I feel much the same. It seems to me the main UK parties still have some level of fear/respect for the electorate, in that they try to justify their decisions and consider how they will look, but not necessarily enough to change those decisions. There is a strong "we know better" attitude among MPs, bolstered by a "voting doesn't change anything" attitude on the ground. Whatever else comes out of the current machinations, I hope we can at least get rid of that attitude.



As for the BBC, these days I tend to read their articles only when someone I know links to them - which generally means it's a subject I'm interested in, so I can easily see how accurate it is. For those articles at least, the use of biased sources and lack of basic fact-checking is depressing.

One such article was linked from Facebook, and one of the people quoted had (apparently) commented on the FB post. He said he'd complained to the BBC that they'd mis-represented his background in a way that made the article look more balanced. He received an apology but the article wasn't changed.

I expect more of the same, and not just from the Beeb, as the election approaches.

While I'm no fan of the BBC, I find it interesting that some of you are so concerned by any perceived lack of impartiality, yet seemingly unconcerned by other media spreading lies and misinformation? While BBC is perceived as "state TV" and funded by licence payers, it's in the difficult position of having to preserve some semblance of neutrality - and not surprisingly it quite often fails.

The problem with "neutral" media is that it almost always still takes on the form of some kind of political position - or can be perceived as such (a neutral position is still a position).

To some Tories, the BBC apparently come across as left leaning, but to those on the left the BBC will always come across as "closet Tory", politically correct claptrap.

There are political correspondents, editors, etc, who are certainly not Labour supporters or leftists by any standard. There is that atrocious farce "Question Time", where a lot of cherry picked "ordinary people" all ask specially vetted questions and a few MPs fire back prepared political diatribe, argue pure politics amongst themselves and nothing useful is achieved. If there is ever an awkward question - "we're running out of time, I'll have to hurry you..." and the mic is whisked away. It's establishment shite, always has been and always will be. Several few years ago I remember they brought the ex British National Party leader on - and though I always found his "politics" deplorable - it was just an embarrassing lynch mob setup, with insults and insinuation flying, from opposition MPs and the presenter, with thunderous applause going on throughout. But rather than being set up by leftists - Question Time has been in the hands of obviously Tory supporting presenters since the mid 90s...

I just take the BBC with a pinch of salt these days. I wish I didn't have to pay them the licence fee, as I rarely watch TV, never listen to radio and don't watch BBC regardless, but once you're on their radar it's difficult to get off it.

When it comes to the BBC, I'm more annoyed by the absurd amounts of licence payers money they award to talentless pricks, hosting cheap throwaway TV.

Yes, I remember that too. It was quite extraordinary - I wouldn't have believed that any TV program could make Nick Griffin appear the most reasonable, sympathetic member of a panel and even cede the moral high ground to him but Question Time were so zealous in their attempts to vilify him they actually managed it.

Anyway, I do think the BBC is unaware of the woke hipster vaguely leftist politics they tend to represent and make a genuine effort at neutrality. They simply can't get there but are incapable of seeing it, they really believe they are neutral (hence the howls of outrage when their bias is pointed out). I suppose they could be worse.

I used to consider myself to be slightly left of center and largely in line with BBC politics but now I think that the old left/right divide is a thing of the past and politics today is about the libertarians versus the authoritarians.

However, its a different story when we're talking about Brexit, the BBC's "neutrality" has been pure lip service on this topic, and obviously so to anybody who's not a hardened remainer.

Excellent point!

This is an interesting point: I always fall into the centrist camp since my views hit both 'left' and 'right', though I fall squarely into libertarian. However, I do tend to disagree with a lot of 'leftist' woke drivel still, I remember someone even describing the next-generation divide as trans-movement vs neo-Luddism. I don't think it's possible to boil everything down into two camps: there are too many belief systems, and human politics and psychologically are becoming ever-more complex, which is probably why a four-way axis is a bit more accurate. Still, I have my reservations: apparently, according to this, I'm Bill Clinton.

I agree that left-right isn't the real axis any more. And that explains why people like John Bercow and the BBC can seriously believe that they are completely neutral and fair when they clearly aren't. The point is that they are neutral on the old, out-of-date axis and that's the only one they recognise.

But I don't see this as libertarian vs authoritarian either. In my experience libertarians are usually old-fashioned rightists who really only champion the liberty of big business to make profits and ignore rules. For me, this is definitely Somewheres vs Anywheres.

As to "woke liberalism", that is simply the religion of the Anywheres. All the intensity and the heresy-hunting make sense once you realise that this really is a religion. These are sacred values for them like nation and freedom are for the Somewheres.

By the way, I'm impressed with this thread. Previous threads on populism and politics have tended to end up as rantfests, but this one is still pretty civilised.

We seem to be very much alike in relation to the left V right - totally agree with you Lysander!!

Although, not sure I'm Bill Clinton either

And I'm amazed that so many non-Brits (is that a real word?) are interested enough to comment on the election process of some small islands off the coast of Europe!

Sorry Hazel but you're going to have to expand on that. I've no idea what you're talking about.

From here.

It's a location-based way of filtering people into yet more categories. Those who care about their town and their country and would have it for themselves bar a few exceptions, and those that think that such locale-based metrics have little to no value.

It's basically another way of promoting new buzzwords in order to sell a book. It doesn't matter what terminology you use - open/closed, remainer/leaver, anywhere/somewhere, cosmopolis/metropolis, they're all ways of simplifying a very complex problem with the focus ostentatiously being on the term-coiner.

And it doesn't work because of that 20-25% who are 'neither', which would probably be me. We are not the 'don't knows', we are those who are patriotic, proud of our country yet love many others, we value movement and immigration but are not for open borders, we are educated, we are not from the older classes, we live in big cities. We are basically a mixture of both. Drawing a line in the sand is an attempt to control the population and how they think, and if you can control how they think you can control how they act. It's little better than what the media are doing, and they are ones who are really pulling the strings.

If there's one thing that's come from this thread it's the realisation that people are not just Brexiteers or Remainers, and such rigid categorisation is inherently damaging.

The terms come originally from a book called The Road to Somewhere by David Goodhart. His basic thesis is that the main political divide these days is between cosmopolitans and the rest. He calls the former "Anywheres" because they see themselves as citizens of the world. They are liberal-left, pro-EU, pro-globalisation, and thoroughly woke. In the UK, they are solid Remainers. The Somewheres are anti-cosmopolitan. They are rooted culturally in a particular country and town. They value tradition, patriotism and the values of their own culture. They are not necessarily right wing; many of them are lifelong Labour voters. But they tend to favour populist politicians, often irrespective of whether these are of the left or the right in traditional terms. And in England (I deliberately say "England" and not "the UK"), they favour Brexit.

I was raised as a socialist but I am definitely a Somewhere.

@Lysander. You can't dismiss a political axis as spurious merely because a lot of the electorate are in the centre of it. That would be equally true of the old left-right axis. When I was growing up, there were people who were definitely Conservative, others who were definitely Labour (like my family) and various groups of people in between. It was a continuum. But the two ends of the axis were clearly differentiated. And it is the same with the new axis.

Did I read that New Statesman quote correctly, that roughly half the population are "rebels"?

I'd never heard of Goodhart or his magazine, but his views seem a bit crude. "Somewheres" are uneducated members of the working class? Neither Hazel nor I are uneducated and I'd be greatly offended if anyone took me for a member of the working class! Incidentally, I hate that name — do they assume the rest of us have never worked?

It's not a magazine, it's a book.
I don't think he actually said that. You can't really judge a book or a writer from quotes in a review. The distinction he is trying to make is one of culture and temperament, not class or education. There is a link to having a university education, but that's probably because British universities have their own definite culture, and residential students are most likely to absorb it. I was never a residential student; I did all three of my courses while living at home.
I don't know where the name came from but I think there is a strong suspicion among working class families that the middle classes get paid for not really working!

My own position is complex. My parents were refugees and had to accept very low-paid work. When I was growing up, they both worked for a handbag manufacturer. My father was a cutter and my mother sewed handles (I put the brass rings in them!). I definitely thought of myself as working class but I see now that I really wasn't because my parents had a middle-class upbringing, especially my mother, who was a banker's daughter, and they transmitted a lot of that to me.

I don't know if "somewheres vs anywheres" is more relevant than "left vs right" but it looks like a similarly blunt instrument to me. I'm a Leaver, or rather a leaver, who's in favour of free movement and global trade, so am I in the middle or just not a good fit?

If there is one axis/spectrum relevant to modern politics I think it's more about trust in leaders - at one pole are those who prefer to leave the big decisions to politicians who are selected and paid to understand the situation, while at the other are those who think that anyone who wants to be in a position of power should be automatically disqualified from holding one. That's how I see the Brexit divide, for one thing - there are benefits to being in the EU and most Remainers see those benefits and trust the leaders are doing and will do their jobs fairly. Most Leavers, on the other hand, see a bureaucratic body making wide-ranging decisions and wonder how impartial it really is. Or maybe that's just me.

I'm sure I saw someone in this site suggest that government ministers should be randomly selected from the population, like jurors. I can think of some big problems with that approach, but the idea intrigues me nonetheless.