New Year Roundtable with Global Progress.
It was fantastic to have so many people at The Britain Project and Global Progress New Year roundtable, contributing to a wide-ranging and informative discussion. A particular thank you goes to David Rowson and Will Clothier from Yonder and Marcus Roberts from YouGov for their presentations that helped centre the conversation. A quick summary of some of the key themes are below:
Summary of the research
A hopeless politics? Overall, we saw a picture of voters in the UK and across the world that are deeply pessimistic about the future and seriously distrust politicians. They are wary of change and express serious doubts about political leadership. This has led to a significant gap in UK politics, underserved and disillusioned by current choices where the future appears to have become something to be feared rather than embraced (with just 1 in 5 thinking the country is going in the right direction) and the idea that change can be better has evaporated (just 1 in 7 think change will make things better for people like them).
Key concerns and values - The majority of voters think healthcare, crime, quality of life and economic equality will get worse over the next 10 years and they don’t see the parties forcefully defending or representing their core values which they think are being eroded. Immigration remains a major issue and needs to be addressed - with voters expecting the rules to be applied fairly much more than wanting to reduce numbers and just over half of British people recognise the need to be vigilant against threats to democracy.
A way forward? Voters appear open to values-based pragmatic and patriotic agenda that is centred on enhancing the quality of life for all people. The two buckets of values that resonate across the British electorate are ‘equality of opportunity’ and ‘respect and responsibility’ - although these are expressed and interpreted differently across the political spectrum and there appears to be lessons from other countries where these messages and narratives have resulted in victories for progressive parties and policies.
Discussion and themes
A politics of reassurance? As we moved into discussion there was a provocation that responding to this landscape requires a 'politics of reassurance' where politicians offer 'just enough change' that does not scare or frighten voters, and that rehabilitates the idea and notion of progress. Many felt this roadmap had produced victories for progressive leaders in other countries, but there were also a few comments which challenged this on the basis that the public are still yearning for a more radical agenda of transformation and change.
A temporary or permanent shift? - several questions and takeaways came in the form of whether the findings and the victories of progressives in other countries following a similar path represented a permanent or temporary shift in politics dependent on particular circumstances and individuals. There were several points here regarding the move from class towards education and age as much stronger, more permanent, drivers of views, values and political persuasions which was adding to certainty, but there was also a view that people could imagine a shift back towards populism as we are seeing elsewhere in the world. Here particularly there was a lot of focus on the fracturing of the Conservative electoral coalition that won the 2019 election and that the politics of populism and the right is most vulnerable from a progressive assault and fracturing that alliance creates a space for a liberal consensus to emerge.
Winning the future? The lenses of 'Take BACK control' and 'Make America Great AGAIN' were remarked as a potential hopeful sign that people did believe things could be better, but were looking for reassurance in the nostalgia both represented. There was discussion here about how progressive politicians and parties can paint a picture of the future - potentially across the three great revolutions of climate, technology and Brexit. There were other views here shared about changing the nature of our politics or whether people are exhausted by politics after such a tumultuous ten years and simply wanted politics to 'disappear'.
Message and messengers - we ended on a discussion about how progressive leaders can help persuade people and the idea that the messenger and message remained the key pillars of building a more progressive future. Building a patriotic and positive progressive story through narratives and storytelling was discussed, grounded in 'real' language not the language of politics and Westminster, and the importance of matching radical policies and promises with credible figures that people trust to deliver. There were some final remarks about the outdated nature of our political and cultural infrastructure and how this has been 'hollowed' out - this was in the context of how progressives can win the cultural and economic battles we see today and build the new political infrastructure capable of helping progressives and liberals win the future.
Positively progressive - overall and finally, despite the overall impression of pessimism there are definite opportunities for progressives to capitalise on through presenting narrative, vision, authentic leadership and unity of purpose. A key theme discussed throughout was how we respond to this picture rather than succumb to this underlying pessimism in a positive way.