it’s best to listen to people who know what they’re doing. Two people who genuinely do on social media are Sean Topham and Ben Guerin who founded Topham Guerin, which has run social media campaigns for politicians around the world. Their approach sounds obvious but is incredibly difficult to do well and consistently: create content that is actually entertaining which people actually want to share.

If you want to understand how they think, there are two interviews worth watching. The first is Ben Guerin on the NZ Tech Podcast. The second is Sean Topham’s interview with The Spectator.

You should watch both in full, but here are the key quotes.

Ben: The key lesson for that is whether you’re selling a politician, a toothbrush or anything in between, you’ve ultimately got to recognise that no one really wakes up in the morning and wants to listen to an ad. Your ads have got to be entertaining because you need to get people’s attention so they actually listen, actually engage and might even just remember something that you’ve done.

Sean: We were there to be playful and create some noise, to get attention and eyeballs on the Conservatives. A little bit of controversy can be a good thing on social media. It’s about making sure that that controversy relates back to an important message or something that you’re trying to get in front of a target group of voters.

Ben: In 2019, we worked on the Conservative campaign with Boris Johnson. One of the things that we did in the final week of the campaign, days before Christmas, was we recreated that iconic scene from Love Actually… Boris Johnson’s holding the signs and he’s saying “vote Conservative”, here’s why you need to Get Brexit Done, and all these campaign messages. It worked because it was a shot-for-shot remake of the scene… It worked because everyone knew that scene… It was a prime time broadcast and everyone watched it. We supported it on social media and it was just a great way to wrap up the campaign. It was humorous, it was entertaining, and most importantly of all and it got the message across.

Ben: When we started Topham Guerin back in 2016, we came from a place where the centre-right traditionally was pretty rubbish at social media… So we took the view of saying just because you’re on the conservative side of politics… it doesn’t mean your style of communication has to be conservative.

Sean: TikTok was a really important platform for the National Party to get its message out there, because of the type of people who are on it are younger and harder to reach. The platform skews younger, but its ability to cut through across demographics really surprised us during that election campaign.

Ben: One area where the National Party has done particularly well has been the use of TikTok, both by the party and by Christopher Luxon. They fully embraced this platform. Christopher Luxon, the other day, did a “get ready with me” where he tried on his outfits for the day, which is a popular TikTok. It’s authentic to the platform, it’s funny content, it’s not trying to ram a policy explanation down someone’s throat.

@christopherluxonmpI know a lot of you have been asking, so here it is… #nz #nzpolitics #fyp #grwm

Tiktok failed to load.

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Ben: The key thing to takeaway is that politics is a lot like any other kind of marketing. Do the basics well, and just focus on testing and experimenting until something’s working.

Ben: Whether you’re doing political campaigning in New Zealand, the UK, anywhere else, or if you’re selling anything at all, it’s just finding ways to make it entertaining so that you can win that battle of the thumbs, get people to stop scrolling, watch your ad through and hopefully do something off the back of it.

Politics on social media is not about lecturing people, it’s about entertaining them. Attention is scarce, and no one wakes up wanting to watch an advert (let alone a political one), so political content has to earn its place in the feed. Humour, playfulness and a touch of controversy can work if they connect back to a clear message. Test, tweak and adapt until something works.

Once again, Aristotle understood this thousands of years ago. The best way is always a mixture of ethos, pathos and logos. The medium might change, but what humans respond to does not.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

In the modern era, a politician needs to do everything and anything to get attention. The winner is whoever can make people stop scrolling. You’re not just competing with other politicians for attention, you’re competing with Stranger Things, cat videos, make-up tutorials, celebrity gossip, football clips and whatever meme is blowing up that day. This means being able to do everything outlined in this article.

Speeches still matter, but they’re no longer enough on their own. The rally, the headline-grabber, the stage show are the things that get airtime. Think the Reform UK convention in 2025. It was a full-blown spectacle designed for attention.

Oh, you think this is uncouth and low-brow? So what, snob? People paid a lot more attention to this than they did to your favourite party’s leader speech where they just stood behind a lectern droning on and on.

Podcasts are the new radio. In 2024, Trump sat down for hours on with Joe Rogan, Theo Von and even the Undertaker! Doing so meant Trump spoke directly to millions of listeners who otherwise don’t pay close attention to politics. The long-form, intimate nature of humanised him, even showing vulnerability when discussing his brother’s alcohol addiction with Theo Von.

Linear television isn’t dead yet, but the way it works has changed. The medium once rewarded measured delivery, calm presentation and a standard format. Now it has to feed into the wider engagement strategy. Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them” ad aimed at getting shared and talked about as much as possible, which it achieved.

You can also update Charles Kennedy’s chat show strategy on go on the most popular genre of linear TV: reality television. That’s why Nigel Farage’s decision to go into the jungle was the same instinct Kennedy had: to reach people where they actually are. Millions of viewers who would never sit through a political interview watched Farage eating kangaroo bits and swapping stories by the campfire.

Effective use of social media can help take someone from nowhere to mayor of New York City. Zohran Mamdani’s campaign harnessed viral content and fandom to build momentum. His team created entertaining, shareable posts that focused on bold policies like rent freezes and free buses.10 He created multilingual content, Bollywood-style edits and influencer collaborations to energise voters. His team rooted the content in real New Yorker stories and humour, making the message feel personal and shareable across communities.

In Chris Hayes’s book The Sirens’ Call, he argues that attention has become a scarce resource in a world of constant distractions. Politicians must fight for it across every platform. The ones who succeed entertain, connect and persuade all at once. In today’s fragmented landscape, charisma means mastering chaos.

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Charisma and Attention-Seeking are Skills You Can Learn

Like the ancient Greeks, people often talk about charisma as if it’s a magical gift or something you’re born with, but that’s not true. It’s a set of learnable behaviours which can all be practised and improved – or you hire people who know what they’re doing and do what they tell you to do.

Few politicians ever arrived with better preparation for charisma and attention than Ronald Reagan. Before entering politics, Reagan spent decades as an actor, radio commentator and corporate spokesman. All of these careers were built on performance and persuasion.

You can still learn to be more charismatic and develop the associated skills without having to have been a professional actor. However, you have to be proactive and want it.

Margaret Thatcher is a good example of this. In the 1970s, she realised that her natural voice made her sound less authoritative in debates, so she worked with a vocal coach from the National Theatre, lowering her pitch and slowing her delivery. Thatcher’s transformation was deliberate, but it wasn’t “fake”. Yes, she trained just as an actor trains for a role. However, she understood that leadership is as much about sounding confident as being confident. She didn’t change the substance of what she was saying, but she realised that the style also mattered. She was willing to change and grow as a politician.

After his 1960 loss, Richard Nixon became a student of image management. As detailed in Joe McGinniss’s The Selling of the President 1968, Nixon assembled a team of media consultants to rebuild his presence from the ground up. One of the most influential was Roger Ailes, then a young producer Nixon met on The Mike Douglas Show. Nixon grumbled to him that it was “a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected.” Ailes disagreed and quickly shot back: “Television is not a gimmick.” After he explained why, Nixon hired Ailes on the spot.

Ailes obsessively managed every visual detail from lighting, background, makeup and camera angle. He wanted Nixon to look solid, relaxed and trustworthy (all the things he hadn’t looked in 1960). The goal was to project a “New Nixon” who was a family man and steady hand.

In 1968, Nixon even appeared on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In saying the catchphrase “Sock it to me!” The line was clumsy, but it made even Nixon look faintly human (as well as gaining him a lot of attention).

As the Topham Guerin team outlined, Luxon was willing to learn and do things on social media to get attention. He fully committed to the style of the platform, which helped him reach new voters. Maybe he’s not the most naturally charismatic person in the world, but so what? The point is he was willing to try new things, succeed and fail, and do what he needed to get people to notice him.

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Anyway, back to Ed Davey

The weirdest thing about Davey’s recent complaints is that he seemed to be mastering the art of getting attention. During the 2024 election, he pulled off a series of campaign moments that were clever, memorable and perfectly aligned with his political message.

He fell off paddleboards into lakes and slipped off a giant inflatable in the middle of a reservoir. These were not random acts of clumsiness, they were calculated, playful and highly effective. Each time, the cameras were there, and each time, the clips went viral. Importantly, each time, the Lib Dems made sure the context was clear: Davey was campaigning about water pollution.

He also showed vulnerability when talking about caring for his son. He let cameras into his home and showed the reality of being a carer. It was raw, human and powerful. Voters who had never considered the Lib Dems (or had never heard of Ed Davey) before stopped scrolling, watched and listened.

Again, it was all brought back to Lib Dem campaign messaging, this time about their plans to reform the carer system. Davey did not leave the personal story hanging as sentiment, but tied it directly to policy.

• It was ethos: credibility through lived experience.

• It was pathos: emotional connection through honesty.

• It was logos: clear, logical policy.

This was just like Topham Guerin said. You use viral moments to get attention, but in a way that reinforces your campaign message. The stunt is the hook, but the message is the pay-off. The policy can only land, because people are already watching.

Yet, after building a campaign that was bold, visual, emotional and sharply focused, Davey is now complaining about BBC airtime. He sounded aggrieved, small and like every other politician. This was reactive, defensive and conventional.

Okay, complaining about not getting attention is a way to get attention (it got me to write this Substack after all). Fair enough, but it’s not really the same as the previous things he’d done. Those were all creative, brave and fun. They made people who don’t pay attention to politics want to watch and share.

What do people like that care about fights over equal quantity of BBC news coverage?? 😴😴😴

Hey, Ed, get back to what you were doing! You’d found a way to cut through the noise without shouting. Do that again!

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Being a Charismatic Attention-Seeker is a Good Thing

A politician without charisma is like a professional wrestler without a character: they might be technically competent at doing all the moves, but without a “face” persona that people want to cheer or a “heel” persona that people want to boo, the fans won’t care and you won’t get “over.” Let The Rock explain:

One of the strangest developments of the last decade has been the way the “centrist” side of politics has come to treat charisma as beneath them. They act as if any politician who goes out there and looks for attention is somehow cheating and not playing by the Queensberry rules.

That’s not how it works and it never has been. Politics has always been about connection as much as content. Attention isn’t handed out by divine right or because you whinge on social media. People who can make their message stick will always get more coverage than someone who looks and sounds forgettable. People don’t just vote for policies, they vote for people they feel can speak for them, carry their hopes and stand up to opponents. That’s human nature.

There’s this stupid thing people who think they’re really clever say and it goes something like: the UK only left the EU because Farage appeared on Question Time X number of times. Leaving aside whether appearances on a show only angry loners and the unemployable watch had an effect, the obsession with the count misses the point.

The point is not how often Farage appeared. The point is that every time he did appear he said things which got attention. He spoke in plain English, made jokes and told provocative stories. In contrast, the Remainers on the panel bored everyone to sleep.

The retort is: “The populists deal in soundbites, whereas the galaxy-brained ideas people like me have cannot be summarised any shorter than a policy paper.” They say it with a sigh, as if complexity is a badge of honour and clarity is for the dim-witted. Give me a break.

As has been pointed out repeatedly in this article, style is necessary to show your substance. If you can’t summarise your ideas in an accessible way, that is not a good thing. You need to learn to do it. It’s a vital and extremely difficult skill to master, but it’s one every great leader in history could do it.

Here is Ben Guerin again:

In some ways there are scary parts of social media. You see the rise of populist leaders and it sets alarm bells ringing… I’d say this is a sign for centrist, reasonable international politicians to say you’ve got to up your game. Because if a populist who’s out there saying entertaining things, and holds pretty out-there opinions, is doing a better job than you, imagine how much support you could get if you took up those same tools.

He’s right. Charisma isn’t a trick and attention isn’t a dirty word. If you don’t like the way politics is going, it’s your own fault and no one else’s. You need to up your game.

Complaining that politics has become an attention race is both arrogant and undemocratic. It implies that you (or people like you) should be able to set the rules of engagement, and that your preferences for tone, style or civility should dictate how everyone else has to campaign, debate or speak to voters. But there is no late-1990s autopilot anymore. That cozy world is gone.

You no longer automatically get attention just because you hold office. You have to earn it every single day with every post, clip and appearance.

The Powers That Be no longer get to keep the vulgar, non-U opinions of the great unwashed out of polite conversation anymore either. With social media, they can talk back to you, mock you, organise against you and spread their own narratives faster than you can issue a press release.

That might sound exhausting, but that’s the world we live in. The game has changed and what was once enough is now inadequate. Standing still is falling behind.

If you don’t like the shape of the conversation, don’t complain that others are too loud. Learn to speak more clearly and more memorably. In this era, silence isn’t dignity, it’s defeat.

Trying to remove the role of attention-getting from politics is like trying to remove oxygen from a fire. Attention is the lifeblood of democratic engagement. It’s how ideas travel, debates happen and voters decide. Pretending you can or should avoid it doesn’t make your politics noble, it makes you irrelevant.

I am now a doctor. Not a useful one, mind you, but a doctor nonetheless. At the end of September, I passed my final oral exam defending my PhD thesis called Diversity, Deposits and the Death Penalty: Three Papers on New Voting Divides in the United Kingdom.

I’ve written up the papers of my thesis in meme-y ways on this Substack previously:

But, if you’re so inclined, you can now read the actual academic-y version here: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/diversity-deposits-and-the-death-penalty-three-papers-on-new-voti/

PhD theses are hardly page turners, but I tried to write it so it’s somewhat readable for a human being. As an amuse-bouche for you, here is an abridged and accessible version of my introduction section, which might entice you to read the whole thing…

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Simpler Times

British politics used to be simple. Men who worked in overalls (and their wives) voted Labour. Men who worked in a suit (and their wives) voted Conservative. Economic self-interest was the only significant divide and if you knew someone’s social class, you knew how they voted.

Of course, it was never that simple. Since mass enfranchisement, the Conservatives always received a substantial number of votes from the working-class. The history of the Labour Party would be very different without the support of the do-gooding middle-classes who were so influential in its creation and direction. Gender was more complicated than simply husbands and wives voting the same way, with women consistently more likely than men to vote Conservative throughout the 20th century.1 Third parties also received substantial backing with the Liberals never entirely going away, while nationalist parties always retained support in Scotland and Wales.

Despite this, even at the end of the 20th century, class remained an excellent guide for how someone voted. Although it peaked in 1951, the level of class voting in Britain was almost identical in 1935 and 1992.2

However, the pattern of two-party competition structured along economic left-right lines has given way to a more complex landscape. Demographic change and structural changes to the economy have altered the underlying society of Britain. In the 21st century, voters were exposed to a number of ‘electoral shocks’, leading to a significant and often unanticipated reshaping of the party system.3

This thesis includes three papers, each examining a new or emerging voting divide. Instead of focusing on well-studied issues like immigration or Brexit, it looks at areas that have received less attention. Together, the papers aim to improve our understanding of how new political divides form, develop and reshape electoral competition.

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Voting Divides

The most important concept for understanding voting divides is the idea of ‘cleavages’ (no sniggering at the back!) which are deep and lasting divisions in society that influence how people vote and how political parties compete for support. These can be based on conflicting material interests or distinct group social identities. They also depend on the way political parties organise and reinforce these divisions over time.

In 1967, the political sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and Stein Rokkan outlined four main voting cleavages in Western democracies:4

1. centre–periphery where there is a divide between the ‘culture’ of a dominant and centralising centre and the ‘culture’ of those on the periphery of society

2. religious–secular between religion and secularising forces

3. urban–rural where the economic interests of producers in rural areas and merchants in urban areas diverge and

4. labour–capital between the economic interests of the working-class and the owners of capital

Although more than one of these are likely to occur simultaneously in any one country, the dominant party system is a reflection of the main division in society when universal franchise was introduced. For example, in Britain, the labour–capital divide was key to creating a party system dominated by Labour and the Conservatives, each of whom represented one side of this split.

Writing in 1967, Lipset and Rokkan argued that these cleavages had become ‘frozen’ and deeply entrenched into the political system, essentially remaining unchanged from their original formation.

However, more recently, the debate has been whether, and to what extent, the original cleavages are still relevant. First, the original cleavages may be still relevant, even if the nature of the divide has changed. For example, there has been a continuation of class-based analysis, but where ‘class’ is measured in a more complex ways. This includes researchers who study how changes to the economy have altered political divisions, such as the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ of globalisation or the rise of socio-cultural occupations.

Others say that the dominant cleavages have declined in importance, which has prompted an investigation into what new fault lines might have superseded them.

First, they might not have been replaced by anything. If so, there are more swing voters who base their decision on competency and performance considerations. This could mean that, without a solid and consistent base of support, political parties fall and rise much quicker than in previous eras.

Alternatively, Lipset and Rokkan suggested that their original cleavages might decline and be replaced by new divides. One example of this can be seen with Inglehart who developed the theory of ‘postmaterialism’, where the level of affluence in an individual’s formative years informs whether they are more concerned with material security or non-material goals.5

Inglehart’s work suggested that the generational replacement of older, more materially focused voters with younger, postmaterialist voters has been a critical driver of new voting divides in the West. In particular, it results in the emergence of new political divides between ‘materialists’ and ‘postmaterialists’.

Finally, divisions are not entirely driven by bottom-up changes within society. Parties can and do strategically emphasise issues they think will benefit them the most. When it comes to new issues, if Party A’s supporters are united in their beliefs but Party B’s supporters are divided, Party A can use it as a ‘wedge issue’ to fracture the opposing party’s electoral coalition whilst strengthening the support of their own existing voters. Alternatively, challenger party ‘political entrepreneurs’ can use new issues to mobilise voters and harness voter disenchantment with established parties in order to carve out a unique appeal. 6

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The Context of New Divides

The Culture War

The idea that a ‘culture war’ in Britain is a new phenomenon, the likes of which has never been seen before, is not true. While there is a strong case that social class has been, until recently, the most important factor in voting behaviour, societal divides based on cultural matters have been evident throughout British history.

Competing visions of what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and attempts to enforce a particular morality onto society were evident after the English Civil War. Puritans sought to create a morally austere society. This included the attempted imposition of a strictly observant culture through much greater policing of personal behaviour. In contrast, after the Restoration, Charles II lifted Puritan restrictions and oversaw a more morally libertarian culture.

Intriguingly, over 350 years later, geographic areas of England that supported the Roundheads were more likely to vote Remain, whilst royalist Cavalier areas were more Leave voting.

Public debates over sexuality have also repeatedly divided British society. The Victorian era saw moral panics over ‘gross indecency’ and ‘sexual deviancy’. The Lady Chatterley’s Lover obscenity trial in 1960 exposed a rift between defenders of morality laws and those supporting greater sexual openness and free expression. A similar rift continued with Mary Whitehouse’s campaigns against perceived moral decline in the media, particularly the ‘video nasty’ panic of the 1980s. The introduction of Section 28 in 1988 banned the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools.

It’s difficult to find a bigger cultural rift than the Reformation. Protestantism became the state religion and lead to centuries of division between Catholics and Protestants. This remained deeply ingrained, with the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, which allowed Catholics to hold public office, provoking a fierce backlash from those who saw Catholicism as a threat to British national identity.

Although largely in decline, sectarianism has been a key feature of voting behaviour in Great Britain, particularly in cities with substantial Catholic populations – and has been, clearly, the feature of voting behaviour in Northern Ireland. Even within Protestantism, Nonconformity was strongly associated with support for the Liberal Party in the 19th century, while the Church of England has been oft-quoted as ‘the Conservative Party at prayer’.

Today’s culture war, therefore, while often presented as a novel phenomenon, echo these historical patterns. However, the content of today’s culture war is different. Beginning in the early 2010s, a transatlantic ‘culture war’ began over issues of identity, morality, history and societal norms, particularly with regards to race, gender and sexual identity.

In the UK, ‘cancel culture’, ‘political correctness’ and debates over freedom of speech have been a prominent topic, with a particular focus on university students attempting to ‘no platform’ speakers. Similarly, statues of figures with links to the slave trade or the British Empire were a prominent public debate in the wake of Black Lives Matter. Also around this time was the rise in the use of mandatory diversity training in the workplace, leading to a debate over its effectiveness and effect on intergroup relations. Transgender rights, particularly with regard to whether and to the extent they infringe on the rights of ‘cisgender’ women, caused considerable consternation in the UK.

However, the big puzzle is whether these issues are something the average voter cares about. Whilst the culture war has caused debate in elite circles and has increased in awareness within the general public, we do not know how important these new issues are relative to long-standing issues. Even if beliefs are polarised, this does not necessarily mean they matter for vote choice.

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Homeownership

Friedrich Engels, much to his chagrin, argued that homeownership discouraged working-class revolution, because homeowners gained a vested interest in maintaining property values. This then lead them to prioritise stability over radical change and to resist political movements that could undermine their financial security.7

The first major state-led expansion of homeownership in the UK came after World War I, when David Lloyd George promised ‘homes fit for heroes’ to returning soldiers and passed the 1919 ‘Addison Act’ which led to the construction of council houses at government-subsidised rates.8

During the interwar years, Stanley Baldwin (as the anti-Engels) made homeownership a key part of his political vision, seeing it as a way to bind the working-class to conservative values and Conservative Party voting. Given mass enfranchisement, the Conservative Party’s electoral future hinged on creating a ‘property owning democracy’ where homeownership would develop and encourage values such as aspiration, self-respect and independence – and thus discourage socialism.9

The post-World War II era saw an unprecedented expansion in housebuilding, driven by both Conservative and Labour governments. Between 1945 and 1951, the Labour government constructed over one million new homes. In response, the Conservatives pledged to expand homeownership and build 300,000 homes a year, a target that was met by 1953. Again, one of the stated reasons for this was to promote popular support for conservative values. This time it was to show that the free-market could provide more homes in a quicker and more efficient manner than Labour’s planning policies.10

The 1970s saw volatility in the housing market after Chancellor Anthony Barber implemented a period of rapid credit expansion. This led to a speculative housing bubble, making homeownership more accessible in the short term, but the housing bubble burst in the mid-1970s. This time, the motivation was less about trying to promote conservative values and more about trying to revive the broader economy through an easy monetary and fiscal policy, with changes to the housing market an unintended consequence of this.11

A significant transformation in the relationship between homeownership and voting behaviour came with Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Right to Buy’ policy. This was a scheme introduced in the 1980 Housing Act that gave council house tenants in England and Wales the right to buy their home from their local authority at heavily discounted rates. By 1996, 30% of eligible tenants had exercised this right, leading to 2.2 million homes becoming privately owned.12

The early 1990s saw another major housing market crash. The subsequent recession, combined with high interest rates, led to a widespread decline in house prices. In 1997, Labour capitalised on dissatisfaction from homeowners who had suffered under negative equity, helping secure a landslide victory.13

In the 21st century, though, house prices in the UK have risen almost continuously. Below shows the house price index in the UK from 1969 to 2023 and that house prices are now historically elevated.

Given that homeownership has so often been seen by the political right to increase their support, this development has not gone unnoticed. As Housing Secretary, Michael Gove linked Conservative 2022 losses in local council elections to declines in homeownership rates. Similarly, Conservative MP Gary Sambrook argued in favour of changing regulations to make it easier for people to obtain a mortgage saying, ‘[b]luntly, there’s no getting away from the fact that people who own their own homes are more likely to vote Conservative’.

An issue is that only looking at someone’s current homeownership status misses the potential differences within non-homeowners, particularly differences in their future homeownership expectations. Previous work has pointed to how people take their future, as well as their current economic situation into account when developing political preferences. I extend this to see whether these findings also apply to homeownership.

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Unaddressed Demands

Finally, I look at new issues that might divide the public in the future. In particular, I look at issues that mainstream parties are currently ignoring and not responding to, and what the electoral effects of taking a stance on one of these issues would be.

While people like to claim that today’s politicians are uniquely unresponsive and that this is a new phenomenon, UK political parties have always routinely ignored or resisted popular demands to some extent. Sometimes parties ignore public opinion for ideological reasons, sometimes due to internal party constraints, sometimes because of elite consensus overriding public sentiment, and sometimes because they are ignorant of – or delude themselves about – where public opinion actually is.

This is an important question in the UK, because there have been repeated instances where not responding to public demands have got Labour and the Conservatives into electoral trouble. In recent decades, this has centred around immigration and the history of this issue helps illustrate the dynamic of electoral supply and demand.

In the 1960s and 1970s, public concern over immigration grew significantly, but both Labour and the Conservatives were reluctant to address it directly. This disconnect between opinion and policy helped fuel support for groups like the National Front. However, in part because of Margaret Thatcher’s more restrictive stances, the Conservatives were able to regain support and win the 1979 election.

A similar process played out in the 21st century. Under New Labour, the UK government – unlike other EU countries – allowed workers from Eastern Europe to move freely straight away after the 2004 EU enlargement, leading to immigration numbers that were much higher than anticipated. David Cameron’s Conservative Party, while promising to reduce net migration to the ‘tens of thousands’, could do little to stop the free movement of EU citizens whilst Britain was still in the EU.

By 2015, YouGov’s ‘most important issues facing the country’ tracker saw ‘immigration and asylum’ reach 71%. All of this helped Nigel Farage and UKIP who were able to channel the anti-immigration attitudes that Labour and the Conservatives did not – or could not – respond to.

After the 2016 EU referendum, immigration drastically reduced as a priority for voters as a greater sense of control was created, reaching a low of 14% in the same YouGov tracker. However, once again, the main parties put themselves into a situation where they were at odds with public opinion.

Despite a 2019 manifesto pledge of an ‘Australian-style points-based system to control immigration’, the actual system that was implemented by the government resulted in a net migration figure of 906,000 in 2023. This again gave Nigel Farage a clear opening and his Reform UK party benefited from voters who were dissatisfied with this situation at the 2024 election.

This whole process should hardly have come as a surprise. One of the key arguments of Kitschelt and McGann in the late 1990s was:

The conditions for the rise of extreme-rightist parties become favourable if moderately left and right parties converge towards the median voter. Under these conditions, the established parties fail to attend to a wide uncovered field of more radical right-authoritarian voters who will search for a new political alternative.14

Ignoring that the median voter in the UK was also calling for reduced immigration throughout this time, the wider point is that unaddressed demands have historically disrupted existing voting patterns, allowing outsider parties to achieve success by championing neglected issues.

But what are the next issues that could have such an effect? Are there any issues circulating within public opinion right now that people are aggrieved that the main parties are not responding to?

Existing research tends to be retrospective, analysing cases where political actors have successfully used an issue to mobilise votes. While valuable for showing how neglected issues can reshape politics, it means we have a limited understanding of what high potential issues may be crystallising within public opinion at present.

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Go on, go on, go on, go on…

Well, now that your whistle is well and truly wetted, how could you resist reading the whole thesis? Go on, you know you want to.

https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/studentTheses/diversity-deposits-and-the-death-penalty-three-papers-on-new-voti/

British political punditry on elections and voter behaviour is, to put it politely, of variable quality. However, there’s a couple of specific bad habits that have become so common that I felt the need to do something.

So I’m going to do the most effective thing known to man: complain on the internet! Hopefully someone might read it and take note.

If you want to understand UK voter behaviour right now, there are two psychological biases you need to avoid:

1. The Ecological Fallacy

2. Availability Bias

Sorry for using silly jargon, but by the end of this, you’ll hopefully see what I mean. You might even end up being less biased than the median political pundit (not a high bar, but still worth clearing).

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What is the Ecological Fallacy?

The ecological fallacy is when you assume that what is true for a group must also be true for individuals in that group. The problem comes when you try to make claims about individuals based only on group data.

For example, just because someone lives in a wealthy postcode doesn’t mean that they are personally wealthy. A neighbourhood might have high average income and high average house prices but, within that same area, there will almost certainly be many people struggling to pay their bills.

I’ve committed the ecological fallacy myself many times. I remember reading an interview with David Cameron during lockdown where he said:

“I worked for the Chipping Norton Food Bank, actually, one or two days a week, which was great to do something to help people who were really isolated.”

My immediate reaction was: Ha! A Chipping Norton food bank? Are you joking? What, is okra getting too expensive in Waitrose or something? Get a grip, you posh, soft, southern jessies!

That was me ecological fallacy-ing.

Of course there are poor people in Chipping Norton. It’s a rural area, so there are many people in low-paid agricultural and service jobs. There is limited public transport which makes it hard to commute. The fact that lots of rich people live there pushes up local prices and squeezes the local working-class.

Yes, Chipping Norton is a rich place, but if you assume everyone there is rich (or no one is poor), you’ve fallen for the ecological fallacy.

One of the most famous examples of the ecological fallacy comes from medical research. When researchers looked at different countries, they found that places where people eat more fat tend to have higher rates of breast cancer.

You might, therefore, conclude that eating fat causes cancer. However, when scientists studied individual women and their diets, they found no link between how much fat a person ate and their personal risk of breast cancer. The pattern that existed at the country level didn’t hold at the individual level. Other factors (like healthcare systems, genetics, lifestyle differences) were probably responsible for the country-level pattern.1

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The Ecological Fallacy in Politics

You see this mistake all the time in political analysis at the moment:

1. At the 2024 election, lots of constituencies went from Conservative to Liberal Democrat.

2. Polling now shows lots of constituencies might go from Labour to Reform.

Both of these things are true at the group level. Does that mean loads of individual voters have switched directly from Conservative to Lib Dem or Labour to Reform?

No, it doesn’t. Remember the ecological fallacy!

Of people who voted Conservative in 2019, only half did so again in 2024. Around 21% of them went to Reform, but only 4% to the Lib Dems. Even in seats that flipped from Conservative to Lib Dem, roughly 19% voted Reform and only 9% voted Lib Dem.

Some seem baffled that the Conservatives aren’t “targeting” Lib Dem voters, since they lost seats to them, but that’s the ecological fallacy. Seats went Conservative to Lib Dem, but that didn’t mean individual voters did.

Conservative seat losses were because former Conservative voters either switched to Reform or didn’t vote at all, which lowered the bar needed for the Lib Dems to win. The Conservatives focusing on voters they lost to Reform makes far more sense than chasing voters they lost to the Lib Dems since:

1. There are not that many of them

2. They are not particularly socially liberal anyway

The ecological fallacy is also seen in the amount of attention that Labour to Reform switchers have received. In a previous piece, I looked at where current Reform voters came from. About 24% voted Conservative in 2019, 18% didn’t vote, but only 9% voted Labour.

Similarly, when you look at 2024 Labour voters, only 8% now say they’ll vote Reform next time. So even if seats end up flipping from Labour to Reform, that doesn’t mean there are loads of Labour to Reform voters.

Again, that’s the ecological fallacy. The pattern at seat level doesn’t reflect what’s happening at the individual level. Most Labour losses are coming from people becoming undecided, or moving to the Lib Dems or Greens.

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Why Do People Commit the Ecological Fallacy?

It’s a natural mental shortcut that we all do (including me). Our brains are wired to connect patterns and it’s hard to avoid because our intuition wants to simplify things.

But, like an addiction, recognising your problem is the first step to fixing it. Whenever you see group statistics, pause and ask: does this tell me anything about individuals, or am I making a leap I can’t justify?

With politics, there’s often an extra twist: motivated reasoning. This is when you interpret information in a way that supports what you already want to believe.

On Bluesky, which is almost exclusively liberal-left, people are very good at spotting the ecological fallacy when it comes to Labour and Reform. Half the posts on there seem to be people saying Labour shouldn’t chase Reform voters because those voters don’t exist in large numbers and don’t like Labour anyway.

And they’re right about that!

The reason they’re right is partly due to statistical literacy, but also because they wanted the popular narrative to be false so went looking for evidence that it was false.

If Labour’s main losses are to the Lib Dems and Greens, that implies an electoral strategy where Labour moves closer to the views of people on Bluesky (liberal-left). If, on the other hand, Labour were losing lots of votes to Reform, that would point towards a totally different strategy where Labour moves further away from those same people’s views.

You’re naturally inclined to accept any analysis that says your preferred strategy is also the smart one. In this case, that instinct happens to align with reality. Labour really isn’t losing large numbers of voters directly to Reform.

Nevertheless, there are other times when motivated reasoning leads you astray.

Most notably, they’re blind to the exact same fallacy when it comes to the Conservatives and Lib Dems.

If the Conservatives are losing votes to the Lib Dems, that suggests they should move closer to what Bluesky wants the country to be: more pro-European, less anti-immigration, more “hug-a-hoodie” (there’s a reference for the kids). Yet, if the Conservatives are actually losing voters to Reform, the logical response from the party would be to move in the opposite direction (i.e. the direction Bluesky doesn’t want the country to go).

They prefer the version of reality where the Conservatives are being punished for being “too anti-immigration,” not the version of reality where they’re being punished for being too open borders. So, when the data shows that Reform is taking the bigger slice of ex-Tory voters, it’s quietly ignored or downplayed.

The key to avoiding this is to treat data like going to the dentist or having a colonoscopy. You don’t have to like it or enjoy it, but you do have to face it no matter how much it pains you.

Sometimes the optimal vote-winning strategy involves a party supporting things you don’t like. Sometimes the optimal vote-winning strategy involves a party supporting things you do like.

Look at the numbers as they are, not as you wish they were. Ignoring reality because it clashes with your own politics doesn’t make it go away, it just means you’re analysing the world as you’d like it to be, not as it actually is.

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What is Availability Bias?

Having said that, the biggest reason people commit the ecological fallacy is availability bias.

Availability bias is a mental shortcut where we judge how common something is based on how easily we can think of examples of it. If something comes to mind quickly, our brains conclude “this must happen a lot.” If nothing comes to mind straight away, our brains decide “this must be rare.”

The problem is that how easily we can recall something has very little to do with how often it actually happens.

For example, I am a white man from Manchester.

Go on, admit that was what you thought.

Obviously, though, not all (or anywhere near the majority of) white men from Manchester are like Liam Gallagher.

Availability bias is essentially just a fancier name for stereotyping. We take a handful of vivid cases and treat them as typical, even when they’re not. The mind grabs what’s easy to picture and mistakes it for what’s common.

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Availability Bias in Politics

Certain types of information stick in your brain much more than others:

• Recent events spring to mind more easily than things that happened ages ago.

• Vivid or dramatic events are more memorable than boring, everyday occurrences.

• Things that made you frightened, angry, or upset are easier to recall than things that made you go “meh.”

Crucially for the reporting of politics, when something keeps getting mentioned, it lodges itself deeper in your mind. If you hear the same news story over and over again, those examples pile up in your memory.

If certain narratives of voters who switch from one party to another get repeated, it means you start to more easily picture someone like that. If the media highlight profiles of “working-class ex-Labour voters living in the Red Wall now backing Reform,” that image becomes sticky. Likewise, stories about “disenchanted middle-class anti-Brexit Tories in the Blue Wall switching to the Lib Dems” are neat, tidy narratives that sound plausible.

Each time you come across one of these stories, your brain files it away. After you’ve read enough of them, it feels familiar, so it feels true. The repetition tricks you into thinking, “I keep hearing about this, so it must be happening a lot.”

After the umpteenth article about Red Wall Labour voters switching to Reform or Blue Wall Conservative voters switching to the Lib Dems, those voter types start to seem like massive, decisive groups. But media attention doesn’t show how big those groups really are.

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Stereotyping Leads to Bad Analysis

Stereotyping makes the world seem predictable and understandable, but it’s analytically useless because you end up with a cartoon version of reality that can’t tell you anything accurate about what people will actually do.

If I say to you “Conservative to Lib Dem who lives in Surrey,” you are likely to picture the stereotype of a liberal cosmopolitan. You are unlikely to picture someone who’s just a normal person going about their daily life, and even less likely to picture someone who wants immigration reduced or to bring back hanging.

Again, just because you can picture the stereotype of someone quickly doesn’t mean that such a stereotype is the majority or even particularly numerous. The archetype of the bougie anti-Brexit Conservative to Lib Dem switcher is availability bias. They are there, but they are nowhere near as many as either:

• The Conservative to Lib Dem switcher who chose their new party as a none-of-the-above protest vote

• The person who voted Conservative in 2019 and moved to Reform in 2024

• The person who voted Conservative in 2019 and didn’t vote in 2024

The actual original definition of the “Red Wall” was created by James Kanagasooriam and Lizzie Simon. Here, they outlined a group of 42 seats where the Conservatives were underperforming given local social profiles.2 These seats had demographics which meant that they should have been competitive for the Conservatives, but the historical context (i.e. the legacy and memory of Margaret Thatcher) meant that they weren’t.

Unfortunately, in the hands of politicos, a bastardised version of the “Red Wall” was created which distorted this definition into a caricature of uneducated, unemployed, wife-beating, pie-eating, knuckle-dragging racist losers in some northern or midlands town that political commentators thought had only just got running water.

This was not only unhelpful, but was also completely wrong and completely missed the point of what James and Lizzie were saying. Here is how James and Lizzie finished their original piece (emphasis added by me):

The Red Wall must be understood as an aggregate concept. To make individual-level inferences from this analysis is to commit an ecological fallacy. The Red Wall exists because for a highly geographically concentrated cluster of people, living across the Midlands and North, the Conservative Party no longer seems unappealing. This is not to say all Red Wall voters feel this way, or even that all Red Wall voters in seats which turned blue in 2019 feel this way – indeed, there remains a high level of variation in Conservative support between individuals within these constituencies. It is simply that in these seats, opinion is changing and in some, this has changed for enough individuals to engender an historic realignment. To speak of how Red Wall voters think, as Westminster often does, is to make a crude overgeneralisation.

What James and Lizzie are saying here is that the Red Wall was never primarily about individual voters in these constituencies. The point wasn’t “Red Wall voters think X” or “Red Wall voters want Y.” The point was that the balance of opinion in those constituencies tipped just far enough for a realignment.

A similar distortion is probably going to happen all over again with the “Blue Wall.” At its core, this should refer to constituencies with group-level demographics that mean they should be more competitive for the Liberal Democrats to win. However, as a reverse of the original Red Wall, these constituencies are more likely to vote Conservative than you would expect, because the party has historically looked after the Home Counties.

And yet, a twisted version could easily get peddled that paints a picture of these places as being stuffed full of Brexit-hating, immigration-loving, Gail’s-munching, upper-management, asset-hoarding, Tuscany-holidaying, NIMBY, tax-dodging, cosmopolitan elites.

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Don’t Just Take My Word For It

People far cleverer than me have shown all this too. First, a recent academic article by the British Election Study team of political scientists (James Griffiths, Stuart Perrett, Ed Fieldhouse, Chris Prosser, Jane Green, Jon Mellon, Jack Bailey and Geoff Evans) looked at how individuals’ vote actually changed between general elections.3

Their key finding is that even though hardly anyone talks about Brexit anymore, the political divide it created still shapes how people vote. Rather than individual parties, British politics is now organised around two broad voting blocs:

1. One bloc (the right-conservative bloc) includes the Conservatives and Reform. These parties are seen by voters as broadly pro-Brexit, more traditional and more socially conservative.

2. The other bloc (the left-liberal bloc) includes Labour, the Lib Dems, the Greens, the SNP and Plaid Cymru. They’re seen as more liberal, socially progressive and anti-Brexit.

They show that the vast majority of voters who backed Leave in 2016 vote for parties in the right-conservative bloc and Remain voters back parties in the left-liberal bloc. People might switch within their bloc (for instance, from Conservative to Reform, or from Labour to Green) but very few move between the blocs (for instance, from Conservative to Lib Dem, or from Labour to Reform).

The support for individual parties bounces all over the place within the blocs. The Conservatives rise and fall with Leavers. Labour gains and loses with Remainers. However, the overall support for the two blocs stays remarkably steady. Leavers stay on the right-conservative side and Remainers stay on the left-liberal side.

This backs up what I’ve been saying in this article. When pundits see a seat go from Conservative to Lib Dem or think Labour is at risk from Reform, they imagine big swings between totally different types of voters. In reality, most of the movement is happening within blocs, not across them.

So when a seat flips from one party to another, it’s not because thousands of people have changed their political worldview overnight. It’s usually because people within the same bloc have rearranged their votes or because one side stayed home.

A second great recent article by academics (available for free here) comes from Jane Green and Marta Miori. It looks at what’s actually happening beneath all the noise around Reform and their conclusion is simple: Reform isn’t taking large numbers of voters directly from Labour.

And crucially, this holds even in areas that voted strongly for Leave in 2016. Among 2024 Labour voters in the most Leave-leaning constituencies, about 12% have gone to Reform, compared to roughly 8% in more middle-of-the-road areas. In plain English, even in Brexit-supporting places, the vast majority of Labour voters have not switched to Reform.

Jane and Marta looked at the voting histories of Reform supporters and found that 70% of people who currently back Reform have either never voted Labour or last did so before 2005. That’s over twenty years ago when I was still in primary school!

These aren’t recent Labour voters suddenly turning into Farage fans. They’re people Labour either lost a very long time ago or never had to begin with.

The real story, backed up by both the Griffiths et al. and the Green & Miori research, is that the electorate is split into two broad blocs that barely overlap.

Reform’s rise has mainly come from reshuffling votes on the right and mobilising people who didn’t vote before, not from poaching Labour voters.

Similarly, the Liberal Democrats’ success in the “Blue Wall” is mostly because:

1. The right-wing vote split, which lowered the number of votes the Lib Dems needed to win those seats

2. Previous Labour voters backed the Lib Dems to help push them over the line

Despite all the shouting, Britain hasn’t suddenly filled up with ex-Labour Reform voters or ex-Conservative Lib Dem voters. The parties are mostly fighting over different halves of the country and the media’s obsession with mythical voter types is leading them badly astray.

During her time as prime minister, Liz Truss criticised what she called the “anti-growth coalition.” This was a group of politicians, activists and commentators who she claimed were standing in the way of Britain’s economic success.

Although Truss argued that this was made up of people and groups the British right-wing have long had a negative view of, the idea there are forces actively working against economic growth has gained support across the political spectrum.

One of Rachel Reeves’ first actions as Chancellor was to unveil plans for a “new era for economic growth” and Keir Starmer has outlined how securing “the highest sustained growth in the G7” is a key “national mission” in power. Starmer also defined his own version of the anti-growth coalition, saying that his government would favour “the builders not the blockers.”

However, as far as I can tell, no one has yet tried to design survey questions that systematically measure how people actually feel about economic growth itself. That’s a big gap, because it seems like there might be both a “pro-growth” and an “anti-growth” coalition within public opinion, but that these won’t line up neatly with the usual left-right divides.

To test this, I ran a poll with Focaldata of 1,002 British respondents over 28-30 August 2024 with a series of questions to better understand the full spectrum of people’s beliefs. What emerges is that there really are both anti-growth and pro-growth groups out there.

What’s more surprising is how these groups are made up. Growth turns out to unite people who are usually on opposite sides of politics and to divide people who are normally allies. It also splits people by class, but not in the old working-class versus middle-class way. The divide runs along lines of who’s benefited from change and who’s been left behind.

An earlier version of this article was published on Focaldata’s blog under the title “Is there an anti-growth coalition in Britain?” and can be accessed here: https://www.focaldata.com/blog/bi-focal-20-is-there-an-anti-growth-coalition-in-britain

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Possible Growth Coalitions

On the right, libertarian thinkers see capitalist growth as the foundation of prosperity and progress. They argue that the free-market provided the freedom to innovate, trade and create which then lifted millions out of poverty.1 On the left, equitable growth is similarly defended for its social benefits, where expanding the economy creates the resources needed to improve living standards and fund public services.2

At the same time, both sides have critics of growth. Some conservatives believe the pursuit of growth destabilises or undermines traditional community, culture and national identity.3 Indeed, Hayek named this “fear of change [and] a timid distrust of the new” as the reason he was not a conservative, because he instead favoured letting “change run its course even if we cannot predict where it will lead” (pages 521-522).4

Many on the left, meanwhile, see growth as the root of exploitation and inequality.5 Others question whether economic expansion actually makes people happier, arguing that beyond a certain point, more wealth doesn’t mean more wellbeing.6

Housing

Housing is a specific example of how attitudes to growth cut across party lines. In the United States, parts of the left have recently embraced what they call “supply-side progressivism” or a “liberalism that builds” in order to promote an “abundance agenda.” Their core argument is that well-intentioned building regulations are now being used to block the things society needs, such as new homes, transport and energy projects.7

The free-market right have made essentially the same points that a slow and bureaucratic planning system has created resentment and made it too hard to get things built. These restrictions, they say, are holding back growth and making life more expensive.8

At the same time, new construction has also been opposed across the spectrum. On the left, environmental concerns have led to resistance to increased infrastructure development.9 On the right, opposition often comes down to concerns it will change the character of the local community.10

Paving paradise and putting up a parking lot would be divisive. Joni Mitchell would be in the anti-growth coalition and Alan Partridge would be in the pro-growth one!

Environment

On the left, the “degrowth” movement argues that tackling climate change is incompatible with endless economic expansion.11 After Liz Truss’s comments, environmentalist George Monbiot proudly called himself part of the “anti-growth coalition,” arguing that what economists call progress is, in ecological terms, destruction.12

Some conservatives, like philosopher Roger Scruton, have made similar arguments. Scruton criticised the environmental damage caused by industrial growth and called for a renewed “green conservatism” focused on stewardship and conservation.13

Then there are those on the pro-growth side who reject this trade-off on left and right. They believe in “sustainable growth,” where innovation and clean energy can allow economies to grow while cutting emissions.14 They point to the evidence that developed countries have accomplished sharp drops in their per capita carbon dioxide emissions whilst growing GDP per capita.15

Technology

The rise of artificial intelligence and automation has sparked a new divide between those who see technology as a threat and those who see it as the key to a better future.

Pessimists worry that rapid advances in AI will lead to widespread job losses, social disruption and even existential risk.16 Optimists, on the other hand, argue that every major technological shift in history has created more opportunities than it destroyed. They believe AI and other innovations will solve old problems and improve lives across the board.17

Carry On Keir

Finally, Keir Starmer recently created an entirely new growth coalition. On 1st September this year, he announced the appointment of a Chief Secretary and Chief Economic Advisor with a press release that began:

Today the Prime Minister is bolstering the Downing Street operation as this government delivers on the country’s priorities: growth people feel in their pockets, secure borders, and getting the NHS back on its feet. 

Ooh, Matron!

This could really be the stimulating package to perk the nation up. Perhaps a bit of pump-priming to get things flowing again? Or maybe the invisible hand helps create some upward mobility? One can only hope his new team know how to keep things steady if the figures start to rise.18

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What Do People Think “Economic Growth” Is?

Enough Carry On jokes, let’s get to the data.

Politicians love to talk about “economic growth.” The problem is that political language often assumes two things that might not actually be true: first, that everyone understands what these words mean; second, that everyone shares the same definition.

When people hear “economic growth,” are they picturing GDP going up, more jobs being created and higher pay packets? Or are they cynical about politicians’ promises and sceptical about whether any growth will get seen by them?

First, we asked:

Politicians often talk about “economic growth”. What comes to your mind when you hear this phrase?

Respondents were given the chance to type whatever answer they wanted. Using natural language processing, we found that there were nine common topics raised.

There is a pretty wide spread of answers. The most frequent were people mentioning something to do with national prosperity, but without a specific indicator mentioned.

‍“That the economy is going on the right path.” – 34-year-old white woman, lives in South West England, 2024 Labour voter

‍“A more prosperous country” – 59-year-old white woman, lives in Scotland, 2024 SNP voter

‍“Getting stronger and better off” – 37-year-old white woman, lives in East Midlands, 2024 Labour voter

Over 14% of respondents were able to give a particular economic indicator, such as GDP, productivity or exports. Over 13% mentioned increased individual purchasing power or an improved cost of living.

This was different to the almost 12% of respondents who named increased employment specifically and the 10.6% who mentioned business expansion or higher company profits..

Notably, almost 11% of respondents gave an answer which indicated scepticism towards politicians and their claims about economic growth.

“Another meaningless political phrase” – 62-year-old white man, lives in South East England, 2024 Lib Dem voter

“I am fed up of listening this phrase from politicians because they are the destroyers” – 49-year-old Asian man, lives in West Midlands, 2024 Labour voter

“They may talk about growth but only serve to destroy the country’s economy” – 41-year-old white woman, lives in South East England, did not vote in 2024

There was also a high level of misunderstanding with almost 11% of respondents giving an answer that signalled that they weren’t sure what politicians meant when they said economic growth.

“I dont know as I dont pay attention to anything related to politics” – 36-year-old white woman, lives in West Midlands, did not vote in 2024

“I hear it talked about but am not certain what it actually means” – 70-year-old white woman, lives in Scotland, 2024 Conservative voter

“I have no idea about economics” – 49-year-old mixed-ethnicity man, lives in North West England, 2024 Labour voter

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Dimensions of Growth

We then asked respondents to place their views between a series of two statements on a 0-10 scale, with one side being anti-growth and the other being its pro-growth opposite. These were created to cover the main debates.

To make sense of how people answered, we used something called factor analysis. In simple terms, this is a method that looks for patterns in how people respond and tells us whether questions are really measuring the same underlying attitude.

All the statements loaded in the same direction, which means that people who agreed with one statement were also likely to agree with the others. People don’t just support/oppose one aspect of growth, they tend to support/oppose the rest too.

The statements that best captured this shared outlook each had a strong factor loading (above 0.5):

1. Further economic growth will unlock more of humanity’s potential and improve people’s quality of life

2. The increasing use of new technologies makes me optimistic about the future

3. Economic growth leads to more comfort and ease in people’s daily lives

4. Constant innovation and progress is key to improving our lives

5. Automation and other new technologies will create many more jobs than they destroy

6. We should be removing barriers in order to allow more housing, energy, and new technologies

7. We should embrace new industries and modern ways of working

8. Wealth can grow so that there’s enough for everyone

However, attitudes towards growth may just be another way of measuring traditional economic left-right values or cultural liberal-conservative values. To test this, we did another factor analysis, but this time these eight best growth statements were included alongside the economic and social/cultural values questions used in the British Election Study (BES).

The above shows that there are three clear and distinct dimensions of political beliefs. Each of the three factors is consistent within its own group of questions but clearly different from the others, as illustrated by the three coloured bars.

People’s beliefs on growth are almost always unrelated to their left-right economic or socially liberal-conservative beliefs. This suggests that views about the benefits/downsides of growth form both an internally coherent belief system but also that it’s a separate dimension of political thinking that cuts across the usual boundaries.

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Growth as a Class Divide

Using people’s answers to the eight strongest growth statements, we created a single score for each respondent’s attitude towards growth using a “graded response model.” This method takes all their answers and combines them into one number that shows where they fall on the growth spectrum. A low score means a person is strongly anti-growth, a high score means they are strongly pro-growth.

We could then see which demographics are most associated with beliefs on growth. We tested age, gender, education, ethnicity, homeownership, marital status, work status, occupation, and the population density of the constituency that a person lives.

Doing this reveals that by far the best predictor is a person’s occupation, with people in the most elite jobs much more likely to hold pro-growth views. In contrast, it is skilled manual workers (rather than semi-skilled or unskilled manual workers) that are the most anti-growth.

Previous studies in economics suggest that recent waves of technology have tended to benefit workers doing non-routine cognitive jobs through higher earnings and employment.19 This could help explain why higher managerial, administrative or professional respondents were so positive, as they have benefited from growth in the past and may therefore think they will do so again in the future.

At the same time, MIT economist David Autor has found that technological change in recent decades has moved workers in “specialized middle-skill occupations into low-wage occupations that require only generic skills.”20 In other words, skilled manual workers who once had stable, well-paid jobs have been hit hardest by automation. This fits with our findings, where skilled manual workers are the most anti-growth. It makes sense that people in these roles are anxious about the future, given that past waves of growth and technological change have tended to disadvantage them.

This is different to those in semi-skilled or unskilled jobs (such as waiters, cleaners, those boxing items, or assisting the elderly) which are generally harder to automate, given that they tend to require either dexterity or communication skills that technology lacks, and so have not generally seen a decline in employment over the past decades.21 This could help explain why respondents in these occupations were less likely to hold anti-growth views than their skilled counterparts, as it would be less likely to affect their income or employment prospects.

Of course, the coming wave of artificial intelligence could have very different effects, targeting many of the white-collar jobs that were previously protected from automation. If that happens, all bets are off as the people who’ve been the strongest supporters of growth could find themselves among those most disrupted by it this time around.

The Political Whiteboard

The "collar flip"....what if class politics shifted in the UK?

In my day job As Chief Research Officer at Focaldata we spend alot of time thinking about the upside of LLMs and AI on research, and also do alot of political modelling. For this post I wanted to delve into the politics and geography of AI exposure; a strange mash-up of our two focusses. The below post is extremely LowFi - I do have a day job…

Read more

a year ago · 61 likes · 24 comments · James Kanagasooriam

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Pro- & Anti-Growth Voters Go to Polls

As growth attitudes don’t neatly align with existing political frameworks, how do they relate to voting behaviour? We can use each respondent’s score on the three dimensions (traditional economic, traditional social/cultural and growth) to see what the average was for each by how people voted in the 2024 general election.22

Labour voters are the most pro-growth group compared to others, followed closely by Conservatives. At the other end, non-voters, Reform voters and Green Party voters show the most anti-growth attitudes. Given how these parties’ voters have such different beliefs on the other dimensions, this gives further evidence of how growth beliefs do not map neatly onto traditional divides.

You can see this pattern when looking at answers to the eight growth statements. Labour and Conservative voters tend to swap places depending on the question, where sometimes Labour supporters come out as slightly more pro-growth, sometimes it’s the Conservatives. Non-voters stand out as consistently the most anti-growth group across nearly every question. After them, the next most anti-growth groups are either Green or Reform UK supporters, depending on the specific question.

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Was Liz Truss Right?

There certainly is a group of voters who have more negative views about growth than others, but these are not necessarily the same people Liz Truss complained about when she was prime minister.

In reality, the anti-growth coalition looks like this:

It’s a mixture of Reform voters, Green Party voters, non-voters and skilled manual workers. On the one hand, Truss did name climate change activists as part of her anti-growth coalition, so our findings on Green supporters bear this out. However, Truss also named Remainers, but we found that Reform voters are consistently anti-growth and are one of the most pro-Leave groups in the country.

For the Greens, there was some surprise last year when their then co-leader Adrian Ramsey opposed the building of pylons through his constituency carrying wind energy. However our results show that this may be in line with Green supporters’ general opposition to growth, despite sometimes coming into conflict with pro-environmentalism.

The common thread among these disparate groups is likely to be scepticism towards the current political system. This sentiment can manifest in different ways – from voting for a right-wing populist party to voting for a left-wing environmental party to abstaining from voting altogether – but correlates here with pessimistic views on growth and development. This suggests that attitudes towards growth are intertwined with broader perceptions of the direction of society and how much influence they feel they have within the system. These feelings of alienation extend here to scepticism about the benefits of economic growth and technological progress.

In contrast, the pro-growth coalition is a mixture of people in comfortable middle-class occupations, Labour voters and Conservative voters. That’s awkward for Liz Truss, who labelled Labour as part of the “anti-growth coalition.” In reality, Labour supporters in our data were among the most pro-growth of all.

Some of that may be because, with Labour in power, their voters felt more upbeat about the future and confident that growth is back on the agenda. But it also shows that people don’t fit neatly into the caricatures politicians paint of them. Truss may have missed a trick by turning Labour supporters into enemies of growth, when the data suggests they were, at least in part, open to her message.

What stands out is that mainstream party supporters (Labour and Conservative) tend to see growth as a more positive thing than other parties’ supporters. Even if they clash on tax, spending or culture-war issues, they still share a belief that Britain should be aiming to grow.

This suggests that being pro-growth, supporting the main parties23 and feeling optimistic about the future tend to go together. It’s the opposite image to the anti-growth coalition, where scepticism about growth overlapped with scepticism about the political system itself. In other words, belief in growth isn’t only about GDP, it’s also about trust, optimism and whether people think the system can deliver for them.

Growth unites people who might otherwise disagree and divides others who would normally be on the same side. In that sense, understanding how people think about growth isn’t just about predicting elections. It’s about understanding how a society sees its own future, and whether it still believes that tomorrow can be better than today.

So, in conclusion…

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Growth and Populism

Some of those in the pro-growth camp argue that economic growth is the cure for populism. The idea goes that if people see progress, innovation and abundance all around them, they’ll stop feeling angry, resentful or left behind.

That could be true at the end of the story if everyone shared in the benefits of that growth. But even if the abundance crowd are right in the long-run, they tend to skip over a pretty big detail: growth, technology and progress all come with enormous social change.

Populism often rises in the wake of big economic or cultural shifts. Saying “let’s put our foot on the accelerator” is, at best, a bold gamble. At worst, another round of disruption sold as “progress” isn’t an inspiring vision, it’s a threat.

Our data shows that the people most drawn to populist movements are, in fact, the most anti-growth. So if your plan to counter populism is to generate more growth (which would inevitably involve a lot of change), you’re pushing something that many of those voters actively distrust. In doing so, you’re creating an opening for populists to harden their support among anti-growth voters and deepen the divide.

It’s also a pretty emotionally unintelligent approach. You’re effectively telling people (once again!) that you know what’s best for them. This time it’s that growth and technological change are good and you just need to accept it. But that’s the same argument that failed in past debates over immigration: insisting that people welcome “inevitable” change for their own good, rather than taking their worries seriously.

If abundance advocates repeat that mistake with growth, they won’t be curing populism, they’ll be fuelling it.

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The Future of Growth Beliefs

Economic historians have argued that optimism about the future and confidence in human ingenuity helped spark the Industrial Revolution in Britain.24 Between 1500 and 1900, the language of progress and innovation became far more common in books, reflecting and reinforcing that cultural shift.25 Since around 1970, though, there’s been a noticeable change. Analyses of books in English, French and German show a sharp decline in words associated with progress and a rise in those linked to caution and risk.26

Over the same period, growth rates in Western economies have slowed. Correlation isn’t causation, but it may be that our willingness to believe in the benefits of progress and technological change have played a quiet but powerful role in shaping that story.

In our data, the pro-growth camp tended to be those who feel optimistic about the future and confident in technological progress. Yet there’s a paradox here: optimism seems to depend on growth, but growth may also depend on optimism. When people lose faith that progress is possible, they become more cautious and risk-averse, which in turn makes progress harder to achieve.

So how do you break that loop? God knows.

Again, I’m sceptical that simply insisting that growth is good, or pushing through policies that people don’t trust or understand would work. You can’t lecture people into optimism.

I suppose the only real way to create more pro-growth believers is to deliver visible improvements in people’s lives. However, it would need to be growth that feels fair, tangible and worth believing in. If growth is yet another thing that some snobby, overconfident, university-educated London-dweller with a “vision for Britain” is doing to you without your input, it risks hardening the very scepticism it’s meant to overcome.

This connects directly to what we found about occupation. Class may have declined as a good predictor of voting behaviour in the UK but it clearly still shaped how people think about growth. However, this was not a simple working-class vs. middle-class divide but depended on how a person’s specific occupation is impacted by change. An increased saliency and campaigning on growth could create a class divide in voting, but in a more complex manner than the white-collar vs. blue-collar divide of old.

You may have noticed that Reform are doing well in the polls right now. This has led to a range of reactions from bed-wetting horror to joyful excitement.

In a previous post, I used the latest release of the British Election Study Internet Panel (BESIP) to look at what happened to people who voted Labour at the 2024 election (spoiler: not many are still intending to vote Labour).

However, given the polls, the just as interesting story is people who are saying they will vote Reform at the next election:

• Who are they?

• What do they believe?

• What is the most plausible reason they are voting Reform?

Let’s tuck in!

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Who Are Ya?!

In the 2025 BESIP, Reform came in at 32% vote intention, which is more than double what they managed at the general election just a year earlier. That put them 9-points ahead of Labour in second place on 23%, with the Conservatives trailing at 16%.

The first way Reform pulled this off is by keeping hold of almost everyone who backed them in 2024. An astonishing 95% of their voters have stuck with them, which means they had a stable foundation from which to build.

The second reason is that they’ve added new support, pulling in voters from other parties and from people who didn’t vote at all.

The largest group is former Conservatives, who make up 24% of today’s Reform voters. That shows how much Reform has managed to unite the right behind them.

The next biggest group are people who didn’t vote in 2024 at 18%. That’s very impressive because non-voters are, by definition, the hardest group to mobilise.

Then there are the ex-Labour voters, who make up 9% of the current Reform coalition. That’s a big number but it’s not as dramatic as you might think given how much attention the idea of “Labour to Reform” voters has had in the media and from Labour/Reform politicians themselves.

Finally, there’s a mix of people who previously supported other parties, about 5% combined of the total.

The oldest group are the people who switched from the Conservatives. That’s not bad news for Reform, given that older voters are both a large share of the population and the most likely to turn out.

The group who stayed loyal to Reform are the most male. But across the board, all types of Reform voter are more likely to be men than women.

The former non-voters stand out in a few ways. Only 21% of them have a university degree, which is lower than other groups. They also have the lowest household incomes and the lowest rates of home ownership.

All five groups are at least 90% white, but among them, the ex-Conservatives are the whitest.

The majority of every group voted for Brexit, but only 56% of the former non-voters backed Leave in 2016, making them a bit of an outlier.

The former Conservatives are the most middle-class, with 12% in higher professional jobs. At the other end, non-voters and ex-Labour voters are the most working-class with the highest percentages in semi-routine and routine jobs.

It’s also worth underlining just how much more working-class Reform’s electorate looks compared to Labour’s. In my previous article, I showed that people who stuck with Labour from 2024 to 2025 were very middle-class, with 20% in higher professional jobs and an average household income of over £56,000. Both of those figures are much higher than anything we see among current Reform voters.

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What Do They Believe?

First, let’s look at these groups’ past voting behaviour.

People who stayed Reform in 2025 were mostly Conservatives in the past, though in 2015 they split evenly between Conservatives and UKIP.

The 2025 Conservative-to-Reform switchers were previously loyal Tories right up until this year.

Former non-voters really did tend not to vote in past elections.

Former Labour voters turn out to be more swingy than the label suggests. They had split between Labour and the Conservatives before going strongly Labour in 2024.

The “other party” group were also mainly Conservative before splitting off after 2019.

Every group had a bump in UKIP support back in 2015, but it was never overwhelming. This is not simply a case of voters drifting back to where they were ten years ago, but looks like a genuine shift in political loyalties.

The BESIP also lets us map people’s views across different dimensions:

• economic left–right

• cultural liberal–conservative

• political efficacy (this means how much you feel your political participation matters. People with high efficacy believe they can influence politics and that the system responds to them.)

• populism (how much they see politics as a struggle between ‘the people’ and a corrupt or out-of-touch ‘elite’)1

All the results here are relative to the average BESIP respondent.2

Every group of Reform voters is more socially conservative than the average and their scores are fairly similar.

Where they diverge is on economics. The most left-wing are the former Labour voters who are well to the left of the average respondent. At the other end, the most right-wing are the former Conservatives who sit well to the right. The other groups cluster around the average.

All groups are more populist, which fits with the choice to support a populist party in the first place. On political efficacy, former non-voters and former Labour voters are more likely to feel powerless or disengaged.

But what do these voters actually care about? Here, the BESIP is useful because it doesn’t rely on tick boxes and respondents can type in their own words what they see as the most important issue.

Across all groups, immigration dominates. It’s the majority issue raised everywhere, ranging from 53% of former Labour voters to 71% of those who stuck with Reform from 2024.

The economy is the second most common issue. It comes up for between 14% of Reform loyalists and ex-Conservatives and 25% of ex-Labour voters.

The “negativity” grouping are answers where the respondent expressed dissatisfaction with politics (whether specific politicians, parties or politics overall). This shows that, for some Reform voters, their support is about a deeper anger that the whole system has let them down.

There was then a follow-up question asking which party the respondent thought was best placed to handle the issue that they named. Here, Reform are way ahead with everyone. They are not just holding their nose and choosing the least bad option, but believe Reform is the one best placed to deal with what they care about. The fact that so few people answered “no party” suggests Reform’s support is not just a protest vote.

Compare that with what I found for Lib Dems in 2024, where many who switched to them did not actually name them as the best party on their issue. That looked more like a non-of-the-above choice rather than some active commitment to liberalism.

It’s also worth comparing current Reform voters’ answers during the 2024 election to the same question.

Back then, many were Reform curious, but large numbers also said “no party”. That tells us that in 2024, they were already unhappy with the choices available to them, even if they did still pick a party at the ballot box.

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Immigration

The results on the “most important issue” question strongly suggest that immigration is at the heart of why people are moving to Reform. The BESIP asks people to place themselves on a immigration preference scale (from reduce to increase) and where they perceive the policies of the different parties to be.

Every group of current Reform supporters wants immigration reduced by a lot. On a -5 to +5 scale, the highest (!!!) scores are -3.9 among both former Labour and former other-party voters.

Importantly, the differences between self-placement and party placement are tiny in every case. In political science, “spatial voting” means that people tend to support the party whose positions most closely match their own preferences on the issues. For immigration, Reform’s voters and Reform’s perceived policies are almost identical.

Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens are all seen as wanting to increase immigration, which is the exact opposite of what is wanted on the issue that matters most. The Conservatives are in a bad position too. They are still seen as somewhat anti-immigration, but nowhere near as tough as Reform.

The wider context is that immigration has become salient again. If we look at how current Reform voters have named immigration as their most important issue since 2014, they have always been more concerned about it than the average BESIP respondent.

Concern about immigration was very high in the run-up to the 2016 Brexit referendum. It then dropped sharply, given the promise and expectation of post-Brexit lower numbers. From the end of lockdown onwards, though, concern has steadily risen again. Among our Reform groups, immigration is now back to being as salient as it was in 2016.

If we then look at vote intention among all respondents who name immigration as their top issue, we can see just how much things have changed. In the 2014 to 2016 period, when immigration was highly salient, people who prioritised it were split between UKIP and the Conservatives with each party getting around 35% of their votes, whilst around 20% backed Labour.

By 2025, with immigration back at the top of the agenda, this balance has vanished. Reform now dominate the vote among people who say immigration is their most important issue. They have 74% support in this group compared with only 16% for the Conservatives.

This is where the concept of “issue ownership” matters. Certain parties are seen as the most credible or trustworthy on particular issues. Therefore, a party that owns a high-salience issue can attract and hold support even if it is weaker on other fronts.

Immigration is now clearly an issue that Reform have ownership over. It is high salience again, which makes it a powerful mobilising tool. Crucially, they now own it alone. In the past the Conservatives shared the immigration vote with UKIP. Now Reform have monopolised it.

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Brexit

Brexit and opposition to the EU have obviously been central to Farage’s past political success. The BESIP survey includes a scale where people place themselves from more pro-EU to more anti-EU, and they also place the main parties on the same scale.

All groups of current Reform voters see themselves as more anti-EU than pro. At the same time, all of them view Reform as more anti-EU than they are. In some cases the gap is large, particularly for former non-voters, former Labour voters and former other-party voters.

I don’t think this difference matters much, though, because Brexit and the EU are very low salience issues and have been for everyone since the 2019 election.

That means efforts to divide Reform’s coalition by pointing out that Farage is more hardline on Brexit than they are is unlikely to succeed. All of these voters still oppose the EU, even if not as strongly as Reform’s leadership. More importantly, they no longer care enough about the EU for it to be decisive. What unites these voters today is not their feelings about Brussels but their desire to see immigration reduced.

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The Economy

Immigration might dominate, but the economy also came through as a significant concern for a minority of Reform voters in the “most important issue” question.

On a tax and spending preference scale, Reform groups sit roughly at the midpoint, which means they are not strongly in favour of either more state spending or lower taxes. They also place Reform in a very similar position, so they don’t see the party as out of step with their own beliefs. By contrast, Labour and the Lib Dems are viewed as much more in favour of tax and spend.

When asked how they think the UK’s overall economic condition has changed in the last 12 months (since Labour came to power), the vast majority across all Reform groups said things had got worse. Whether “a lot worse” or “a little worse”, the combined totals are overwhelming. These voters are deeply unhappy with the direction of the country’s economy.

The picture is a little softer when the question shifts to their own household finances. Here, more people say things have got “a little worse” than “a lot worse”. Even so, a clear majority are still on the “worse” side in every group.

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Will Reform’s Success Last?

The BESIP asked people how likely they were to vote for each party on a 0 to 10 scale. The answers show that Reform voters are very happy with their choice and suggest people are not treating Reform as a temporary parking spot.

For most of these groups, no other party comes close. Former Labour voters in particular do not look like they are about to go back to the party, with Labour scoring just 3.2. The exception is the ex-Conservatives. They still give their old party a relatively high 6.5 and suggests some of them could drift back in the future.

If we look at the longer history, these groups have been open to Farage’s parties for a long time. Back in 2014 to 2016 and in the 2019 European elections, there was already an appetite to back UKIP or the Brexit Party, so today’s support is not coming out of nowhere.

What is striking is the scale of the shift from 2024 to 2025.

• Among former Conservatives it jumped from 5.6 to 8.7.

• Among former non-voters it rose from 4.0 to 8.1.

• For ex-Labour voters it went from 3.6 to 7.9.

• For ex-other-party voters it moved from 4.6 to 8.2.

That is a huge swing in just one year. Some might think that makes it easy come, easy go. But given that Reform are in opposition and do not have a record in government to defend, I doubt their numbers will collapse quickly.

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Why are People Voting Reform?

Yeah, it’s immigration.

However, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to spend the rest of the article discussing the power of immigration as an electoral issue.

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Just Start Oil

Imagine a hypothetical government who does the following:

• Their rhetoric is that climate change is man-made and an existential threat to humanity, and they promise to do all they can for the environment.

• Their outcomes in government are to oversee a massive expansion in the use of fossil fuels and a massive reduction in the use of renewable energy.

Would you consider this an environmentalist government?

Obviously not.

No one who cared about climate change would vote for them again. Their previous supporters wouldn’t be bothered by all the nice language, they would look at the actual outcomes and conclude that this isn’t the party for them. Who cares what a politician’s promises are, if they don’t then match reality?

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Do Sonny and Cher Still Have That Stupid Show?

Imagine someone fell into a coma the day before the 2019 election and woke up the day after the 2024 election. Now imagine, for some reason, the first thing they said after waking up was, “Show me Britain’s immigration figures!” So, you tell them:

• In 2023, net migration to the UK was almost one million

• Small boats came over the channel and the government didn’t stop them

The only rational conclusion that our coma patient could draw was that Jeremy Corbyn won the 2019 election and appointed open-borders hippies to the Home Office. I mean, how could they believe anything else?

They would be absolutely flabbergasted to hear that the Conservatives won, given their 2019 manifesto promise that “overall numbers will come down” once the country introduces “a firmer and fairer Australian-style points-based immigration system.”

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Accommodating Behaviour

In political science, one common explanation for the rise of right-wing populist parties is that centre-right and centre-left parties have “accommodated” their views on immigration.3

The idea is that when voters become worried about immigration, mainstream parties shift to look tougher. They do this in the hope of winning back those voters and cutting off the appeal of the populist party.

These academics’ research, though, suggests that this strategy can backfire. By talking more about immigration, the mainstream parties raise its salience and make it feel even more important to voters. That creates more space for the populist party rather than less, because the populists are seen as the most credible on the issue.

In other words, when the big parties try to copy parts of the populist message, they risk strengthening the very thing they are trying to weaken.

An issue with these articles comes when you see how they measure “accommodation” when analysing how changes in what mainstream parties support affects people’s willingness to vote for right-wing populism. These papers use what mainstream parties say, such as their public rhetoric or their manifesto pledges (such as the Conservatives in 2019 promising to reduce overall numbers). This approach partly makes sense, because it captures how parties present themselves in the competition for votes.

However, this way of quantifying accommodation would mean that our hypothetical oil-expanding “green” government would be considered an environmentalist party, because that was what their rhetoric/promises were. If a centre-left government did this and their voters then switched to a green party, the academic conclusion would be something like:

See, accommodation doesn’t work. This party started talking more about climate change and moved left on the issue, and all it did was lead voters to environmentalist parties.

But that misses the key point that the reality turned out to be the opposite of these promises, which would not be captured.

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Caught in a Landslide, No Escape From Reality

I hope that the thought experiments helped you see things from the perspective of a Reform voter. It shows why they didn’t give the Conservatives credit for being “anti-immigration” just because Suella Braverman said mean things about asylum seekers. The rhetoric was meaningless given the reality went in the opposite direction. For Reform voters, the Conservatives didn’t “accommodate” their beliefs on immigration, they stuck two fingers up at them.

If you are on the liberal-left, you may not see this. If you think current immigration levels are fine or that it’s not something to worry about, then it’s easy to dismiss Reform voters as just being prejudiced.

But go back to the hypothetical climate change government. If you lived under a government that promised to fight climate change whilst drilling more oil and cutting renewables, would you consider your own views “accommodated” by this party? No, you’d despise them, not consider them environmentalist, and probably wouldn’t vote for them ever again.

You have to put yourself in other people’s shoes, or at least flip the issue to something you care about. When you do, you can see why Reform voters are furious. They hate the Conservatives not because of what was said, but because of what was done.

Obviously, Starmer’s “island of strangers” speech didn’t win Reform voters, but why would it? To think one (quickly forgotten by normal people) speech is going to override decades of record immigration and broken promises from politicians is pretty disrespectful to the intelligence of voters.

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“Well, They Shouldn’t Have Made the Promise in the First Place”

A common response to this is that politicians shouldn’t have promised to reduce immigration in the first place. But voter demands don’t vanish just because mainstream parties decide to avoid the issue altogether. If there’s a groundswell of concern about reducing immigration (or doing something on climate change), refusing to supply a response doesn’t make it go away.

Demand persists, festers and eventually gets met by supply from somewhere else. In business terms, it’s like ignoring a market gap. If the big players won’t do it, a disruptive startup will swoop in, corner the market and leave the incumbents wondering where all their customers went.4

It’s true that raising expectations only to dash them is a recipe for voter fury, eroded trust and electoral oblivion. It’s like hyping up a new album as going to be the greatest of all time, only for it to turn out to be a bloated, cocaine-addled mess.

But, again, the point is not the hype, it’s the outcome.

Be Here Now wouldn’t be a byword for rock-and-roll excess if it had actually been a generation-defining masterpiece. The hype would have been justified. There was loads of hype for Avengers: Endgame in 2019, but that got a 94% critics score and a 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, so made $2.8 billion at the box office.

Kevin De Bruyne cost Manchester City £55m in 2015 and Ángel Di María cost Manchester United roughly the same amount a year earlier. People still talk about the Di María fee because he was touted as a saviour, flopped spectacularly and was sold just a year later. Nobody remembers or cares about De Bruyne’s fee, because he turned out to be one of the best players in Premier League history. At the time, some thought City had overpaid. In retrospect, they could have paid double what they did and it still would have been great value.

If you promise and deliver, you’re fine. Promise and fail, you’re doomed. If a party genuinely isn’t prepared to do what’s necessary to reduce immigration or stop the boats, it absolutely shouldn’t promise to.

But, if it does make the promise, it had better deliver.

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To Paraphrase Something Sigmund Freud Didn’t Say…

To argue that immigration is important to voters, I’ve used the question about the “most important issue” facing the country as a whole. However, evidence shows people are more likely to say immigration is a big issue for the country than to say it matters for them personally.

This is what political scientists call a “sociotropic concern.” This means people worry about the state of the country as a whole, not just their own private situation or self-interest. For example, I think the UK economy is in a terrible state, even though I have a full-time job and am personally doing fine. I also think the NHS is in crisis, even though I’m a fit and healthy (touch wood) 30-year-old who hasn’t had to use the health service properly since 2017.

However, the “country vs. me” gap on immigration can be presented as if it proves voters are being irrational, manipulated, or worked up about something trivial. But look again at that graph. The very same gap (albeit smaller) shows up for the NHS, the economy, crime, education, housing, inequality and climate change. I don’t think anyone would argue it’s suspect to say one of these issues is important to you even if you’re not personally affected.

Imagine telling someone who’s worried about the NHS, “Well you’re unlikely to be personally ill anytime soon, so why are you complaining?” You wouldn’t dream of saying that, because we all accept that people can care about the collective whole, even if they’re not directly affected at that moment.

Immigration works the same way. People are capable of caring about what it means for the country in general without needing to have a personal grievance themselves.

You don’t have to pathologise it as if people have been duped by Rupert Murdoch, reduced to victims of late-stage capitalism, brainwashed by Facebook memes, hypnotised by Nigel Farage’s pint glass, tricked by “astroturfed” dark-money think tanks, or struck down by some false-consciousness syndrome that only PhD students can diagnose. Sometimes people just want immigration reduced. It’s a straightforward preference about the kind of country they want to live in.

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A Better Model of Reality and Rhetoric

I think the model below better captures what’s really going on with regards to immigration, promises, credibility, outcomes and “accommodation” (with the caveat that it’s not empirical, but a sketch that I made quickly):

• “There is an increase in immigration numbers.” This reality is the initial stimulus and triggers the process starting.

• “This raises the salience of immigration.” When numbers rise, people pay more attention to immigration.

• “Mainstream party talks more or moves right on immigration.” In response, mainstream parties ramp up their rhetoric or promise tougher policies.

• “Mainstream party fails to reduce immigration.” But if outcomes don’t match the promises and numbers keep rising, voters see a credibility gap.

• “Anti-immigration right-wing populist parties become more popular.” That gap creates the opening for populists. They position themselves as the only actors serious about reducing immigration.

• Feedback loops. The arrows looping back are what matter: failed outcomes raise salience again, and growing populist popularity reinforces why immigration stays high on the agenda.

The key is that the process doesn’t move in a straight line from rhetoric to support. Instead, outcomes feed back in a non-linear manner into perceptions of credibility, salience and ultimately populist support. If mainstream parties keep failing, the cycle strengthens populist parties more and more over time.

So, yes, rhetorical/manifesto promise accommodation alone (as is measured in the academic literature) doesn’t work. But that shouldn’t be a conversation ender. You can’t also ignore the effect of reality (and its interaction with rhetoric).

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Accommodation Works (If It Means Doing Things I Agree With)

A common argument from the liberal-left is that Keir Starmer should take on Nigel Farage directly by making the case for immigration. The thinking is that if Labour rhetorically defends immigration robustly, they can puncture Farage’s narrative and reassure voters who might otherwise be tempted by Reform.

But simply talking more about the issue could further raise its salience, as is predicted in the accommodation literature. When an issue becomes more salient, it tends to benefit the party seen as owning it. So raising the profile of immigration — even with the opposite stance — could end up playing into Farage’s hands.

And if you think a general election fought on immigration will be won by the pro-immigration side, I’ve got a bridge to sell you!

The second problem is credibility. Voters are not stupid. Starmer can make a lofty speech about the benefits of migration and perhaps it would persuade some. But if people look around them and feel that reality contradicts what he is saying then, at best, he won’t be believed. At worst, he’ll look like Comical Ali, insisting on a fantasyland Britain at odds with people’s lives.5

Labour is currently losing liberal-left voters to the Lib Dems and Greens. The standard response from the liberal-left is that Labour should move liberal-left to win them back.

But isn’t that also accommodation?

If you believe the accommodation thesis, then Labour talking more about the EU would raise its salience, but that would help the Lib Dems. Similarly, Labour talking more about climate change would only raise the salience of an issue owned by the Greens.

Why would this dynamic only apply to immigration but not apply to the liberal-left’s preferred issues?

If Labour wants to win back liberal-left voters, they need to deliver liberal-left outcomes. A big speech from Starmer about how much he loves the EU won’t work if it’s not followed by tangible action. If anything, it will raise expectations only to disappoint them, which would make voters even more likely to defect (as is what happened with immigration and the Conservatives).

Liberal-left voters and Reform voters are not a different species and what applies to you applies to other side too. Both groups want results, not words:

• Reform supporters want immigration reduced

• Liberal-left voters want Britain more progressive on social issues

• Everybody wants a stronger economy

Neither will be swayed by speeches or slogans if the reality doesn’t line up.

So, finally, if there are any political party bigwigs reading this, let me end with one plea: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP HIRING HUMANITIES GRADUATES!!!

Words are not everything. The rise of Reform isn’t due to you not finding “the right message” on immigration yet. Rhetoric and speeches will get you nowhere if the outcomes never change.

What political parties desperately need are people who can actually do things. Hire project managers, engineers, paramedics, pub landlords, cat burglars, corner shop owners, Amazon delivery drivers, guys who break people’s legs if they don’t pay debts on time, wedding planners, milkmen, Etsy sellers – just anyone who’s spent their life making sure things actually happen in the real world and can demonstrate they can turn promises turn into results.

Please, before it’s too late!

Remember when you were young? Remember when you had hope? Remember when your right hip wasn’t painful in cold weather?

I’ve never understood people who long to be a teenager again, and I’ve been trying to repress every memory I have between the ages of thirteen and nineteen. That said, there is one thing I remember: my English teacher showing us the difference between the “active” and “passive” voice.

The active voice is when the subject does the thing (“I wrote the Substack post”). It’s clear what is going on and who is doing it. The passive voice is when the thing happens to the subject (“The Substack post was written by me”). You still get the picture, but it feels vague and noncommittal. That’s why writing in the active voice is almost always better, because it forces you to be straightforward and it makes it harder to hide what you mean.1

I’m not going to go full LinkedIn (“what my terminal diagnosis taught me about B2B sales”), but when I was clearing out old stuff from my mum’s garage the other week, I started thinking what my GCSE English textbooks taught me about running a country.

I think if you want to understand why recent governments have been so useless, it’s because they’ve been governing in the passive voice, not the active voice.

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We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas

One of the more popular Simpsons memes is “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas.” This sort of explains British governments’ problems, but the key quote is the one immediately before this from the doctor:

You don’t believe in rules and yet you want to control Ned’s anger?

The parents want something to happen, but they’re not willing to do want is necessary to make it happen. They identify the problem (Ned’s behaviour), but don’t want to take the actions required to discipline him.

James Kanagasooriam showed evidence that voters feel a lack of agency in their life. But I think we’re also in the situation where governments themselves act like they have no agency over what happens under their watch.

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Some Examples

I don’t doubt that the government wants (in the passive voice) the boats to stop. It would get rid of a huge headache for them and close off one of the most potent attack lines from their opponents on right.

I don’t doubt that the government wants (in the passive voice) the economy to grow. There would be fewer difficult trade-offs, budgets would stretch further and politics would feel less zero-sum.

I don’t doubt that the government wants (in the passive voice) more infrastructure to be built. That would ease pressure on housing, improve transport, make businesses more competitive and give them a visible symbol of progress.

Yet, at the moment, they seem to be to waiting for a deus ex machina to descend from the heavens and sort it out for them. There might be a lucky break just at the right moment, like the global economy getting better or smuggling gangs suddenly deciding they’d rather make their money baking Victoria sponges instead. Maybe if the government just talks about the outcome they want enough (“growth, growth, growth” or “build, baby, build” or “smash the gangs”), it might conjure it into existence.

However, this is where the difference between the active and the passive voice comes in:

• Wanting the boats to stop is not the same thing as wanting to stop the boats.

• Wanting the economy to grow is not the same thing as wanting to grow the economy.

• Wanting infrastructure to be built is not the same thing as wanting to build infrastructure.

Stopping the boats (in the active voice) would mean making moves such as amending or scrapping certain legislation, leaving the ECHR, or deploying the navy. That would infuriate most Labour MPs, the party’s liberal-left supporters and high-profile figures in the media, judiciary and NGO-verse.

Growing the economy (in the active voice) would mean implementing big tax reform, major regulation changes or significant shifts in spending. Those that lose out will be very vocal and angry with you, whilst the winners might barely notice.2

Similarly, building infrastructure (in the active voice) would mean overhauling planning laws, overruling local councils, facing down local objections, and prioritising spending with long-term payoffs. That would bring out the “anti-growth coalition” no matter how you define it.

Given this, it’s tempting to retreat into the safety of doing nothing. Action guarantees conflict. Being passive, in contrast, feels safer, because you’re less likely to trigger an immediate backlash if you don’t take decisions.

Nonetheless, just like feeling a funny lump, a problem doesn’t go away if you ignore it. The longer nothing is done, the harder it becomes to fix later. If you avoid taking ownership and refuse to act, the issue festers. By trying not to be unpopular by avoiding anything offensive, you end up becoming unpopular for being weak, evasive and incapable of solving problems people care about.

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Why Do My Actions Have Consequences?

Not wanting to do the things that would stop the boats is fine in itself. Leaving the ECHR could damage Britain’s international reputation, using the navy to push back boats would be dangerous for migrants and servicemen, and tougher asylum laws could lead to many being sent to unsafe countries. From a liberal point of view, these are very high costs, so it’s understandable that Labour doesn’t want to pay them.

However, they also don’t or can’t admit that to the public (or itself). Being active voice doesn’t mean you have to stop the boats, but it does mean that you have to deal with the consequences of your belief that you don’t want to stop them. More arrivals mean more demand on housing, the NHS, schools, social services and councils that are already stretched. Without action, the system becomes overwhelmed, communities worse off, resentment grows and outsider political parties rise.

Those can be reduced if you admit your own beliefs, accept their consequences, take responsibility and act accordingly. This would meaning acting to ensure: more housing so people are not put in hotels indefinitely; faster asylum processing so that genuine refugees can settle and those without a case can be removed; and more funding for councils, schools and the NHS to handle increased demand. If the legal or institutional status quo means you can’t do these things (or can’t do them quick enough), you change the system.

“But we wouldn’t get re-elected saying/doing that!”

Well, stop the boats then.

Or make the case why you think the costs of stopping the boats outweigh the benefits (which seems to be what you actually think), whilst acting to prevent the downsides of them continuing to come (which they will, given your non-decision). You might not be re-elected on that, but at least you’ll be being honest with voters (and yourself).

If you want the boats to stop, you actually have to stop the boats. If you reflect on your own values and conclude that you not willing to stop them, that’s an honest and self-aware appraisal of your own mind. However, whilst this would generate celebrations on Bluesky, you then you need to act based on the reality they will keep coming, because normal people will be living with the negative consequences if you don’t.

Instead, we have the worst of all worlds. The boats don’t stop, because the government won’t do what is needed to stop them. At the same time, the system is unprepared for their impact, because the government won’t admit that they’re not actually willing to stop them – or delude themselves that things like one in, one out (or more accurately 180,000 in, one out) will do anything. So we end up with no one getting what they want.

This is not an argument for or against asylum. It’s an argument for governments knowing what they believe, being honest about what they are (and, crucially, are not) willing to do, and then acting accordingly.

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“Smash The Gangs” Is Not Smart

Apparently, they’re going to “smash the gangs” instead. To return to LinkedIn, there is a business-school acronym that any goal you set should be:

1. Specific

2. Measurable

3. Actionable

4. Realistic

5. Timebound

“Smash the gangs” is not specific. What does smashing mean? Prison? Deportations? Taken out with an Apache helicopter? Vague language makes vague policy.

“Smash the gangs” is not measurable. How many gangs? How many convictions? What percentage decline? If you can’t measure it, you can’t know if you’re succeeding or failing.

“Smash the gangs” is not actionable. What levers are ministers supposed to pull to make this happen? What agencies need more powers or money? To what extent is international cooperation required?

“Smash the gangs” is not realistic. International gangs have existed for decades/centuries, shifting between drugs, weapons, people smuggling and whatever else pays. The idea that you will suddenly “smash” them is a fantasy.

“Smash the gangs” is not time-bound. When will this smashing be complete? Next year? Next parliament? Ten years from now? A new “forever war”? It’s impossible for the public to know when to judge the government.

So the slogan fails every test. It’s worse than noise, because it creates the illusion of seriousness without doing anything concrete.

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The Unaccountability Machine

In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that modern institutions suffer from “accountability sinks.” These are where decision-making is handed off to faceless rulebooks, algorithms or distant bodies. When things go wrong, no individual is ever held responsible. It’s what passive voice government looks like in practice:

• “The system required it”

• “That’s just how the process works”

• “Mistakes were made” rather than “I made mistakes”

This accountability sink is seductive for institutions and politicians, because it allows them to hide or deflect blame (see, for example, how no individuals seem to be being held to account for the grooming gangs scandal). Davies notes that some form of institutional system is unavoidable in complex societies, but the challenge is building systems equipped for responsibility, feedback and adaptation.

Any attempt to achieve big, decisive things in government would therefore require large institutional changes. The civil service would need to be overhauled so that it responds quicker, adapts faster and performs better, which means not just urging efficiency but changing incentives, leadership and accountability structures. This has consistently been the argument of Dominic Cummings and was the conclusion of a recent report on state reform by Labour Together.

Many powers have been farmed out to quangos and other unaccountable bodies, so governments are effectively powerless to deliver much of what they promised. However, governments since 2019 have all had large majorities, so they could they wrestled back control if they wanted to.

Instead, the easier thing has been to do nothing, say “nowt to do with me, mate” and complain after leaving office about how powerless you always felt.

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Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned

The strange thing is that the last Conservative government made the exact same mistakes, so Labour in opposition (literally) had a front row seat of how not to do it.

The Conservatives would keep making promises to prevent further electoral losses. This raised public expectations that the issue would be sorted out. Then, through inaction or incompetence, they would fail to deliver. As a result, voters would look for alternatives. Desperate to stem the bleeding, the party would then make yet another promise, starting the cycle all over again.

This happened on immigration, the NHS, tax, economic growth and basically everything else. As I argued in my first Substack post, this created:

One popular argument on Bluesky goes something like, “Yes, humanity built the Large Hadron Collider, landed a man on the moon and eradicated smallpox – but it’s simply impossible to stop dinghies crossing a 21-mile stretch of water.”

Notwithstanding that, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that it is operationally, logistically, physically and (with changes) legally possible to stop the boats. It might be controversial, expensive, require a big political fight, some big legislation and an unparliamentary level of competence, but it’s obviously not “impossible.” Just because you don’t want something to happen, doesn’t mean it can’t happen. The only things that are impossible are things which break the laws of physics, so unless the plan involves travelling faster than the speed of light, it can be done.

To break the valance doom loop and be an active voice government on any issue (not just boats), I think you need to do all of the following:

1. Have a clear idea of your desired outcome and be committed to delivering it (including being willing to do things that are unpopular)

2. Have a realistic understanding of how the levers of power actually work (and don’t work)

3. If you know those levers of power will be unresponsive, make the necessary legislative changes and/or structural reforms to the civil service

4. Develop (with your newly reformed state apparatus) a coherent plan of implementation in order to achieve your desired outcome

5. Hire people with experience of successful project management and operations, and give them the freedom to get the job done

That’s easier said than done, obviously, but it can be done. The last government did this with the Covid vaccine, after all, but nothing else.

Labour had five years of watching this play out and could have prepared themselves not to make the same mistakes. Instead, they seemed to think the problem was simply that those nasty Tories had been meanie heads to our “Rolls Royce” civil service. Labour’s implicit theory was that if they came in and were nice to them, the very same levers and knobs that had failed for the Conservatives would suddenly start working for them. Now, they finally appear to be realising that there are deep structural problems in the civil service which need reform, but it might be too little too late.

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An Actually Difficult Task

To be fair to Rachel Reeves, growing the economy really is a difficult task even if you’re committed to actually doing it.

Growth depends on a huge mix of factors, many of which are outside the control of the UK government. The complexity of economics means it’s uncertain whether what you do will work or the magnitude of its effect. Plus, even the best reforms can be unpopular at the time of implementation. By the time the benefits show up, the government that introduced the changes may have already been voted out.

But, Reeves frames almost every decision as though she is a reluctant participant in forces beyond her control: I’m doing this even though I don’t want to.

That may well be true, but it hardly inspires confidence. It suggests she doesn’t believe in her own programme and denies voters any reason to believe in it either. Even if the policies succeed, people will reasonably ask why they should give you the credit when you yourself told us you didn’t want to do them in the first place.

I always roll my eyes at talk that a government’s problem is that it doesn’t have a “narrative” (I think it’s a sign that political parties hire too many humanities graduates who think language – rather than, you know, doing stuff – is what matters). However, governing in the active voice inherently creates a story people can follow:

• This is a major problem I have identified

• This is the decision I have made in order to solve that problem

• This is the action I am taking based on that decision and I will do whatever is needed in order to achieve it

• This is the tangible outcome that has been achieved based on that action

Problem. Decision. Action. Outcome.

You can claim credit even when the causal link is dubious! Think of Conservative austerity between 2010 and 2015. They said the problem was a ballooning deficit, they promised to bring it down, they carried out cuts, and when the economy grew they won re-election claiming “our long-term economic plan is working.”

Economists still argue about whether austerity helped or hindered the recovery, but politically the Conservatives were rewarded because they could plausibly say they had acted on a problem they identified and delivered on a promise they made.

Crucially, though, it isn’t enough to just announce or even pass legislation, just look at the Joe Biden presidency. In 2021 he signed a $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Sounds a lot of money, right? Surely this transformed the US economy?

But less than 17% of that amount had actually been spent by April 2024 and less than 50% had even been allocated by the time he left office.

Anyone can stand at a lectern, announce a headline figure, pass a piece of legislation, or pose with a giant cheque. It looks impressive in the moment, but unless it filters down, it’s politically worthless. Outcomes are what matter, because tangible results are what people notice and remember.

To get those, you don’t need “a narrative,” you need a state that works, that can push money out of the Treasury and into actual projects on the ground. It’s a boring, grinding, unsexy, non-headline grabbing administrative side of politics, but it’s the part that decides whether a government looks competent or hopeless.

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Active Voice Government Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Active Government

Active voice government doesn’t necessarily mean active government. Even if you want to reduce taxes, spending and regulation, you still need to proactively reduce taxes, spending and regulation. These won’t happen passively, it requires someone to actively do something in government to make a change.

This carries hazards and Liz Truss is a perfect case study. She was particularly electorally damaging, because of what was happening globally in 2022: post-lockdown supply shocks, energy spikes after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and inflationary pressures across the developed world.

There was a case that the pre-Truss economic pain was a passive voice problem, since economies around the world and governments of all stripes were all being hit. Truss’s mistake was to turn that into an active voice problem. Through incompetence and bad timing, she made voters feel that “you alone made the economy worse by your actions.” That shift in perception was brutal, as the downturn became so personally tied in people’s minds (and bank accounts) to a Conservative Prime Minister.

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FDR was an Active Voice President

Franklin Roosevelt was one of the clearest examples of an active voice president. Just take a few lines from his 1933 Inaugural Address:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today.

Small wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on unselfish performance; without them it cannot live. Restoration calls, however, not for changes in ethics alone. This Nation asks for action, and action now.

This is no unsolvable problem if we face it wisely and courageously.

It is to be hoped that the normal balance of Executive and legislative authority may be wholly adequate to meet the unprecedented task before us. But it may be that an unprecedented demand and need for undelayed action may call for temporary departure from that normal balance of public procedure.

But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these two courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me. I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis: broad Executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe. For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less.

FDR named the problem, promised urgency and said openly that if the normal machinery of government slowed him down, he was willing to take matters into his own hands. If the issue demanded extraordinary power, he would use it. He promised he would do whatever it took and to own the consequences. No ambiguity, no retreat into passivity and no such thing as an “unsolvable problem.”

In the First Hundred Days, Roosevelt rammed through a blizzard of legislation. He didn’t wait for confidence to restore itself, he created agencies, passed laws and flooded the system with action to create that confidence himself.3

In his fireside chats, Roosevelt didn’t hide behind passive language or say “these are difficult circumstances beyond my control.” He got on the radio, explained the problem in plain English, and told people what his government was doing. That is active voice not just in policy but in communication.

Not everything worked and his 1937 court-packing plan ultimately failed. However, it still put pressure on the Supreme Court to uphold more of the New Deal. It also signalled clearly to voters that he was on their side rather than side of preserving “the institutions.”

All of these are what active voice government looks like: taking risks, using your power, not being politically conflict averse, being willing to create losers or to become unpopular, and pushing forward things you want to do. Here is the end of an FDR speech from 1932 which could be made today about any number of issues, regardless of whether you want the left/liberal or right/conservative outcome:

It is toward that objective that we must move if we are to profit by our recent experiences. Probably few will disagree that the goal is desirable. Yet many, of faint heart, fearful of change, sitting tightly on the roof-tops in the flood, will sternly resist striking out for it, lest they fail to attain it. Even among those who are ready to attempt the journey there will be violent differences of opinion as to how it should be made.

So complex, so widely distributed over our whole society are the problems which confront us that men and women of common aim do not agree upon the method of attacking them. Such disagreement leads to doing nothing, to drifting. Agreement may come too late.

Let us not confuse objectives with methods. Too many so-called leaders of the nation fail to see the forest because of the trees. Too many of them fail to recognize the vital necessity of planning for definite objectives. True leadership calls for the setting forth of the objectives and the rallying of public opinion in support of these objectives.

Do not confuse objectives with methods. When the nation becomes substantially united in favor of planning the broad objectives of civilization, then true leadership must unite thought behind definite methods.

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.

The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.

We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer.

We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!

When was the last time your heard the stuff I put in bold from a modern politician?

Well, ok, maybe there is one…

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Trump is an Active Voice President

Before you hit unsubscribe and try to cancel me, hear me out. Trump, in his second term so far, is clearly an active voice president. He identifies what he sees as problems, hammers home what he dislikes about the status quo, promises to do something big, and then is willing to use/expand his power to get it.

“TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) is a comforting lie his critics tell themselves. Look around you! Compare how things are today to how they were this time last year, or before he was first elected in 2016. Things haven’t changed as much as Trump said they would, but they’ve changed far more than any other president in my lifetime.

Trump said “mass deportations” during the 2024 election campaign openly and clearly, there was no hiding. Instead of complaining once in office that it was “impossible” or “too difficult” or even “the deep state won’t let me do it,” he is using and expanding government power to try to deliver it. You may despise the means/ends, or you may think he’s the greatest thing since sliced veg. Either way, all should be able to see that he is governing in the active voice.

From the “anti-populists,” the message is always the same: who/what you vote for doesn’t matter, you’re not going to get what you want, lower your expectations, be grateful for our management of your country’s decline, and don’t you dare get uppity with us.

But then a Trump or FDR comes along and just does stuff. And because they keep pushing, they actually get a lot of what they said they would – enough that you can see a connection between words and actions, at least.

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The Case for Active Voice Government is Made by Me

The point, though, is that the active voice option is – and always was – open to all governments whether economically left-wing, economically right-wing, socially conservative, socially liberal, centrist, populist or miscellaneous. The problem was/is that they chose instead to impose passive-voice government onto themselves.

Saying “I didn’t do what I was elected to do because a lawyer told me I couldn’t” is not proof that you’re a virtuous guardian of the rule of law. It’s an admission that you waved the white flag at the first sign of difficulty and let your voters down. You are a rich tea biscuit, when you should be a hobnob.

Railing against the illegality of actions by active voice governments you don’t like is not enough. If the alternative to their overreach is your passivity, then you can’t really blame voters for choosing the person who actually acts. “Populists just offer easy solutions to complex problems” is a very lame comeback, given that you are offering no solutions in response.

If voters consistently say they want something and it matters to them, that is a signal you can afford to break some eggs to try to deliver it. If the results broadly line up with what you said, you are likely to be rewarded regardless of the means.

You then get to go into re-election saying, “Look at all the things that people said I couldn’t do, but which — thanks to my determination to put your wishes above any constraints I faced — I was actually able to deliver.”

Recently, Anthony Seldon wrote that “a core lesson [from failing prime ministers] is to promise only what you know you can deliver.” However, there are two ways to read that:

1. The machinery of the state is slow and incompetent, that is never going to change, so keep your ambitions small. Promise only what this sluggish system can churn out in five years. You won’t achieve anything meaningful, but you get to have a soak in the “tepid bath of managed decline” for a bit.

2. The machinery of the state is slow and incompetent, but that can change if you are willing to reform it. If you take on the bureaucracy and make it faster, leaner and more effective, then you can promise bigger things because you can actually get them done. Don’t shrink your vision to fit a broken system, fix the system so it can match a bigger vision.

Instead, in the UK, Labour and the Conservatives will have to go into the next election saying, “I know we were crap and didn’t do anything positive when we had the chance, but Farage doesn’t have… errr… experience in government (or something) and will be just as bad.”

But you can’t make a competence argument from a position of incompetence. And you are in a position of incompetence because of your passive voice governing.

And a Merry BES-mas to all British politics nerds: the new British Election Study Internet Panel data has just been released.

This is one of the best sources we have for tracking public opinion in the UK. It follows people over time, asking them about their demographics, vote choices and political attitudes. It is especially powerful for looking not just at what the electorate thinks at any one moment, but also how and when people change their minds. Since the 2024 election, a lot has happened (to put it lightly) so there are dozens of possible stories in this data.

For now, I’m going to focus on what has happened to people who voted Labour in 2024.

• How many are still with the party?

• More to the point, how many have left?

• Most importantly, why might that be?

It’s worth stressing that this survey was carried out in May, so things may have already moved on. All conclusions here are tentative and come with the usual caveats etc. etc. With that out of the way, though, let’s dive in.

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Where Did 2024 Labour Voters Go?

First up, how many voters from 2024 are still backing the party? The answer is not great for Labour.

Only 49% of those who voted Labour in 2024 say they would still do so. Given that Labour’s victory was built on a small popular vote share and relatively narrow leads in a lot of constituencies, this is troubling. The UK’s First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) rewards efficiency, but the margin between victory and defeat is razor-thin at the moment with so much fragmentation. Even a small swing can translate into the loss of dozens of seats.

A further 19% now say they don’t know who they would vote for. In theory, that could be an opportunity if Labour can win them back, but it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that this number is so high after just a year.

Among those who have switched, the losses are mostly to other progressive parties. 9% say they would now vote Liberal Democrat and 8% say Green. However, another 8% say Reform, which is a very different proposition for Labour to try to win back.

Isolating this to just Wales, the pattern looks broadly similar to the UK-wide picture. 48% would stick with Labour and 18% are now unsure. Reform does a bit better in Wales with 11% but there are also significant losses to Plaid (8%), Liberal Democrats (8%) and Greens (6%).

Scotland looks worse for Labour. Only 40% of 2024 voters there say they would stick with the party. Here, 24% say they don’t know. Reform is on 12% and the Conservatives 4%. Together that is about the same as the SNP (7%), Liberal Democrats (6%) and Greens (2%) combined.

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Who are ya?

Here are the demographics of people who left Labour, compared to those who stayed.

The youngest group are those who switched to the Greens, with an average age of 40. The oldest are those who switched to Reform or to the SNP/Plaid, both at 53. Women make up two thirds of those who moved to don’t know, whereas men make up 57% of those who switched to Reform. Among Green switchers, 69% have a university degree, but among Reform switchers, only 31% do. People who stayed with Labour or moved to the Liberal Democrats tend to have the highest incomes, but those who moved to the SNP or Plaid have the lowest. Every group here strongly backed Remain in 2016, except for the Reform switchers, where 64% of backed Leave.

Social class paints another striking picture. Above uses the NS-SEC classification, which sorts people based on their occupation. It’s not perfect, but it lets us compare groups consistently.

Labour’s retained voters are pretty middle-class. 20% are in higher professional occupations, while only 7% are in semi-routine jobs and 4% in routine jobs. The Liberal Democrat switchers look very similar.

The Reform switchers, by contrast, are much more working-class. Only 7% are in higher professional occupations. 14% are in semi-routine jobs and 13% in routine jobs.

As an aside, I’ve always found it strange how psychologically painful it is for some to admit that the average Reform voter/switcher has a stronger claim to being working-class than the people still voting Labour or moving to “progressive” parties. I get that there’s a longing not to be the one voting for an “elite” party. And I get that class is more complicated than just a person’s occupation.

But, come on. There’s some real mental gymnastics required in order to claim that the average Labour voter is “more working-class” than the average Reform voter. The argument that, well actually, the precarity faced by a mid-level academic is in any way equivalent to the precarity faced by a cleaner or a binmen or whoever, is not one I’ve ever found convincing to put it mildly (particularly given the class background of the average academic, but that’s a story for another time).

This is not a good way of thinking:

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What Do They Believe?

The BESIP lets us map people’s views across different dimensions:

• economic left–right

• cultural liberal–conservative

• political efficacy (how much they think politics matters and whether they can influence it)

• populism (how much they see politics as a struggle between ‘the people’ and a corrupt or out-of-touch ‘elite’)1

All the results here are relative to the average BESIP respondent.2

All groups are, on average, on the economic left. That is unsurprising, given they were all Labour voters in 2024. However, it’s worth pointing out, because it shows that they didn’t just choose Labour at random in that election. Their economic views make them at least somewhat open/sympathetic to Labour’s worldview, which helps explain why they backed the party in the first place.

The divisions come on cultural questions. Green switchers are much more socially liberal than the rest, but Reform switchers are much more socially conservative. The other groups cluster around cultural moderation or a slight liberalism but without going to extremes.

Reform switchers stand out as much more populist than the others, which helps explain why they have moved to populist party specifically. However, the other groups are close to the survey average on this scale.

When it comes to political efficacy, Reform switchers, don’t knows and non-voters stand out with low scores. That suggests a level of cynicism, which fits with either drifting to outsider parties or simply stepping back into uncertainty because they do not know how else to respond to their disappointment.

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Most Important Issue

One of the best – and, indeed, most important – questions in the BESIP is the open-text “most important issue” question. Rather than ticking a box, respondents type in what matters most to them in their own words. This gives a better sense of what people genuinely care about and can help explain why they switched.

Across all groups, economic issues dominate. In every group but Reform switchers, “the economy” is the most named most important issue, usually far and above any other. It is named by 45% of don’t knows, 45% of Liberal Democrat switchers, and 30% of Green switchers. That matters because it suggests why there is discontent with Labour. Most of those drifting away are doing so while keeping their focus on core economic concerns.

Immigration, though, should not be ignored. It comes up for 14% of don’t knows, 18% of non-voters and 15% of other-party switchers. For Reform switchers it is the clear majority answer at 53%.

Similarly, the NHS continues to matter. “Health” is named as the most important issue by 10% of those moving to don’t know, 7% of Liberal Democrat switchers, and 10% of SNP/Plaid switchers.

However, the reality is that economic concerns were top of people’s minds in May.

There was then a follow-up question asking which party the respondent thought was best placed to handle the issue that they named. Among those who left Labour, “no party” dominates, with this being named by 70% of don’t knows, 88% of non-voters and 45% of other party switchers. If you are being optimistic for Labour, there is a small glimmer of hope here. These voters are not naming another party instead, which means Labour could, in theory, claw some support back.

Among those who switched to the Liberal Democrats, nearly half (46%) of them say no party is best, which is higher than the 34% naming the Lib Dems. However, Labour is named by only 11%, so this is far from a reassuring result.

The picture is even worse among Green switchers, where a majority (54%) say the Greens are the best party for their issues, and among Reform switchers, where three quarters (75%) say Reform is the best. This suggests that these are largely settled in their new choices.

To show just how bad this result is for Labour, it is worth comparing the same people’s answers to the same question during the 2024 election.

Back then, Labour was dominant. It was the most named party across all groups, even among people who have now changed parties. 49% of those now with the Greens said Labour was best on their issue during the election, and this was 54% percent for those now with Reform. The majority (55%) of those who are now saying don’t know were saying Labour was best on their issue back then. Labour had goodwill when it was elected, but it has since let people down. A lot can change in a year!

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The Economy

The results on the “most important issue” question strongly suggest that economic matters are at the heart of people’s frustrations with the government, so how they are judging Labour’s record in office really matters.

Other than people who have stuck with Labour, the majority of every group say the government has handled the economy “very badly” or “fairly badly.”

Once more, apart from those who stayed with Labour, most respondents in every group say the situation in the country has either “got a lot worse” or “got a little worse”.

When people are asked about their own household finances, the results are a bit less harsh, but still worrying. Here, people saying the situation has “stayed the same” is a more popular answer than before. However, among those who did not stay with Labour, around half say their personal situation has “got a lot worse” or “got a little worse” in the past year.

Put together, this is a brutal set of results for a government that has made economic competence its main pitch.

If people think the economy is in bad shape, what do they want done about it? And how do they think Labour compares to that?

First, the BESIP asks people to place themselves on a scale between more spending even if it means higher taxes and lower taxes even if it means less spending, as well as asking people where they think Labour sits.

Every group places itself on the pro-tax and spend side, ranging from Green switchers at +2.2 to Reform switchers at +0.4. Crucially, don’t knows, Lib Dems, Greens, other party and SNP/Plaid switchers (as well as people sticking with Labour) all put themselves as being more supportive of taxing and spending than they see the current Labour government as being.

In other words, there is a gap between what people say they want and what they think Labour is doing. That could be a problem for the government, because even if people think the economy is in bad shape, it might not be fatal if they also believed the government was trying to fix it in a way that matched their own preferences.

This feeds into attitudes on public services. When asked “how well do you think the present government has handled the NHS?”, the majority of all groups except Labour loyalists and Liberal Democrat switchers say “very badly” or “fairly badly”.

The NHS is one of Labour’s core issues and something the party has historically “owned” in the minds of voters. Issue ownership is crucial because it means people naturally trust a party on certain topics. For Labour to be failing on the NHS is very bad news because it signals they are losing credibility on an area where voters would normally give them the benefit of the doubt.

When a party cannot deliver on its signature issues, it becomes harder to recover lost voters or even to maintain support from people who should be sympathetic to you. It was the same situation the last Conservative government found itself in, as I argued in a pervious post. However, that took about 12 years to happen for them rather than 12 months for Labour!

Reducing economic inequality is another area that tends to matter for Labour voters. The BESIP asks people how concerned they think the government should be with making incomes more equal and where they think the government actually is.

On this too, Labour is judged to be falling short. Groups consistently place themselves as more concerned about reducing inequality than they think Labour is. The gap is especially wide among Green switchers, who put themselves at +2.4 on the scale but Labour at -0.4.

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Immigration and Brexit

The BESIP asks people where they place themselves on immigration (from reduce to increase) and where they place Labour.

The results show why the party is in such trouble. The overall picture is that Labour is pleasing no one. It is seen as too hostile to immigration by the liberal-left, and too friendly to immigration by everyone else.

Green switchers see themselves as pro-immigration (+0.6) but view Labour as anti-immigration (-1.4). At the other end of the spectrum, Reform switchers see themselves as anti-immigration (-3.9) but place Labour as pro-immigration (+1.2).

A pattern similar to Reform switchers, though less extreme, shows up elsewhere. Those who went from Labour to “don’t know” place themselves at -1.3 but Labour at -0.5. Those who shifted to “other party” are at -1.0 versus Labour at +0.1.

At the other end, the Liberal Democrat group see themselves as less anti-immigration (-0.2) than Labour (-0.8).

That helps explain why every group tends to say the government has handled immigration badly. The reasons differ, but the verdict is the same.

Brexit barely featured as a “most important issue,” but it’s still revealing to see how voters place themselves compared to Labour. With the exception of Reform switchers, every group views itself as more pro-EU than they think Labour is.

Those who stuck with Labour place themselves at +2.4 on the pro-EU scale, compared to Labour at +0.7. Don’t knows put themselves at +1.3, versus Labour at +0.6. Liberal Democrat switchers are the most Europhile, rating themselves at +3.3 while putting Labour at +0.5. Green switchers are close behind at +3.1, compared to Labour at -0.0.

The only group that breaks the pattern are Reform switchers. They see themselves as anti-EU at -1.2, while placing Labour much more pro-EU at +1.4.

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Change?

Issues are not the only thing that matters in politics. More basic factors like leadership can matter just as much, if not more.

Every wave of BESIP asks people to rate political leaders on a 0–10 scale. This means we can track how people’s ratings of Starmer have shifted over time.

People who stuck with Labour have always been more positive about him than those who have since abandoned the party. That has been true since the start, suggesting Labour loyalists were always a distinct group.

What stands out is the sharp drop in ratings among everyone else between the 2024 election and 2025. Liberal Democrat switchers’s rating for him fell from 6.9 to 4.3. Green switchers went from 5.9 to 3.5. Don’t knows went from 6.1 to 4.2. And the most dramatic of all, Reform switchers went from 6.4 to 2.3.

We see the same pattern if we look at people’s willingness to vote Labour. Again, this is measured on a 0–10 scale, but now can be tracked all the way back to 2014.

As before, those who stayed with Labour consistently rated their willingness to vote for the party higher than everyone else, which looks like loyal partisanship.

Green switchers are a bit different. Their willingness to vote Labour was very high during Corbyn’s leadership but lower before that and lower again under Starmer. That fits with previous work I’ve written on Corbyn voters’s distinct relationship with the Labour Party.

But once again the key story is the sharp fall from 2024 to now. Liberal Democrat switchers’s willingness to vote for the party went from 7.9 to 5.2. Green switchers went from 8.4 to 5.3. Don’t knows went from 7.8 to 5.5. Reform switchers fell the hardest, from 7.8 to 3.2.

Looking at 2025 only, we can see how each group is rating other parties, which gives us a sense of who they are considering.

Labour seems fairly safe with the voters it has held on to. Their willingness to vote Labour averages 8.5, comfortably ahead of the Liberal Democrats at 5.3 and the Greens at 4.4. Crucially, they rate Reform at just 0.5, so there’s little risk of them bleeding further votes in that direction.

The don’t knows could offer Labour hope. On average, they rate Labour highest at 5.5, but this is only just ahead of the Liberal Democrats at 4.5. That makes the Lib Dems a real competitor for these voters.

Among people who have already switched to another party, though, the story looks bleaker. Liberal Democrat switchers rate their new party at 7.7, well above Labour at 5.1. Green switchers put the Greens at 8.6, compared to Labour at 5.3. Reform switchers put Reform at 7.9 and Labour at 3.2. SNP/Plaid switchers rate their new party at 8.3 and Labour at 3.9.

If people have switched, they look fairly settled where they are. The only real room for Labour to recover support seems to be among the large group of don’t knows.

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Those Are Some Pretty Charts, But What’s The Answer To Why Labour Have Lost Support?

The economy and public services, probably.

Weirdo academics and political hobbyists get excited by “culture wars” or other niche issues. These may make interesting headlines, because they’ve novel and different, but that doesn’t mean they are what normal people care about.

(Although they are what I have written about, so if you’re a weirdo like me 👇)

Looking at all the evidence in this article, Labour’s struggles on bread-and-butter issues are what really mattered. These are the things people overwhelmingly say they care about (which is pretty strong evidence to me) and they also view the government as failing.

The indicators all point in the same direction. Former Labour voters are showing clear disappointment with both the national economy and their own household finances. Crucially, they do not think things are improving.

Voters are focused on paying the bills, affording the shopping, and having access to decent public services. Normal voters have normal demands. Labour’s failure to meet those basic expectations is at the heart of why so many have drifted away.

You can partly defend Labour by pointing out it has only been a year in office. That is fair and you cannot magically fix everything overnight.

But it’s only a fair point if the government is actively making substantial changes to try and turn things around. I’m going to suggest that this does not appear to be what has happened or what is planned. Another year of Treasury-Brain short-termism is not inspiring confidence and with good reason. Negative ratings are exactly what you would expect in that case.

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I'd Like to Change My Point of View If I Could Just Forget About You

Recently, a new academic paper got a lot of attention on Bluesky. The researchers looked at how people reacted to Keir Starmer’s so-called “Island of Strangers” speech. They used a setup that allowed them to treat exposure to the speech as almost random, so they could see how it affected individual voters’s perceptions.

People who saw the speech started to view Labour as more anti-immigration and right-leaning. However, their support for Labour dropped and also didn’t lead to lower support for Reform. The authors use this to make the broader point that when social democratic parties adopt anti-immigration rhetoric to try and win votes, it tends to hurt them electorally.

It is a strong and interesting paper with a clear use of causal inference, and it’s worth reading if you can access it.

That said, a couple of caveats. First, everyone on Bluesky getting excited about something should automatically give you pause for thought. At the time of writing, the original post has over 1,000 reposts and 2,000 likes. Call me cynical, but it’s unlikely that everyone engaging with it actually read the paper. People get enthusiastic about research that confirms what they already believe and that argues Labour should peruse a strategy they agree with, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. This is not a criticism of the academics who wrote the paper, it’s a criticism of people blindly and uncritically sharing it.

Second, and more importantly, the effects of Starmer’s speech are relative. Yes, saying anti-immigration things hurt Labour among voters who might otherwise be sympathetic (at least for the 20 days that the study took place over). And yes, one speech without substantial follow-up action (and a substantial reduction in boat crossings) was not enough to win back Reform switchers who care about immigration.

But think about what the impact could have been if this kind of experiment had focused on something we know 2024 Labour voters care deeply about, such as economic or public service issues. For example, imagine the effect sizes if this had been run when the government announced changes to the winter fuel payments. That policy has consistently been one of the things voters dislike and care about the most, even as time passes.

2024 Labour voters in the BESIP actively want more spending, even if it means higher taxes, and view the government as not as committed as they are to this. Labour’s failure to deliver on the issues that matter most to these voters is what is driving disappointment and defection. Starmer’s anti-immigration speech had an effect, but real, sustained discontent comes from failing to meet these core expectations.

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The Two Sweetest Words in the English Language

The winner of the next election could easily walk away with a large majority by default on just over 30% of the vote.

That’s where the opinion polls are, at the time of writing. Reform are between 30–35%, giving them roughly a 10-point lead, with Labour, the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens all above 10%. Add to that high levels of support for the SNP in Scotland and Plaid in Wales, and you have a fractured political landscape.

Here’s where FPTP goes a bit wacky. If you look at constituency results in England, Wales and Scotland from 1945–2019, you can calculate the probability of winning a seat based on your share of the vote.

In plain terms, if a candidate got around 40% of the vote, they had a 50/50 chance of winning that constituency. If they got below 40%, their odds dropped off sharply. However, if they got above 40%, their chances improved dramatically.3

But today’s fragmentation blows this model apart. When votes are split five or six ways, the bar for winning isn’t 40% anymore.

Nigel Marriott’s analysis of the May 2025 local elections looked at 533 single-member wards where only the Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems, Greens and Reform stood candidates. He found the new tipping point (the average vote share you need to be the favourite to win) has dropped to 33%.

In other words, you don’t need to command anything like majority support in a seat anymore. A party with getting in the low 30s could turn that into a landslide.

Historically, as Callum Hunter argued, Britain’s electoral system acted as a “filter” against outsider and third parties. To win seats, they needed geographically concentrated support. This is why UKIP gained almost no representation in 2015, because they were getting roughly similar levels of (low) support evenly across the country, rather than a high level of support in just a few constituencies.

But once a party breaks through that barrier, the very same system that once blocked them can start protecting and entrenching them in power, offering them the same advantages that Labour and the Conservatives enjoyed for decades.

The Atlantic Brief

The Extremist Filter

Getting into the House of Commons is a tough gig. Just ask the SDP, UKIP, the Greens, the Brexit Party…. So the list goes on…

Read more

a year ago · 1 like · The Atlantic Brief

So does all this mean Labour are already screwed? Not exactly. There are still lots of undecided voters, and the next election is a long way off.

But it’s a bad place to be starting from. Labour’s 2024 win came on the back of an extremely efficient FPTP vote distribution, where they pulled off a huge landslide on a lower national vote share than Jeremy Corbyn managed in 2019.

Many constituencies were won on narrow margins. That means even a small swing could wipe them out. Retaining only 49% of their 2024 voters is bad in any circumstances, but given how fragile their base was to begin with, it’s especially dangerous.

Labour’s problem isn’t just that they are losing voters (although, obviously that’s important), it’s that they are losing them in a system where the margins are tiny and the risks are magnified. If they can’t turn around perceptions on the economy and public services, then the mechanics of FPTP mean that what looks like a narrow slip in vote share will spiral into a collapse in seats.

I am a man of simple but nerdy pleasures. One of these is that I find the names used for voter segmentations during British elections absolutely hilarious.

Voter segmentation is when politicians and their pollsters try to slice up the electorate into neat archetypes and argue that this one group will decide the next general election. Instead of calling them something dry like “middle-aged suburban lower-middle-class white women living in the north west of England,” they get given names that try and make the segment vivid, memorable and easy to talk about.

The fun comes from the fact that the names that have been used range from the bizarre to the stupid to the cliché to the secretly genius (sometimes all at the same time).

Originally, I wanted to write a history of just the names. But the more I dug in, the clearer it became that the story of the segments themselves was even more interesting.

So, here is a history of British voter segmentation: the names, the ideas behind them, the myths they created, what they said about politics at the time, what they revealed about the leaders who used them, and how the original ideas often got twisted as time went on.

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The Man on the Clapham Omnibus

Let’s start with a very old phrase in British life: “the man on the Clapham omnibus.”

In 1873, the historian Walter Bagehot described “public opinion” as “the opinion of the bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus” (an omnibus being a horse-drawn bus used in Victorian times).1 This sentence usually gets cited on its own without much context, but the full passage is revealing.

In theory, democracy assumes everyone is equal. But, Bagehot argues, while that might be roughly true in a new farming colony (like Australia), it isn’t in an old, complex society (like Britain). Some people are better educated, wealthier or more cultured, and, in Bagehot’s view, people like this are more “fit” to govern. He argues that parliamentary cabinet government can only work in “deferential” nations where the majority wants to be ruled by an elite minority and willingly accepts that arrangement.

Britain, he says, is deferential, but not because ordinary people admire the ability of elites. Instead, it’s because they’re dazzled by the spectacle of high society, such as aristocrats, wealth, pomp and Queen Victoria herself. This visible pageantry creates obedience and respect, even among the poor who are otherwise miserable.

The “bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus” is Bagehot’s way of saying that public opinion in the Victorian-era wasn’t the voice of a refined elite (however much he would like it to be). Rather, he believes that Britain is governed by the solid but unremarkable opinions of the newly emerging middle classes. They’re literate but not refined, respectable but not aristocratic, and dull but not completely unimaginative.

Crucially, they’re deferential to authority. The danger, Bagehot says, would be a society without deference, where everyone thinks they’re equal. In this situation, you can’t build stable government, because the best classes won’t be allowed to rule.

In a sense, the “bald-headed man at the back of the omnibus” is an attempt at a voter segment. It’s a thumbnail sketch of the archetypal Englishman whose sensibilities defined public opinion in Victorian times. However, Bagehot’s formulation also treats the average person as somewhere between a well-trained dog and a baby having keys jangled in front of them.

Thankfully, condescension would never happen in a voter segmentation analysis ever again…

Bizarrely, what followed was the term taking on an extremely important role in law.

In 1903, the Western Morning News published a scathing review of The Major. The review described the play as “nothing but nonsense of a not very humorous character” with “far from attractive” music, criticised the entire company as having “not one good actor or actress,” and called the performance vulgar and graceless.2 Thomas C. McQuire (actor, playwright and theatrical manager) didn’t take it very well and sued.

The central question for the court was whether the newspaper’s harsh criticism constituted defamatory libel or fell within the bounds of “fair comment.”

In the judgment, Master of the Rolls Sir Richard Collins emphasised that the test for fair comment was not whether an average person (represented by the “man on the Clapham omnibus”) agreed with or approved of the criticism. If so, critics would never be safe because every time they wrote something unpopular, they could be dragged into court.

Instead, the judgement was that people should be allowed to write their honestly-held opinions, as long as they weren’t lying or being malicious. That opinion can be harsh, severe or “wrong.” The point, said Collins, was that the “man on the Clapham omnibus” doesn’t get to be the judge of whether it can be published.3

However, while the “man on the Clapham omnibus” became the person not to listen to when deciding a fair comment case, he also became the person you should listen to in negligence cases.

Lord Justice Greer used the phrase in Hall v. Brooklands Auto-Racing Club (1933). The specific case involved a motor racing accident where two competing cars were involved in a collision. One of the cars was flung into the air, hitting a group of spectators and killing two of them.

The decision was that the racing club had taken enough reasonable precautions (defined as what “the man on the Clapham omnibus” would expect) for spectator safety, so couldn’t be sued for negligence.4 After that, the “man on the Clapham omnibus” became the go-to hypothetical ordinary person used by the courts where it’s necessary to decide if a party had acted reasonably. He became the ideal “Reasonable Person Test” because he represented the middle ground - not exceptionally clever or exceptionally foolish, just decent common sense.5

From there, the phrase made its way into politics. Politicians loved it because if you said “the man on the Clapham omnibus” would never stand for something you opposed, you were really saying ordinary voters are with me. It was a way of claiming the voice of the average Brit without ever having to define who that average Brit actually was (other than “someone who agrees with me”).

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Selsdon Man

Another proto-voter segment in British politics was “Selsdon Man”. Unlike the voter labels that would follow, this one really did change the course of politics.

In January 1970, Ted Heath took his shadow cabinet to the Selsdon Park Hotel near Croydon. The aim was to thrash out ideas for the next election and what they came up with was radical in the world of the postwar consensus. It was a package of free market reforms, including reducing the size of government and the scope of state intervention, promoting free enterprise, and preventing further nationalisations.6

Prime Minister Harold Wilson tried to use “Selsdon Man” as a bogeyman. This voter, Wilson warned, stood for the ruthless and the uncaring. If the Conservatives got in and governed with the ideas of Selsdon Man, the working-class would pay the price and the safety net of the postwar settlement would be destroyed. The choice, he said, was between a compassionate society (represented by Wilson and Labour) and a free for all (represented by Heath, the Conservatives and their new Selsdon Man).7

The attack didn’t quite land as he hoped. Instead, voters now saw Heath’s party as offering a sharp alternative to Labour, whereas before they were viewed as offering very similar things to one another. The phrase also made Conservative policy seem more coherent than it really was.8

Once in power, Heath initially tried to put Selsdon Man into practice with tax cuts, trimmed spending, NHS charges and tightened industrial relations laws. However, by the middle of 1971, inflation was climbing, unemployment was rising and strikes were spreading. Heath U-turned, and ended up implementing state rescues of failing firms, wage and price controls, and increases in public spending.9

On the Conservative backbenches, though, a group of MPs were absolutely furious and returned to Selsdon in 1973. There, they founded The Selsdon Group and signed a declaration of faith in free market principles.10 At the time, the Conservative establishment dismissed them as troublemakers, but their ideals outlasted Heath.

Selsdon Man may not have lived long in its original form, but when Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979, it became the agenda that ended up defining the Conservative Party for decades to come.

And it was these free market principles that appealed to one type of voter in particular.

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Essex Man

Today, whenever a new voter segmentation is launched, it invariably gets called called “the new Essex man.” In October 1990, at the end of Thatcher’s time in office, Essex’s own Simon Heffer wrote an anonymous piece for the Daily Telegraph entitled “Maggie’s Mauler” where he outlined who Essex Man was, what he believed, and his importance to politics in the 1980s.

The whole article is almost impossible to find online today, so I’m posting the full version here (apologies to Mr. Heffer if this breaches copyright, but hopefully enough time has passed). It’s worth reading the whole thing if you can zoom in.

Here was the archetype of the skilled working class Thatcherite. The sort of person who’d grown up in a working-class Labour household, but had now bought their own house and generally improved their station in life. Consequently, they were someone who embraced “ownership, independence, a regard for strength and a contempt for weakness.”

Importantly, as Heffer points out, it was the type of voter who had transformed the Conservative Party from one dominated by snobby, patrician and paternalistic good chap U wets into one dominated by non-deferential, petite bourgeois, consumerist and individualistic non-U Thatcherites. Bagehot’s nightmare had come true!

The caricature Heffer paints in the article isn’t always flattering, but it captured something real about a shift in British politics. Indeed, this section could have been written today about the way people talk about voters moving to Reform UK:

He is despised by the leftists and liberals in the Conservative Party. His simple political creed is sneered at in the leading articles in the quality Tory press. His self-reliance is ridiculed as naked materialism; his patriotism parodied as racialism; his reactionary moral and social code is decried as anti-intellectual chauvinism.

That is why Essex Man has lived on. It gave journalists, politicians and pollsters a neat shorthand for the new Conservative base of the 1980s and beyond. I’ve written before that stereotyping voters leads to bad analysis, but if it captures a phenomenon that actually exists, then it can be a very helpful way of making sense of political change.

No matter how much “leftists and liberals in the Conservative Party” might like to pretend otherwise, Essex Man “will be in the vanguard for some time to come.”

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Mondeo Man

At the 1996 Labour Conference, Tony Blair told a story from the 1992 campaign trail when he met a man “polishing his Ford Sierra” (hopefully not a euphemism):