Bridging local divides could be a balm for bipolar politics
There are two types of people in this world, or so the old joke goes. The people who think there are two types of people, and the rest of us. But as political polarisation grips the UK, the opportunity to laugh about such crude dividing lines has been rare.
Even discussion of how and why we polarised has become “fractious”, according to Bobby Duffy, director of the policy institute at King’s College London and co-author of a recent report, Divided Britain. His research has revealed a much more complex picture than just of two tribes at war.
Yes, emotional attachment to backing Leave or Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum has fostered mutual hostility. But add to the mix an accelerated erosion of inherited loyalty to the two main political parties and the new landscape starts to look like a tangle of volatile voting patterns overlaid with the Brexit war’s new political identities.
“There is no clear way to map it,” Professor Duffy tells me. He and his colleagues warn of political gridlock and social conflict. But their report holds out some hope. It points out that the divisions exposed since the Brexit vote mask a convergence of views among British voters on other priorities, such as healthcare and tackling poverty. Even on gender roles, same-sex relationships and racial prejudice — hot-button issues in the culture war raging on the other side of the Atlantic — there is surprising agreement among Brits whatever their Brexit standpoint.
Gloria de Piero, a Labour MP in a Leave-voting East Midlands seat, took a tentative step towards finding common ground last month. From an email inbox peppered with angry messages, she chose around a dozen of her most vehement correspondents for and against Brexit, and brought them together for an hour of discussion. “I was really nervous,” she admits. But from a “respectful” start even this group, still so wedded to their 2016 positions, managed a compromise — the Remainers said the referendum should be honoured and the Leavers wanted a withdrawal deal.
These ad hoc attempts at dialogue can backfire. “If you show some people what they disagree with, they stick to [their own view] even more strongly,” warns Alison Goldsworthy, who founded The Depolarization Project at Stanford University, and investigates how to tackle entrenched divisions. A recent study published in the Annual Review of Political Science sifts the evidence on what works. For example, when committed US Democrats and Republicans see that their stereotype of opponents is unrepresentative, they feel less hostility (known as “partisan animus” in the jargon).
Some of these experiments are intriguing, and raise hopes that even attitudes to intractable conflicts can be softened. In one study, voters in Israel were given both Israeli and Palestinian financial assets to trade for a period of weeks before the 2015 election. The experience pushed them towards voting for parties that support the peace process — what’s more, this change in political outlook proved more than just a blip. The researchers quote the 18th-century French philosopher Montesquieu: “Commerce is a cure for the most destructive prejudices.”
Ms de Piero, for her part, recommends modest experiments like her roundtable to others who want to bridge divides locally. If they are doubtful of success, it’s not surprising. Prof Duffy’s report quotes a study showing Leavers and Remainers both view each other as “closed-minded”. They aren’t keen to see family members “marry out” either.
But this MP, who is standing down at the next general election, found her constituents were far more willing to compromise than colleagues in the House of Commons (parliament has so far failed to agree a way out of the Brexit impasse). “We’ve created the polarisation,” she protests.
Ms Goldsworthy agrees that a bipolar politics doesn’t reflect the citizenry’s range of views, particularly now that the traditional party allegiances are fracturing. But the incentives for parties to whip up partisan emotions as a general election looks likely are far greater than any niggling worries about the consequences of stoking division.
As for the voters? She shrugs: “If it’s what they’re offered, it’s where they’re going to go.”
Letter in response to this column:
You don’t live with us, so you don’t know us / From Jim Sanders, Burke, VA, US
Comments