BELIEF AGAINST INTEREST
What we believe. What we choose. What happens next.
Humans believe things.
We always have.
Some people believe in the Virgin Mary.
Some believe the stars can tell them what happens next.
Some believe in things that have never existed at all.
A unicorn can be drawn, described, recognised and understood by millions of people without anybody ever having seen one.
Belief is powerful like that.
But political belief is different in one important respect.
Eventually, it can become policy. And policy becomes real.
THE GAP
You can believe immigration is responsible for the decline of your town.
You can believe leaving a trading bloc will make your country richer.
You can believe welfare spending is going to somebody else.
You can believe government healthcare is wasteful.
You can believe a politician when they tell you that they are going to protect people like you.
You can believe experts. You can distrust them.
You can believe newspapers, television, politicians, friends, family, Facebook posts, podcasts or somebody talking into a camera from their bedroom.
And what happens when the consequences of that choice eventually arrive?
This project lives in that gap.
PEOPLE AREN’T SPREADSHEETS.
The idea that people simply vote according to their financial interests has never adequately explained politics.
Sometimes those things matter more to somebody than another £500 in their bank account.
That doesn’t necessarily make their choice irrational.
If somebody knowingly accepts being economically poorer because controlling immigration matters more to them, they have made a trade-off.
The more interesting cases are where the trade-off isn’t recognised at all.
Where somebody believes the cost will fall on somebody else.
Where a welfare cut means their benefits, not mine.
Where government healthcare means waste, until the hospital serving my community closes.
Where economic disruption is something experts warned about, but the warning itself became evidence that the experts couldn’t be trusted.
That is where belief becomes something worth investigating.
EXPLORE Voting Against Yourself →“I LOVE THE POORLY EDUCATED.”DONALD TRUMP / NEVADA / 2016
It became one of those lines that followed him everywhere.
But underneath the joke is a serious political question.
What was Trump identifying?
Education has become an important electoral dividing line in several democracies.
But education is not intelligence.
A university degree does not make somebody wise. Not having one does not make somebody stupid.
Does education change how people evaluate information?
Does it affect institutional trust?
Does economic security matter more?
Does geography?
Does the disappearance of industry?
Does leaving a declining town for university change somebody’s politics — while simultaneously changing the political composition of the town they left behind?
And when graduates leave struggling communities, are we looking at education changing political beliefs?
Or political geography being changed by migration?
The question is more complicated than the insult.
EXPLORE I Love the Poorly Educated →SOMEONE ELSE IS GETTING YOURS.
This may be one of the oldest political stories there is.
Something has gone wrong.
Then somebody supplies an explanation.
Someone else is getting what should have been yours.
Different movements identify different outsiders.
Sometimes genuine prejudice is involved.
Sometimes genuine competition over scarce resources is involved.
Sometimes legitimate economic grievances become attached to explanations that deserve examination.
Who actually lost it? Who decided how it was distributed? And was the person you were encouraged to blame actually responsible?
Political language frequently creates an imagined welfare recipient.
Somebody else.
Somebody undeserving.
Somebody exploiting the system.
But government support reaches deep into societies.
People can support taking something away without recognising themselves as one of the people it may be taken from.
This project will follow those decisions all the way from the slogan to the household.
EXPLORE But I Didn’t Mean Me →VOTING AGAINST YOURSELF.
Now we get to the ballot box.
The question isn’t whether every Trump voter, Reform voter, Brexit voter or AfD voter is economically irrational.
They aren’t.
Nor do millions of people vote for precisely the same reason.
The question is narrower.
Where political movements receive substantial support from economically insecure communities, what happens when those movements subsequently implement policies affecting the economic systems those communities depend upon?
NO GUESSING. NO ASSUMING MOTIVATION. FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE.
WHEN BELIEF BECOMES IDENTITY.
Sometimes disagreement stops being about the original question.
Brexit became more than Britain’s membership of the European Union.
Trump became more than a candidate.
COVID became more than a virus.
Arguments about vaccines, lockdowns, masks, experts, institutions and government became entangled with questions of trust, freedom, identity and belonging.
Political disagreement began communicating something about who somebody was.
And that creates another problem.
Changing your mind can become psychologically and socially expensive.
Because you are no longer changing an opinion.
You may feel as though you’re betraying your group.
Admitting the other side was right.
Questioning people you trusted.
Or questioning yourself.
Or does belief reinterpret reality?
THE LOOP.
But that isn’t inevitable.
At any point, something can interrupt the loop.
Or simply discovering that something you believed would happen didn’t.
THE CONTRADICTION TEST.
Every investigation in this project ultimately comes back to seven questions.
Sometimes the answer will be yes.
Sometimes no.
Sometimes the economic cost was understood and willingly accepted.
Sometimes the promised consequence never happened.
Sometimes something completely different mattered more.
That’s the point.
BELIEF MEETS REALITY HERE.
A grievance can be
A grievance can be genuine without every explanation for it being correct.
A political choice can be rational without being economic.
A person can be highly educated and profoundly mistaken.
A person with no qualifications can understand their circumstances perfectly well.
And none of us approaches the world without beliefs of our own.