This is an interesting article re political division (apols for cut n paste)

From an American perspective it is fascinating to see how closely the map of results from this surprising general election resembles – albeit with the colours reversed – the maps of our US presidential contests. That resemblance should give all Britons pause for thought.

Look at those oceans of blue, dotted by islands of bright red. Of course there are still smatterings of orange, blobs of green, a yellowish Scotland, and entirely other shades of green and red in Northern Ireland – havens of electoral diversity which seem, ironically, to have saved the Conservatives from defeat. But overall the pattern looks very similar to that found in US states, with big cities unanimous in their isolation from the countryside around them.

In Britain, those islands of red are largely cities and university towns, and that suggests the UK is seeing the same kind of “demographic sorting” between urban and rural areas – as well as the university-educated versus those without degrees – as is found in the US. This term, coined by Bill Bishop in his book The Big Sort, describes the effects of decades of slow but intentional homogenisation of communities in the US.

Simply put, Americans often choose to live, work and socialise with those who do not contradict their own political views. That is pleasant for us in the short term, but Balkanised communities soon lead to more extreme breeds of politics at both ends of the spectrum. When our biases are confirmed rather than challenged, we push them further, and swap opinion for fact. Early analysis suggests something very similar has occurred in Britain, especially in the youth vote, which provided an unexpectedly strong surge for Labour.

This sort of split was precisely what Theresa May intended to avoid. She attempted something akin to Bill Clinton’s 1996 triangulation strategy – positioning herself astride the central poles of Tory and Labour, with the hope of attracting traditional Labour voters uneasy about voting for Jeremy Corbyn without alienating her traditional base. With that goal in mind, the Prime Minister and her aides spent a great deal of time in former mining and factory towns that voted Leave last June, promising that hers was the only party that could properly deliver Brexit.

This partly worked: loyal Tories voted in droves while Ukip was destroyed, which together drove the Conservative vote share to heights unseen for decades. But it did not work well enough to overwhelm the Labour tide, as more former “Kippers” than expected backed Mr Corbyn. Many defeats were close, but as we say in baseball, it doesn’t matter if you lose by 20 runs or two.

I would wager that while most Americans did not know that the UK held national elections this week, most of them would tell you that a two-party system sharply divided on demographic lines is bad news. One red tribe versus one blue tribe will produce the sort of ineffectual governance that we cannot seem to shake.

It will lead to your politicians taking whole swaths of the population for granted, or discounting them entirely; minorities of every description, women, young people, and the well-educated will be expected to vote Left, and wealthy, white, elderly and less well-educated people will be expected to vote Right, as if these characteristics could be expected to form the basis of one’s identity. Your politicians will stop working for your votes. You will see more campaigns like this one, built on scare tactics and virtue signalling, rather than well-vetted ideas.

This is not an inevitable result. Moving away from big-tent triangulation is a good place to start. Neither the Conservative nor Labour parties can be all things to all people, and that’s for the best. Those unhappy with Mr Corbyn’s leadership (or lack thereof) should move elsewhere, and those classical liberal Tories unsettled by big state manifestos should make themselves heard. In this election, standing for or against any one party or person was not a winning strategy; but if current levels of demographic polarisation continue, that may well become the litmus test for elected office.

Given the pressing issues facing the British public, that would be a real shame. Fighting demographic sorting is dependent on the populace taking active steps to move outside their comfort zone. But a vibrant multi-party system that forces politicians to work for votes, rather than take whole groups of people for granted, is the best antidote to this problem.

Posted By: paulg, Jun 11, 10:02:35