#1307 James Tilley & Sara Hobolt - Tribal Politics: How Brexit Divided Britain

00:00 Ricardo Lopes: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a new episode of The Dissenter. I'm your host, as always, Ricardo Lops, and today I'm joined by Doctors James Tilley and Sarah Hoboldt. Uh, Doctor Tilley is professor of politics in the Department of Politics and International relations at the University of Oxford and Dr. Hoboldt holds the Sutherland Chair in the European Institutions and is also the head of the department of government at the London School of Economics and Political Science. And today we're going to talk about their book Tribal Politics How Brexit Divided Britain. So Dr. Tilley, Dr. Hoboldt, welcome to the show. It's a huge pleasure to everyone.

00:43 James Tilley: Thanks very much for inviting me.

00:46 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so, uh, before we get into the sort of political science that you explore in your book related to Brexit and the political tribal tribalism that derived from it, uh, tell us first. A little bit about the history of Brexit. So what led to it, uh, to it, I mean, in the history of, uh, the politics of the United Kingdom, what preceded Brexit?

01:20 Sara Hobolt: I mean, I think the first thing to say here is that Brexit was by no means inevitable. Sometimes when we look back now that Brexit has happened, we might think, oh, you know, all roads would lead to this outcome. There was this sort of major desire or public interest in having A referendum on membership, but that was really far from the case. In fact, when we, which we do in the book, we trace public opinion on European membership, the first thing to note is really that people didn't care very much about the EU or EU membership. So when David Cameron, uh, the Prime Minister who called the referendum, when he first promised the referendum back in 2013, only about 2% of the British population even mentioned it as one of the most salient issues. And in the, in the election that came after that in 2015, it wasn't really one of the debated issues at all. It was not even in the top 10 of issues that people cared most about. So it wasn't the sort of public salience that led to the referendum. But the issue of EU membership had been an issue of conflict and debate in British politics for a long time, but mainly amongst political elites. So first, the Labour Party and then the Conservative Party were really divided on the issue of EU membership, and that was the primary reason why David Cameron decided to hold the referendum, because he wanted to quell or appease the. Divisions within his own party and there was also new pressures from the Eurosceptic UKIP party on the right and so he thought by having that referendum he could sort of solve that issue within his party in that way because of course he expected to win the referendum. So by winning that issue it would sort of put a line on there and say now we've dealt with Europe, so. So that's really what was so interesting and what we deal with in our book Tribal Policy is that EU membership went from an issue that most people didn't care that much about. It wasn't particularly salient to an issue that came to be a political identity, something that really defined how people looked at themselves and how they looked at the world.

03:33 Ricardo Lopes: But historically, were there any precedents to Brexit in Britain or or was it something unprecedented and if it was unprecedented, in what ways was it unprecedented?

03:51 Sara Hobolt: So it's not unprecedented in Britain or indeed elsewhere in Europe. We've had, you know, over 50 referendums on aspects of European integration and particularly there's a very clear historical precedent in Britain which is 1975. So in 1975 there was a similar referendum. So Britain had joined the European Union, uh, together with Ireland and Denmark in 1973, um, but the Labour Party at the time had was split on it. And so we had a Labour Prime Minister in 1975, Harold Wilson, who decided again. In a similar parallel to what happened with David Cameron in 2016, his own party was divided on the issue, so perhaps the referendum would be seen as a good way of solving that issue. So again, we have these internal party tensions this time within the Labour Party that led to a referendum on in-out membership at that time of the European Economic Community. So that's a very clear parallel. Now that's sort of where the similarities stopped because of course what happened in 1975 was a very big victory for staying in the EEC. So about 2 to 1 of people voted to stay in the EEC. So that meant not that the issue in a sense went away, particularly within the parties. It sort of rumbled on, but it meant that because it was a vote in favor of state. QUO. It didn't become this sort of shock where there was continuous negotiations about how the new arrangements should look like. Instead it was like, OK, people have now voted quite emphatically to stay in the EEC. We can now continue that way. So it continued as an elite sort of issue of conflict, but not as a sort of big public salient issue.

05:39 Ricardo Lopes: So talking about the referendum itself, because I mean I might be misremembering a little bit because back in 2016 I didn't really follow it extremely closely, but I remember that when the results came out, people, many people. WERE sort of surprised that Brexit had won, that leaving the European Union had won. So, but were there any signs that that could happen before it did, or and what was its immediate fallout?

06:18 James Tilley: Um, I mean, I think actually the interesting thing there is that. While perhaps there were some perceptions that it was a done deal for Remain that Remain would win, actually the polls were very, very close for the whole 6 months beforehand. I mean, you're talking about like maybe a 1% lead on average, which was pretty much unchanging, um, over that period. And I think that's really important for our story because it meant there were two evenly sized groups in the population basically pitted against each other. And I think the other important thing for our story is sort of the the opposite of what happened in 1975. Um, THAT it was, uh, not only close, but it was also a vote for change. So 75, it's, it's a big majority for staying in the EU and it's also the status quo. 2016, very, very tight result and a vote against the status quo. And so I think the immediate fallout, which is actually really relevant, um, uh, for, for what we're interested in, is that everyone therefore had to decide what Brexit actually meant. And how it was going to be enacted and all of that was going to take some period of time during which this would be a very, very salient issue, unlike as Sara was saying beforehand when basically no one really, um, cared about it. So these two things are really crucial to our stories, these evenly sized groups, a tight results, and a big constitutional question that then needs to be decided over a period of time, um, after the actual referendum.

07:47 Ricardo Lopes: Mhm. But in the immediate aftermath, I mean, how did the people across the country react to it, across the United Kingdom? I mean, were people mostly surprised? Were people sort of expecting that result, or what?

08:07 James Tilley: Um, I think the. I would say there was a degree of surprise because of the way in which the, the polling had been interpreted to indicate that because Remain had a lead most of the time, that meant they were going to win. um, AND so I think there was a degree of surprise because of that, and I think there was also a degree of surprise amongst elites, and that's most elites. So if you think about what I mean by that, let's say academics, journalists, um, most politicians were on the side of Remain. And as we're going to talk about, people like to project what they think, uh, how the world is, uh, how the world, uh, should be and pretend that that's how the world is. And so I think a lot of them were surprised because they didn't, they themselves perhaps didn't meet many people who were going to vote leave and so didn't, and, and therefore didn't really quite believe that it was close. Um, AND so I think surprise was more concentrated amongst those people than perhaps it was among the general public in some ways.

09:07 Sara Hobolt: And famously, of course, apparently the, the, the leaders of the leave camp themselves, including Boris Johnson, was quite surprised and sort of slept through it. At least that's the, uh, that's the sort of modern political history of the event that he had to, that he wasn't awake. And then he had to go and give this speech because one of the things that, and, and we write about in the that that is quite telling that it wasn't only this event, which I think you're right, was to many people, particularly that the opinion formers was surprising, but it was also the fact that there wasn't really a clear plan, a roadmap. Had we voted by the same margin, 52 to 48 to stay in, it was pretty clear, you know, not much would have happened. But all of a sudden there was this result where There wasn't a clear roadmap, not by the official leave campaign, you know, in fact, many people had campaigned for slightly different things, of course. Then you have a Prime Minister, David Cameron resigning, and so you have to then have, and so, so there were a lot of things that were not settled, so it wasn't just the immediate surprise, but also the fact all of a sudden people We, oh my goodness, what do we do now, including probably some quite central figures in the on the leave side that there wasn't a kind of a, they never had to have had a clear agreement or roadmap for what that leave, what Brexit would would look like and of course we all know that Theresa May kept saying Brexit means Brexit, and everyone was like, well, that's a sort of slight tautology, and that was partly to avoid this discussion of what that actually meant while they were figuring it out within the party.

10:43 Ricardo Lopes: Right, so we're going to talk more about Brexit and its consequences, but I would like to now do it by exploring the central topics that you talk about in your book. So since we're going to talk about political tribalism here, what is actually a tribal politics? I mean, what is tribalism in the, in the political context?

11:10 James Tilley: I mean that's a, that is a good question. It is obviously at the heart of the book. The book's called Tribal Politics after all. Um, I think, uh, there's a number of different aspects we could talk about, but I, I think there's two kind of key elements that we sort of focus on in the book and I think probably we're going to focus on in our discussion too. And the first is about, uh, in-groups versus out-groups, us versus them. So the idea that we create, um, we adopt, we join a political group that we consider to be ours, um, in some way. We feel attached to people in that group, we feel attached to the identity, attached to the label, um, and part of that is also, therefore, uh, disliking people in the out-group. Having prejudice against, against people in the out-group and in favor of the in-group, discriminating against the out-group, discriminating in favor of the, uh, the in-group, um, and I think that's the first, Element, um, of what we think of as political tribalism. I think the second element is sort of, uh, sometimes easy to overlook, but it's actually perhaps in, in some ways more important, and that's the way we kind of construct the world around us based on those group identities or we construct our perceptions of the world around us. So we sort of see reality through the lens of the political, um, identity. Adopt policy positions on the basis of it. We might judge how well or badly democracy is functioning through that lens, uh, and so on. So it's these kind of two things. On the first hand, uh, on the one hand, you've got this kind of in-group out-group dynamics, and then you've also, on the other hand, got this kind of consequences of those in-group out-group dynamics in terms of how it shapes, uh, the way we see and interact with, in our case, the political world, but also I guess more broadly the social world. We might perhaps talk a bit about both of those, um, later on.

12:54 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, right, so the two political tribes that developed after Brexit or during Brexit and then more so after it, you call them in your book the leavers and the Remainers. How did each of them develop and what would you say characterizes them and makes them opposites of one another?

13:24 James Tilley: So I think the first thing to say there is that it's not just that we call them leavers and remainers, it's that they call themselves levers and remainers. And so these aren't, these aren't labels we are attaching to groups. They're the labels the groups themselves use to describe both their own group and the other group. And that's actually a really important part of what's, of, of, of what we're interested in, um, so. The vast majority of people who voted in the referendum subsequently identified themselves as Leavers and Remainers, about 80% of people, um, immediately after the referendum, and in fact, today, so 10 years after the referendum, 60% of people still are willing to call themselves a Leaver or Remainer. They still think of themselves in that way, um, which is about the same amount of people, maybe even slightly more, more than the number of people who are willing to identify as a political party supporter. So just to give you sort of context for that. Um How did they develop? Well, I think, um. I mean, they developed ultimately and sort of Sarah touched on this right at the beginning because of the people being forced to make a choice at the referendum, so to vote for one side or the other, you had to convert your position on an issue, an issue which most people didn't really have a very strong view on, but they had maybe some vague view on, uh, EU integration, and then convert that view into picking one side or the other, and then you became part of one group or the other. Um, IN fact, I mean, the, the names Leavers and Remainers, I mean, the, the, that, they, they're derived from the options on the ballot paper. You could vote to leave or vote to remain. So you could have had a yes, no, you know, option, and then people perhaps would have been yeses and, um, and, uh, and noers or nayers, as they're sometimes called in Scotland, where it was a yes, no kind of outcome for the Scottish independence referendum. Um, SO I think the really crucial thing to understand is that. What characterizes these two groups is how they voted in the referendum, yeah, it's the issue position, uh, that they held, but then the choice that they made in June 2016 for one option, um, or the other. I mean, we, we might want to talk a bit about the social characteristics of both sides as well, perhaps if you want, but I think the. The essence of having an issue-based identity, which is what we think this is, is you have a position at issue, you then are forced to make a choice, a binary choice in this case, and then that creates two groups, which are going to be naturally, um, in opposition, uh, to one another. Um, I think the only thing perhaps to add to that is, is also worth just saying, the nature of an issue position on any political issue is lots of people are in the middle. Um, AND that's true for the EU, uh, issue as well. But those people, they went into the referendum and they had to make a choice. So they might, so two people might have had quite similar views actually on EU integration, but when they went and voted, one voted to leave and one voted remain. And so subsequently, they became leavers and remainers. So the the translation of the issue position into the, um, identity means that you've got a spectrum. That then becomes a sort of binary set of categories, um, that's what we call two categories. So it's, it's kind of a different, uh, a different kind of idea. It's a, quite an important element of how these issues become identities effectively. I think.

16:36 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, but this sort of tribalistic dynamics that can develop in the political realm, let's say. I mean, can something like this happen around any sort of potential uh topic or issue, or is it that, er, when it comes to Brexit, it had certain types of characteristics that made it, er, that people who fell on either the leaver or remainer camp. Uh, BECAME that for, uh, that tribalistic.

17:17 Sara Hobolt: I mean, I think, I think the starting point in terms of how we look at it is that it isn't really about the nature of the issue or even how strongly people feel about the issue to start off with, because as we talked about, in fact, people didn't feel particularly strongly about the EU or it wasn't something that affected their lives very much. Of course you're always going to get a hardcore people who are Europhiles or really Eurosceptics, but they were a tiny minority in Britain. Um, IN fact, most people were sort of maybe broadly we call kind of indifferent Eurosceptics, uh, in the book. So they were sort of a bit skeptical, uh, uh, of the whole European thing, but that didn't necessarily mean that they had to, um, You know, you know, they would vote to leave. I mean, exactly what happened with the referendum is it created these two, it compelled people to be in one or two camps. So the starting point is people have, there are lots of political issues. Most of them don't become identities, but some do, and that's really part of a social and political process, and, and, and what. Brexit was this sort of Goldilocks combination of factors that created the conditions where an issue like Europe did become something that became really at the heart of it became a tribal issue with two camps, so it's not just about, oh, it couldn't happen to other issues, but it's also not, oh it happens to most political issues,

18:47 Ricardo Lopes: right, I understand. And how is the discussion surrounding Brexit Brexit evolved over these past 10 years? I mean, are people really still that entrenched when it comes to their tribalism surrounding this topic, if of course they fall on the camp of the leavers or the Remainers and not in the middle, or are people. More, uh, tribalized or more polarized when it comes to that issue nowadays than they were 10 years ago in the immediate aftermath of the referendum or how have things evolved basically?

19:30 Sara Hobolt: I think uh we can sort of look at two things here. One is the issue about how the identities have evolved, and another is sort of what are are general attitudes also amongst those who don't hold identities on Brexit. And when it comes to the identities, I think what's really quite extraordinary is how sticky they've been. We're now more than a decade on from the referendum. If you read British newspapers or watch British television or listen to, you know, even our new Prime Minister, you won't hear Andy Burnham talk a lot about Brexit. Uh, IN fact, uh, the Labour Party, I think, quite deliberately avoids talking a lot about it. So it's not really as a sort of headline news the way it was for, you know, 56 years, constantly bombarded with news about Brexit. Everything was about Brexit. So if you just look at the news coverage, you would think, oh, Brexit is over, it's done. But if you look at, uh, and we've traced really across a decade public opinion and identities, you see that because it's more than your opinion. It is these identities about how we see ourselves, they have that stickiness to it. So as James mentioned, we still have over 60% of people still identifying as either leave or remainer. Even the term remainer doesn't really make sense anymore because we've, of course, left the EU, but it's still something people use to describe themselves. So that's quite extraordinary in that way and also really shows that how it's more than just an issue of opinion. Now that's even higher amongst those people who voted back in 2016. Now, so if we look on the other hand, at attitudes towards Brexit, it might look like there's been a shift, and so how do we reconcile that? So if we look at now, we ask people, do you think it was a good thing or a bad thing for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union, there's now quite a big majority that would say that it's a bad thing, yeah. Uh, SORT of, um, in the region of kind of, uh, uh, 55, 60% who consistently, it would say it's a bad thing. Um, NOW, that has to do with not so much that lots of people who identify strongly as leaders have changed their minds. That's not really what's going on. Of course, there will be some people who've changed their minds, but a couple of things are going on. One is just demographic change. So if you look at how The population in Britain has evolved for the last decade. Older people were more likely to be leavers than younger people, and they're the ones who have sadly, some of them left the electorate, while the younger people who can now vote are more likely to say, to be more positive about the EU. And another thing is for those people who didn't vote back in 2016 or who didn't develop an identity, they're more likely to say, oh, this sounds like this Brexit thing was a bad thing. So we have seen a kind of shift. Even if we ask about the question of rejoin, uh, it's now about 55% who would rejoin. Uh, THAT you, uh, if, if you ask it in that way, um, uh, so, so there has been a sort of more EU positive or Brexit negative shift, but the, the main thing in terms of, uh, the identities is that they're still there in quite high numbers, uh, despite the sort of the lower salience of the issue.

22:48 James Tilley: And I think one thing to add to that is that there's, there's very few people sort of hint that there's very few people switching between the identities. They've become quite fixed with those people. Maybe some people have left the identity, they've gone to not having one at all, but they've not switched sides. And so most of the, most of the kind of change in sort of those headline numbers that, um, Sarah mentioned about support for say, rejoining, that's actually coming from people who didn't develop an identity, um, in, in 2016 or in the immediate aftermath.

23:19 Ricardo Lopes: Right, uh, yes, I, I'm going to ask you more about issue-based identities in a second, but just before that, when it comes to social identities, is it that people identifying as leavers or remainers track onto any sort of demographics, like, for example, I remember that. Right after Brexit, there were people trying to make sense of what might have caused people to vote one way or the other, and they were talking, for example, that it was really about the young versus the older people with high educational attainment versus low educational attainment and They also, certain people also tried to make it about uh class divisions. I mean that people who were low socioeconomic status were more likely to be leavers and uh high socioeconomic status, more like. TO be remainder, things like that. I mean, is any of that true? And if so, do any of those sort of social categories track onto this division or not?

24:45 James Tilley: Um, I think that's that's yes and no. Um, SO I'll start with the yes and then I'll go on the no perhaps. Um, I think the, the yes is that like with most political attitudes, there are social characteristics, exactly the ones you mentioned in this case, um, age, education, to some extent, social class. In our case, actually national identity, um, would be the one that do predict people's views about the European, um, Union. Education is probably the best of those things that you mentioned in terms of the predictor. And they also predicted, therefore, how people voted in the, um, referendum. Um, THAT'S the yes bit. I think the no bit though is that. They're not very good predictors of people's attitudes and people's vote, and I think that that's quite surprising, I think, to some people because exactly like you just said, the referendum is sometimes presented as a, you know, a class conflict or an age conflict or or whatever it is, um, but I think some of that's really about people. You know, humans like to be able to sort of describe the person on either side in this case, and so we sort of reach for these things that might be, you know, relatively slightly correlated with the, with these issue opinions, and then we describe or think of people in those, in those ways, but Actually, if we model people's vote choice at the referendum, you know, using these kind of social characteristics and, you know, at least the models we use, we've got a very long list, they're very well measured, um, and some really good measures of national identity, but we don't actually do a very good job of predicting, um, how someone voted. And there's, there's sort of 22 reasons for that. One is that the, simply the relationship between those characteristics and people's vote is just not that strong, um. But the second bit, which is perhaps a bit more subtle, is that where there is strength, the strength is at the extremes. So by that, what I mean is, let's say we took education. So people with very high levels of education, um, so people with a PhD, say, um. They tend to be, uh, much more supportive of EU membership than the average person, but there's not very many people with a PhD out there. So you could sort of say, well, education is a good predictor, but it's only a good predictor for a small segment of the population at the extremes, and then the same is true for, say, national identity. So people who thought of themselves as Europeans, having a European nationality were much more likely to be supportive of EU membership, but prior to the referendum, um, we might get onto it perhaps later on after the referendum because it's changed a bit, prior to the referendum, very few people thought of themselves as European, yeah, something about 10, 15% of the population. So the kind of characteristics we have don't really do a very good job of, um, uh, of actually explaining how people, uh, how people voted. So the amount of variation we can explain in people's opinions is actually not, um, not terribly high. So, you know, it's not that leavers are just a, a, another name for the working class and Remainers are just another name, um, for the middle class. They're kind of new political identities. Um, RATHER than just, um, sort of old ones, uh, with a different label, uh, attached to them.

27:57 Ricardo Lopes: So I would like to hear more from you about issue-based identity. So what causes issue-based identities? I mean what leads to the development or what are the factors that Help to convert an issue into an identity and in the book you explore things like issue contestation, issue expression, and issue alignment. So could you tell us about that?

28:29 Sara Hobolt: Perhaps, uh, a good place to start is what is what a social identity is because what we're interested here is really issue-based identity as a type of social identity, and that's really what makes it different from having an opinion on a political issue. So, you know, social identity is a sense of who we are as people based on what group we belong to. And we have lots of these social identities. So, you know, I might have a social identity as a, you know, an academic and a political scientist and a Londoner and a Danish person, and they sort of form my perception of who I am, but also who I'm not, like who are the people who are not like that. So, Both gives me a kind of a sense of, of worth and self-esteem, uh, in terms of basis of I, I belong to these groups, but it can also sometimes, if these identities are polarized, it can also then be a source of, you know, outgroup prejudice and discrimination against the people who are not like that. Like sometimes, uh, uh, I think about it, uh, you know, yesterday I went to a football match. I always think this is like the pinnacle of where you can really see, you know, these social identities and outgroup things in action, because here you have, you know, I just happen to have Fulham ticket, you know, Fulham season tickets, which is sort of a bit random in a way. But once you're sitting there in the stands, you're like, we're the best, and these other guys are complete losers and sort of worse words. So that's the sort of the in-group feeling. Uh, AND also the outgroup animus in, in play. Now, so, so that's a social identity and often, uh, the literature and political science have focused a lot on social identities that were based on more, we might think of as scriptive characteristics like, oh, it might be race, or it might be Gender, it might be class or, or, or partisanship, which is the perhaps the most powerful social political based social identity that we often think of that predicts all sorts of things like attitudes and voting behavior and so on. And so the, to, to answer your question, to get to issue-based identity, that's really where you have a political issue that where you form an that you have a view on, and you form an identity on the basis of other people holding the same view on that issue. Uh, AND, and, and some people holding the opposite view or a different view. Now, of course, we have lots of views on, on things in, in politics and policy that never, you know, lead to an identity. I might like low taxes or I might like regular bin collection, but I don't go around thinking, oh, I'm the sort of once a week bin collector person or the low tax, even the low tax person. I mean, some people might have an identity based on that, but most don't. It's just views you have, yeah. So, so really what we, you know, that's why it's the sort of the puzzle, one of the puzzles of the book is, so when does, as we show quite clearly, an issue become um uh something that's the basis of an identity and also the basis of tribal politics. And, and as I mentioned before, that's really a part of not just really the issue itself, but the how that issue plays out politically and socially. And that's why we have these, these 3, kind of, you know, conditions to sort of think about how could that work beyond Brexit, the sort of issue contestation, uh, issue expression, and also lack of issue alignment. Uh, HAPPY to, to sort of elaborate on that, but that's, that's really, that's really where we get from the social identity, the issue identity.

32:04 Ricardo Lopes: Yes, please elaborate a little bit more on that, particularly on the factor related to issue alignment.

32:13 Sara Hobolt: Yes, so, so, um, so the three factors are really ones where we all see them in Brexit, but we also think that they could characterize why other issues become identities. So starting with. CONTESTATION, not surprisingly for an issue to become an identity, something people feel strongly and emotively about. It has to be something that's heavily contested, sort of very salient, not only salient, but also where there's considerable disagreement between, you know, political actors, between people in the population. So in Brexit, of course, we went from a point where this was not a heavily contested issue, but by calling a referendum, all of a sudden, it became everything everyone talked about, and that didn't stop with the referendum. We then had 56 years where it was all everyone talked about, because it was then the question of what Brexit, what does it look like? And a constant refighting of this issue. Should we really remain in the EU? Would there be a no-deal Brexit, and so on. So it was constantly contested. Now, the second thing is what we call issue expression, because sometimes issues can be contested at the elite level, but we as citizens never really have to commit. And that's with a lot of issues like the taxation issue. Oh, we might have views, but we're not really committing. We might be in the sort of middle, oh, I like low taxes, but I also like a big welfare state, but I'm never really asked to commit, am I in the low tax, small state, or in the high tax, high state category. I just sort of can have my cake and eat it. Now what happened when there's issue expression is you have to commit in some way, uh, uh, on one side or the other. Now, of course, what we do in an election or in a referendum, here you had all these people, many of whom were in the middle, they committed, they were compelled to either vote. Physically go down, put a cross. Now, once I've put that cross, I can no longer be this, you know, ambivalent person in the middle, because I have committed to saying no, in fact, I am a leaver, and I then have to sort of keep thinking about, well, I'd like to, I don't like to be wrong. So once I've said, OK, leave is the way it goes, then when news comes out, oh, maybe Brexit wasn't good, I'm like, Oh, that's not great, because I can't be wrong, because I took the right choice. I committed to that choice. So I will see things through that lens. Similarly, if I vote to remain, I'm going to interpret everything like, God, Brexit was terrible, and I was right all along. So that's the sort of issue expression. Now, that's not just a vote, we can, you know, some people, I'm sure you know, people like that, they go on social media. And they express, they recommit to their issue, you know, to their view on a particular issue, or in the case of Brexit, we had the biggest online petition ever of people who said they wanted a second referendum or people's vote on the EU. So that's a way that we keep recommitting to conversation with peers online, offline, and so on. So that the expression then rarefies, calcifies our identities in a way that simply having a view doesn't do. And the final thing is this lack of issue alignment. So here, that might seem a bit counterintuitive, but we're arguing if an issue, a conflict over an issue is not neatly aligned with existing partisan or party competition, it's more likely to become a new identity. So some issues like the ones I discussed about tax, they form perhaps quite neatly into Labour versus Conservative. So if I decide I'm a super low tax person, it's pretty obvious that I should probably commit myself to the Conservatives over Labour. Some people might dispute that, but let's just see sort of broadly that that's how it would be. So it falls on a kind of existing conflict dimension that we know. So there's no need to invent a new political identity. In contrast, if you have an issue where the parties are split, then And it doesn't neatly align. First of all, you don't get sort of clear cues from the parties about how to, but also then if this is now the issue that I feel more strongly about than anything else, then a new identity can emerge. And Brexit again was an example of that. Especially the Conservative Party, was clearly split. You had David Cameron advocating the key person of the Remain side advocating to vote to stay in the EU, so a Remainer, and you had the key person of the Leave side, Boris Johnson, also a very prominent Conservative. Uh, PARTY politicians advocating to leave the EU. So already here, uh, the parties were split, and there was also Labour politicians. So that lack of alignment with the sort of main dominant partisan conflict means that if a new issue becomes salient, it's more likely to form a new identity, and we can, we can think of parallels with things like independence votes in Scotland. In Catalonia and so on. Again, where the parties are not, where partisan supporters are split internally and then you get these, these new identities emerging.

37:12 Ricardo Lopes: Right. Yeah, uh, uh, let me just say really quickly that you touched very briefly on football there, and I really want to avoid that topic altogether because I, I, I want to try to maintain my my. Impartiality here, but, but objectively here in Portugal, Porto is superior to Benfica, but

37:41 James Tilley: that's the fact. I'll I'll say that's fine. That's fine, yeah.

37:45 Ricardo Lopes: OK, so, but, so these identities, uh, around issues develop, uh, socially, politically. What are then the kinds of political and social consequences that, uh, the development of these identities can have? I mean, what, in what ways can those uh uh the uh or this kind of phenomenon change society and politics?

38:13 James Tilley: I mean, I think it goes back to almost when we were defining what tribal politics is, to be honest, because At the sort of social level you've got this us versus them dynamic between these, these two kind of, you know, relatively arbitrary defined groups. People think people in their own group are better than people in the other group, they want to spend more time with people in their own group than people um in the other group, they discriminate in favor of their own group versus the other group, um, and so on. So I think that I actually is quite an important social consequence because it means it's a, it's a way of sort of, uh. Um, HOW you interact with other people is changed because of it. You, you are choosing to interact in different ways with people on the basis of those, um, identities. The second consequence you also mentioned was this way in which Be Sara sort of touched on there, um, when she was talking about her, uh, her, uh. Attendance at Fulham, which is you view the world in a different way, yeah, you, you sort of, uh, you see whatever, whether the referee is good or bad at the football match, but in the context of our thing, whether the economic performance of the country is good, where, whether democracy is working well, what policy positions are, are, are correct through that lens of the identity. And I think there is then a final consequence, which is, um, uh, so it goes back to what Sara was saying about the, um, the sort of idea of issue alignment. Because It may well be the case that prior to these new identities, uh, being created, that they're not aligned, say, with the, uh, with People's Party identities. But a possible consequence of this is that parties have to react to the new identities and so organize themselves in, in, in different kinds of ways around those new, um, identity, uh, groupings. So parties might shift to try and, you know, accommodate them to win over perhaps voters organized on those, around those divisions. So I think that's a sort of a, a more directly, in this case, party political consequence, but. To be honest, I actually see the consequences as perhaps more importantly, at the kind of social level, um, how just how individuals go about their daily lives and, and, and perceive the world.

40:23 Ricardo Lopes: Uh, YES, and related to that in the book you explore phenomena like in-group affect, out-group animosity and prejudice, and effective polarization. So, um, what do those kind of phenomena allow for us to understand about the social dynamics that surround, um. That that surround basically these issue-based identities that develop and in the case of Brexit, the leavers and the remainder.

41:03 James Tilley: Um, I mean, I think on, on, on, on, on specifically those, those kind of elements, um, the phenomenon is actually, I guess, relatively straightforward, which is we start with in-group affect. That's basically means people like people like them, yeah, and they're defining like them in terms of this new identity. And so we, we know that people are generally like people like them, but the interesting question is how they define what is like them. Is it that, um, You know, Sarah mentioned her various identities. Is it that we're both, um, professors, we were both academics, or is it that she's a London and I'm not, you know, if depending on which of those you pick, we are part of the same identity or we're opposed to one another, um, well, opposed is perhaps a bit strong, but anyway, uh, let's not get into that. But, um, but, you know, so. But here what we're saying is these Brexit identities became how people define themselves and so it's that, you know, one of the key ways in which people might talk about themselves, think about themselves. Um, AND I mean, I won't go into great detail, but you know, we, we try and measure this in lots of different ways in the book. A, a really common way is, um, to use, uh, what are called feeling thermometers where you, you ask people how favorable or unfavorable they are to people on, uh, different groups, running from 0 to 100, 100 is you, you know, absolutely love them and 0 is you absolutely hate them. Um, IF we ask people about people on their own side of the Brexit identity group, they're giving scores of about 80, which is pretty high in this context. You know, for example, the, um, scores for, say, Labour and Conservative and Liberal Democrat identifiers, so party identifiers are more like 60 or 70. So this has got much stronger, people got much stronger in-group feeling towards, um, people on their Brexit, uh, side of the, uh, divide than they have actually for the, for the party political, um, things. Other measures would be, um, I think we have a sort of battery of items, but, uh, that try and get emotional attachment. So, and I, I, I always think that one of the best items there is, um, When you ask people, when you speak about people on your own side, do you say we or they? And I always think that gets to the heart of the matter, that you're actually describing people in this group as a we, you're part of them. Um, AND we see really quite high levels of agreement with those kind of statements for these, uh, for both Remainers and leavers, and again, higher than they are for party identities, um, in the main, which is the, you know, the, a convenient comparison point for us in a way because it, it's sort of saying, well, look. What is the primary in-group identification, uh, the primary political identity in-group identification in Britain? Actually, for the last 10 years, in the main, it's been not parties, it's been actually these Brexit groups, which I think is, is quite striking, uh, in some ways. Certainly as political scientists, I think. You know, when we talk about political identity, we almost just say, we always just mean party identity. They're almost synonymous to some extent, um, and yet here we actually see something quite different. Um, AND then on, in terms of the other things you mentioned, so the outgroup animosity and prejudice, I mean, in a way, it's just sort of flip it over and we see the the the same kind of thing. So again, take those feeling thermometers. Um, SO 0 to 100. What do you think about the other side? Well, people are giving scores they're about 20 or 30, so really quite low. Um, PEOPLE really quite dislike the other side. They're saying they have a cold, unfavorable feeling about, about the other side. Um, BUT I think again, like perhaps more striking than that is to look at, um, perhaps prejudice and things like discrimination, uh, so. We find really, I, I would say quite high levels of prejudice in favor of the in-group over the out-group, and there's lots of different ways to measure that, but, um, a really classic way is basically to ask people about positive and negative adjectives about, uh, different groups. Um, AND what you find is that people say, oh, my own side, uh, who, whichever one they are, yeah, they're honest, they're intelligent, they're selfless, and so on and so forth. So loads of good traits, um. The other side, oh no, they're dishonest, they're selfish, they're hypocritical, and a load of, of bad traits, and these are quite big differences in the way that people would describe the two groups. They'll ascribe traits, bad traits to the other side and good traits to their own side. Their own, you know, your own side, paragon's a virtue. The other side, awful people, um. And I mean, yeah, I could go on. Oh, perhaps there's one other thing I'll mention, which is about, um, we also asked people to describe in their own words what the other side was like, uh, and indeed their own side. Um, SO it's an open-ended question, you can write whatever you want. And I think what's really fascinating there is that, of course, some people describe the other side in terms of, um, some of the social characteristics you mentioned earlier, but often also the issue itself. So these are people who voted this way or have these views. But a lot of people. Uh, ESSENTIALLY just insults the other side. So 25% of people, all they do is give insults about the other side. Um, SO, you know, to give you a couple of examples, uh, brainwashed morons, selfish dicks, etc. ETC. YEAH. These are not very complimentary terms. Um, I, I could go on. In fact, these are, these are, these are the more, um, uh, some of the other options are probably not, not, uh, not ideal for the podcast, yeah, so like people are quite rude, um, so not everyone's willing to do that, but a, a substantial minority of people are, and I think. It does reveal something that that kind of level of prejudice about, um, maybe not exactly how people are dehumanizing the other side, but regarding them as lesser people, inferior people, uh, in one way or another, and I, I think that is quite an important social, um, uh, kind of consequence, um, of these new identities because. It's not that people weren't doing that before, of course, but they were using different criteria for which people, for which group they were in and which people or groups other people were in. And this is, uh, this has now become, uh, more about these political, um, identity groups, uh, based on the referendum vote.

46:58 Ricardo Lopes: And er can this lead to discrimination and if so, how does discrimination manifest in this particular context?

47:09 Sara Hobolt: I mean, maybe just, maybe just briefly, I mean, I think James described it very well that it really flows for this from this idea that part of what in-group and out-group, uh, polarization is about is that you consider your own. Group as superior to the other side. And of course, if you do indeed see the other side as, as inferior, it also makes sense that in a lot of contexts, you would want to choose, uh, your own side, someone belonging to your group over the other, you know, that almost sort of, uh, you know, if you do indeed think they have to think that people on the other side have all these character flaws, then why would you not, uh, you know, in a sense be biased or prejudiced against them when choosing. And just the one little example of that is we ran this experiment where instead of asking people specifically about leavers and remainers and their characteristics, we gave people sort of examples of CVs for who they might choose to rent a room to, you know, to be a lodger in their home. And so, you know, and they would have lots of things like what job do they have, uh, you know, what, what did they vote? The last general election, you know, what kind of age, education, you know, the kind of things. And you might think, oh, you want someone who has a well paying job and is a good cook or something like that. That's what you would think. But in fact, what really came out most strongly was that people did not want to live with someone who was, if they were a Remainer, a leaver, or vice versa. In other words, they discriminated a lot on the basis of uh Brexit identities. Now, that might be because they don't want to discuss Brexit, but it might also be because exactly like James said, they associated someone being, let's say a remainer with lots of other negative traits, uh, and therefore that in a sense that identity became part of who that person was. So, so that's an, that's an example exactly of how those identities also therefore can lead to discrimination in scenarios where that really wouldn't be about politics at all.

49:15 Ricardo Lopes: And this kind of uh identity formation, let's say, and the the social dynamics that develop around it. Uh, CAN also have, uh, a cognitive impact, uh, on people, right? Because in the book you talk about phenomena like confirmation bias and rationalization. So, uh, could you tell us a little bit about that in what ways, uh, people's cognition might operate in a way that goes according to the interests of the group they are now part of.

49:53 James Tilley: Yeah, I mean, uh, it'd be easy to tell you a lot about it, but I'll try and tell you a little about it, um, because there's, there's a lot there, I guess, actually. Um, BUT it, but in essence, like these strongly, these strongly held group identities, you know, they bias people in various ways, effectively towards ways in which it flatters their own side and sort of discredits the other side. Um, I think it's worth saying actually perhaps just a bit about why that might happen, like what the mechanism is there. Um, ONE possibility is obviously people want consistency in their views and opinions, you know, it's psychologically disconcerting to not have that kind of consistency. The other possibility is it's kind of more of a signaling mechanism, so you want to hold particular beliefs and opinions to signal something to typically people on your own side that you're a good person, you have the right views and things like that. So, um. One thing I always want to sort of emphasize this, this isn't, people aren't being irrational here necessarily, yeah, um, because it makes sense to try and curry favor with people, um, by adopting the, the kind of the right views for your group and to make truth kind of secondary to those considerations. So it's not, it's not that this is sort of irrational, um. Tribalism doesn't necessarily mean irrationality. It just means sort of, uh, um, adopting behaviors that are going to, uh, um, promote, promote you within the, within the, within the group. Um, ANYWAY, that, that's perhaps by the by, but I mean, I think it is useful just to quickly talk about that a little bit, um. And it's definitely the case people do engage in motivated reasoning. There's a lot of examples. Uh, WE could give, um, I, I think perhaps one of the, I'll just give one because I guess time's marching on, but I think 11 example that I think, um, is in some ways perhaps the most striking is the, uh, the way in which people regard, um, sort of democratic functioning. So one of the things we talk about in the book is the, the way in which people, uh, whether people think the referendum was fair or not, whether it was a sort of a fair democratic process. And I think one of the really interesting things there is if you look before the referendum had happened when, um, as we talked about, the broadly speaking, people thought Remain were going to win. Remainers said that it was going to be very fair and leavers said it was going to be very unfair. As soon as the referendum happened and Leave won, Remainers immediately said it had been unfair and Leavers said, oh no, it was very fair. So people adopted their view, changed their views of the, uh, sort of fairness of the democratic process, and these are big changes, not small changes, um, depending on whether they, whether they'd won, um, uh, or lost, and. You know, what, even today, about 60% of remain, over 60% of Remains I think still say that the referendum was not based on a fair democratic process. That's a lot, a lot of people who are questioning, um, a kind of, you know, basic, uh, basic part of, uh, democratic, um, functioning, and, and the reason for that is, is to go back to those mechanisms is because you can, you know, you can, uh. You can feel that you won, that you, you, you're superior in some way because that's your side really won. You can signal to fellow, in this case, Remainers, you're a good group member, you have the right opinion, uh, and you can cast down the virtue of the side because they cheated. They were, they were, they were unfair in some ways. So it's very appealing to kind of believe these kind of things, to adapt your views to, uh, basically better match your better match your group, um, identity. Um, I don't think there's anything you want to add to that, Sarah. I mean,

53:23 Sara Hobolt: just, I mean, another example that I think also. Really is relevant to what we discussed before when we said is how have, how has the sort of debate on Brexit developed is when you look at views on the economy, economy. So what I get quite a lot when I'm presenting this work is people, people say, well, you know, uh, I don't understand why anyone can still be supporting Brexit because it's been terrible for the economy. And often on the basis of that question, you can sort of maybe guess which side of the identity divide. BECAUSE if you look at views on the economy, uh, just generally, not even just views on how the effect of Brexit on the economy, for the EU economy, that's really divided along Brexit lines. What's fascinating is we actually looked at how people who ended up voting leave and remain, what were their views on how well the economy was doing in the run up to the referendum, and they weren't actually different. It's not that leavers were optimists and remainers were pessimists. They were quite similar. Now what happened almost overnight with the referendum is Remainers just became incredibly pessimistic about the econ the British economy and have, have remained so and leavers have remained sort of relatively more optimistic. So one thing is you just see this divide, which we also know in terms of partisan, the partisan lens that people who are, let's say I'm a Trump supporter in the US, I'm likely to think, oh, everything is going amazingly well in the American economy. We're winning all of these amazing trade wars and so on. If I'm a Democrat, I'm likely to think everything is just terrible. Yeah. And of course, the answer is probably in some ways, the American economy is doing well, and in some ways, it's perhaps not doing as well, sort of, you know, but that's not the partisan way of looking at it. And that lens is also one we see that Brexit identity is being used for this Brexit lens. And sometimes it might be that both sides are a bit, let's say pessimistic, for example, when there was a spike in energy crisis, you might say, oh, you know, everyone thinks that's not great. They recognize that there's been a negative, uh, shock to the economy. But how do you then attribute blame? If you're a remainer, you're going to say, well, that's clearly because of Brexit. If you're a leaver, you're going to say, well, you know, there was Russia invading Ukraine and all sorts of other things. So we really see also when it comes to how you interpret the world, that that is still today, 10 years on, shaped by your Brexit identities.

55:55 Ricardo Lopes: Right, so, uh, I would like to ask you now, uh, this is something that usually falls more on the camp of uh psychology because psychologists tend to be more interested than political scientists in exploring er people's individual traits. Instead of more, let's say, social factors or factors that play out on a collective level, but are individual psychological traits something that you think might also play a role here when it comes to people becoming more politically? Tribal, I, I mean, are certain people with certain psychological traits more likely to become tribal, or is that something that you think perhaps it doesn't play that big a role, at least compared to the other, um, social factors we've already talked about?

57:00 James Tilley: Yeah, I mean, I think one of, one of the questions we're interested in answering in the book is kind of like, well, Well, basically why are some people more attracted to their in-group identity and why are some people more hostile than others and, you know, one obvious explanation of course is some people had stronger views on the original issue because we were talking about an issue-based identity and obviously that is part of the story, um, but another part of the story is, is at least to some extent the kind of, uh, personality traits or the disposition or traits that people, people hold and um. I mean, in terms of specifics, um, if we look at the big five traits, then, uh, neuroticism, uh, tends, tends to be, uh, correlated with people who are more attached to their in-group, um, actually both for the Brexit identity and party identity. Uh, SO perhaps if you're high in neuroticism, you're someone who derives a bit more comfort from knowing you're a good member, um, of the in-group, and so we certainly find a bit of that as sort of psychological shield against threats which you feel more strongly. Um, AND then the hostility to the out-group, um, is people who are low in agreeableness, um, which is not that surprising because disagreeable people are generally kind of hostile to others, um, but they're also, uh, hostile to others in the political arena in terms of these political identity groups. So that's the big five traits, but actually the, the trait we find is kind of the most important, um, is actually, uh, one of the dark triads, so narcissism. Um, SO people in high in narcissism, they think their in-group is, uh, superior to the out-group, and they also are more hostile, um, sorry, yeah, they're also more hostile to the out-group, and that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, if you're high in narcissism, you think you are superior to other people, so it makes sense, you will think your group is superior, um, to others, and you tend to be a more antagonistic person, um, you know, you're more rivalrous, uh, with others, and so therefore more rivalrous between your group, uh, and other groups, um. Uh, AND one of the sort of interesting consequences of, of that is that, um, which I, I, I, I find interesting anyway, perhaps because I'm sort of very middle of the road and lots of things, but it means that the people who are quite extreme actually have something in common. They're quite similar in some ways. They have these kind of similar traits. Um, SO whether you're a really, uh, attached leaver or really, really, uh, attached remainer. You are likely to have on average, at least, you know, more similar psychological traits to one another than you are to, um, a fellow Remainer or a Leaver who's, um, uh, who's, uh, who's who's less attached to that identity. Um, SO yeah, there's something to that. I, I wouldn't want to overemphasize it, you know, these, these correlations are not hugely strong, but they are definitely there and we do consistently find them for both sides, you know, and so it's not that narcissism predicts you're on one side rather than the other, it predicts the strength of your identity and your hostility to the out-group for both groups.

59:52 Ricardo Lopes: Oh my God, don't tell me that, uh, horseshoe theory is correct on a psychological level.

1:00:00 James Tilley: Not quite, but

1:00:02 Ricardo Lopes: yeah. OK, so, uh, toward the end of your book, you talk about 4 different scenarios for the continuing role of Brexit identities and you explore restoration, revival, realignment, and replacement. Uh, SO what does each of those possible scenarios correspond to, and, uh, I mean, what do you think that one of them is more likely than the others, or what can we tell about that?

1:00:38 Sara Hobolt: So in the book, because we were sort of sitting a bit on the fence, uh, but now, of course, uh, you know, things have happened, so perhaps we can Uh, you know, also evaluate a bit in terms of the evidence so far and think about what has in fact occurred for the sort of the four scenarios that we set out. So one was restoration, and that was one thing, oh, things will return to normal when it comes to party competition in the UK, which means mainly based on kind of classic economic issues, mainly with the dominance of the Conservative and Labour Party, and we're going to forget about this little episode in British history where everything was about Brexit. And I think that it's fair to say that that isn't really what we're seeing. Uh, FIRST of all, the issues that are kind of correlated with Brexit identities to some extent, the kind of what we might think of as cultural politics, the kind of more identity-based issues, they are still very much dominating the political debate, although of course the economy also matters. But the other thing is also that the dominance that we've seen in post-war of really 100 years of British politics. OF these two major parties really evaporated. So we have, if we look at the polls, certainly, uh, Labour and Conservative both look a lot weaker than they did going into this referendum a decade ago. So we haven't certainly not seen a full restoration act. It looks like Brexit has sort of messed, shaken things up in some ways. So then the question is, in what way, and there I don't think we can fully give you the answer, but we can speculate in what way has this shakeup happened. So one is a realignment. So that's saying, OK, uh, maybe, uh, uh, and we see that, of course, in a lot of Europe, not just um uh in Britain, that we've seen this. It's not only about sort of left-right economics. We have this second dimension that's really about kind of cultural issues where issues like immigration. Uh, NATIONAL sovereignty, uh, these sort of more identity-based cultural issues matter a lot more, and they are really the ones that decide voting behavior and party competition. And Brexit kind of put that to the fore with the issue of, of, of leaving or staying in the European Union, but also a lot of what was debated in the Brexit referendum was about controlling borders, Do we want Britain to look like, kind of these cultural issues. Um, AND that is indeed what we're seeing. Also, we have seen, you know, in the last few years, the emergence of two, you know, particularly on the radical right, the Reform UK led by Nigel Farage, which is a strong kind of force that was really the key topics are around cultural issues, mainly immigration. Um, BUT also on the populist left, uh, with the Green Party and its new leader that's really campaigning, uh, uh, on the other side of that. So that's the kind of realignment that Brexit in some ways, um, uh, we think have given rise to. And one of the reasons that even though Brexit isn't ever on the ballot paper or really a key issue is that when you look at patterns of voting behavior, you can really see. Kind of Brexit blocs. So you have the people who are leavers, they vote for the Conservative and Reform UK overwhelmingly in the sort of 80% plus, and the people who are remainers vote overwhelmingly for what we might think of the socially progressive parties, uh, Labour, Lib Dems, and the Greens. So even though it isn't about Brexit, we have seen this kind of realignment around blocs. Then, um, the question of sort of slightly more radical scenario is one of a replacement. So that's to say perhaps Brexit, because it was such a major political shock that gave rise to new identities, will simply wipe out, uh, this, uh, you know, uh, century-old dominance of Labour conservatives. They were split on the issue. They couldn't contain it within themselves. They gave, there were new political. Identities that became more important. So perhaps they'll just be replaced by more purer versions. In this case, it could be, you know, reform UK. On the one side that's clearly a much more pure version of, you know, you know where Nigel Farage stands on the EU. Yeah, he's, you know, the architect in some ways, if you can think of it that way, of this idea of leaving the European Union. So perhaps there will be a replacement. I mean, we don't know. Whether that's going to happen, but certainly in a British context, it's quite shocking in some ways to see reform for such a long period of time being ahead of the two major parties in the polls. So certainly things have been shaken up. And so one of the reasons that we think that that's been shaken up is because people abandoned, or at least downgraded their partisan identity. IN order to adopt these new identities. So there were, so once you've done that once, and you've said, oh, actually, I'm a conservative, but I don't agree with David Cameron. I'm a believer, it's then easier to take the next step and say, well, if I'm, you know, I voted against my prime minister and my party once, why don't I just, you know, shift my vote choice altogether and become a reform supporter and so on. So there was a sort of acceleration of the weakening of partisan identities. The final uh uh uh scenario that we talk about is that a revival, which is this idea of maybe Brexit comes like Brexit itself, not just to sort of correlates, but Brexit itself is back on the agenda, you know, are we going to have a rejoin campaign? Are we going to, well, so far, as we talked about the Labour Party in particular has been quite shy of talking about rejoining the EU. One reason for that is of course that they still have quite a lot of voters, supporters, or voters they would like to attract in the next general election, who are who are leavers, and so they, that looks like a risky strategy in some ways, even though if we look at the people who actually voted for them last time, they are overwhelmingly remainers, but it seems like maybe ignoring the issues better. So right now we're not seeing. A big sort of mobilization around Brexit. However, that doesn't mean it couldn't happen. And the point about identities being sticky, that if there was that political entrepreneurship that, that mobilized around it, there would be people to mobilize. You know, there would be people out there, including it probably in the corridors of where I sit, who would be like, oh, Yeah, hallelujah. Now we get to go out in the street, and, you know, who would be excited about um a rejoin campaign. There would also be people on the other side who would be furious, who would think, you know, our democratic choice has been taken away, and who would therefore be mobilized in opposition. So I'm not saying it's, we're not saying, I think predicting, you know, predicting is sort of a fool's game that it's going to happen, just to say that if there were the political entrepreneurs who wanted to take that fight, that debate, there would be people who'd be there alongside them fighting.

1:07:39 Ricardo Lopes: Yeah, so I have just one last question that is sort of a more general question, even though of course it can also apply to this Brexit issue, but is tribal politics something that can be overcome, and if so, how?

1:07:59 James Tilley: So I think I'm the natural pessimist, so I should go first on this, and then you can end on a more optimistic note. Um, BUT I think I, I think I, yeah, I'm definitely more of the Eyo between the two of, uh, Zar and us. And so I think, I mean, I just think intrinsically people are drawn to group identities. It's emotionally satisfying to belong to a team in politics that normally manifests itself as a party identity, but it doesn't have to, as we've been talking about for the last, for the last hour. Um, AND indeed in some European countries, it's not a party identity either. It's an ideological identity. People think of themselves as leftists or rightists, for example, but has the same kind of, um, structuring to politics and to society as, as we find for Brexit identities or many people find party identities. Whatever it is, that thing is the thing that tends to shape most of your political opinions and ideas. And so politics is a team sport, uh, in my opinion, um, in the main and. And that's not crazy, it's, you know, it's not irrational. Most people aren't very interested in politics. Political decisions aren't going to affect you very much, and even if they do, you can't do anything about it. So it's quite sensible for people to sort of embrace this kind of political tribalism, to adopt biased views of the world because it's sensible to show that you're a good group member. I'll bring you some benefits, whereas actually the truth, um, often won't. So I just think there's sort of an intrinsic, um. Uh, TENDENCY for people to, uh, to go down this kind of route. The exact nature of that, I think, varies and, and that's, you know, kind of what we were, I think, very interested in that, that it had varied from the default option, if you like, of the party identity and in Britain over the last 10 years to this different political identity. But the actual consequences of that are in some ways quite similar, uh, they're just structured around uh different identities. So I think I, I would be sort of like, it is actually very difficult to overcome this. I think it is a sort of just an intrinsic feature of, of party, of political life. But Sarah might well disagree on this, I think, so. Or maybe not.

1:09:58 Sara Hobolt: No, I don't think I disagree, but I think also there's also a kind of social and political context that might make these things more, even more likely to happen. So I think we are, you know, we're sort of partisan element, partisan sort of. Not as in political party, but we do like to belong to groups and it gives us benefit. But on top of that, we're now, I think, increasingly operating in worlds that are fragmented and where we have our own, you know, we like to surround ourselves with people or, or whether on social media or in how we consume news, uh, or perhaps even, you know, you know, who we interact with who are more like ourselves in political news. So we didn't find. You know, that much evidence of in the book of a kind of social media effect. But I think even in the decades since the referendum, you know, that's become more pronounced that, you know, when I grew up, there was like one news channel in Denmark, everyone watched it. So you're kind of forced, there was some kind of, it's true. I remember when TV news came in the news channel, and everyone thought like democracy is over. You can't have like a second news channel. But there was only one channel. And so there was a kind of a level playing field. Everyone would kind of, there was high, higher trust, I think, and people viewed or bred sort of similar things. There was still partisanship, but there was some, some common denominator of what kind of information you got. And Now we are living in a world where we can increasingly if we want to, and that's a great feeling. Just listen to people who agree with us. And James and I've done other research showing that when we do that, we do become more polarized, we do become more intolerant. Uh, BUT the, the psychological boost of just being there with my Fulham supporters, oh yeah, Chelsea, they're terrible. We're so great. The referee was Rick. It's a great feeling. It's not as great when someone telling you, actually, perhaps, you know, Fulham didn't play as well as Chelsea. So you can see how You know, I think there are some things in the broader sort of social and political environment that might make tribal politics provide really fertile ground for tribal politics. However, I mean, I think that's probably for another book, because we don't show that, but that's, uh, that's my hunch in terms of what might happen.

1:12:12 Ricardo Lopes: Great. So the book is again Tribal Politics How Brexit Divided Britain. There it is in its printed version, and of course I'm leaving a link to it in the description of the interview. And would you like to tell us where they can find you and your work on the internet, perhaps starting with you, Dr. Hoboldt.

1:12:36 Sara Hobolt: Uh, WELL, I mean, very easy to find if you Google me. I'm also on the Blue Sky and LinkedIn or just on the LSE, uh, if you want to Google my name, I'm easy to get in touch with and always interested in talking about these kind of subjects.

1:12:51 Ricardo Lopes: How about you, Doctor Tilly?

1:12:53 James Tilley: Uh, I'm a bit more elusive on the internet, but I do have a web page somewhere that the department maintains, so.

1:13:00 Ricardo Lopes: OK, I, I will add that to the description and thank you both so much for taking the time to come on the show. I really love the book and it's been really nice to talk with you about

1:13:11 James Tilley: it. Well, thank you very much for inviting us again. Yeah,

1:13:14 Sara Hobolt: thank you so much.

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