Beyond Binaries: Understanding the Fragmentation of British Politics
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/20419058211066521 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Paula Surridge |
32 POLITICAL INSIGHT • DECEMBER 2021
Remain vs Leave; open vs closed;
young vs old and grads vs
non-grads – it is all too easy
to see the ‘new’ divides in
contemporary British politics and society
as binary. Political commentators expound
at length about two large camps that are
hostile to each other, with little common
ground or shared interests. In a rush to
declare a culture war and see our politics
as polarised, many have failed to grasp the
more complex underlying picture: far from
two tribes, the electorate is now formed by
the intersection of these new divides, with
older divisions of left and right themselves
underpinned by social class, income and
wealth.
Each of the ‘new’ divides is closely related
to what has sometimes been labelled
the values divide – a dimension of British
politics which captures people’s attitudes
to issues in the non-economic realm. It has
been variously labelled in the academic
literature as ‘open-closed’, ‘post-materialist’
or ‘GAL-TAN’ (Green-Alternative-Libertarian
and Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist).
But in the British context it is most
commonly referred to as the ‘liberal-
Beyond Binaries:
Understanding the
Fragmentation of
British Politics
British politics is often characterised as divided along binary lines. But,
argues Paula Surridge, there is increasing evidence that the electorate
is less polarised than is often assumed.
authoritarian’ divide following the labelling
of Evans et al (1996) when the measures
were first used.
A polarised electorate?
It was fashionable after the 2015 General
Election to talk about the fragmentation
of British politics – and an electoral system
creaking at the seams, given the strength of
the Liberal Democrat vote in the previous
decade and the emergence of UKIP. Just
two years later, a snap election produced
the highest two-party share of the vote
since 1970. Despite 2019 providing a
rollercoaster in the opinion polls, with
four different parties leading the polling
at least once during April-June that year,
the election did not see a repeat of the
successes the smaller parties achieved in
Political Insight December 2021 BU.indd 32Political Insight December 2021 BU.indd 32 18/11/2021 14:2018/11/2021 14:20
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