In 1987, the first gay kiss on EastEnders — a mild peck on the forehead — led to a furious backlash and calls for censorship. This year, as the soap marks its 40th birthday, hardly anyone in Britain would bat an eyelid. Since that kiss, the changes in social attitudes have been extraordinary, not just on LGBT issues but on every cultural question — from mental health to international aid and the environment.
This change illustrates a strange paradox in British politics: while the public grows ever more socially liberal, politics appears to be heading in the opposite direction. Reform UK’s polling regularly hits 25%, far outstripping the popularity of hard-Right parties 40 years ago. And a newly ascendant Blue Labour movement speaks in increasingly sympathetic terms of Donald Trump and JD Vance.
Hence the EastEnders paradox. Four nights a week, viewers tune in to the BBC One soap, which now includes an LGBT club and a far more diverse range of characters and issues than in 1987. But come polling day, they opt for the nativist Right, which many Brits would never have dreamed of doing back then. In this context, it’s easy for liberals to feel an irresistible pull: if voters keep asking for the same thing, then surely politicians owe it to them?
Perhaps it is only TV producers who’ve become more liberal. Perhaps elites are imposing political correctness on conservative audiences, as the Right claims. Perhaps. But, for the most part, the numbers tell a different story.
In Britain, support for same-sex relationships doubled between 2000 and 2022, while support for abortion rights increased by 22 percentage points between 1998 and now. The proportion of Brits who are “very concerned” about the environment has nearly doubled since 2010. And the proportion “strongly disagreeing” that you must be white to be British rose by 29 percentage points between 2008 and 2020. The number of people who would mind a foreigner living next door is now negligible. Support for the death penalty is falling fast.
The headwinds, in other words, are blowing against Reform. And these headwinds exist, to some degree, across all social demographics and all political allegiances.
Many of today’s Right populists aren’t claiming to be socially conservative on every issue, of course — at least not in the ultra-traditionalist, religious sense. But it’s noticeable that the trend is especially marked on immigration — the signature issue of the Right. A 2024 report from the British Social Attitudes survey (BSA) — the UK’s gold standard in social research — revealed that the proportion of Brits saying immigration was good for the economy had risen from 17% to 40% between 2002 and 2024. The proportion saying it enriched our culture went from 33% to 43%.
A particularly notable finding here is that race and immigration have seen a de-coupling. The proportion of Brits who wanted inward immigration by white ethnicities cut to “none” fell 22 percentage points, from 35% in 2002 to 13% in 2021. But it fell by even more — 33 percentage points — when it came to non-white migrants: from 49% in 2002 to 16% in 2021. There is now virtually no difference. This pro-migrant sentiment appeared to peak immediately before the cost-of-living crisis set in, and has since fallen. But it remains much higher than a generation ago.
“The headwinds are blowing against Reform.”
This implies that today’s immigration debate isn’t a proxy for nativist views. As polling expert Peter Kellner pointed out recently, voters are often positive about immigrants as people but negative about immigration as an idea. Antipathy stems from a fear that more arrivals put more pressure on public services, as well as from a specific frustration with the continued arrival of small boats, which implies to voters a broken system.
If the public is becoming more liberal, then how do we explain the drift towards the Right? The bleak state of the economy and low trust in politicians doubtless play a role — although there’s no reason why such factors should point in a Right-wing direction rather than a Left-wing one. But a large part of the answer lies, the BSA report suggests, in the differing pace of changes in attitudes, particularly over the past 15 years. The whole country is becoming more liberal, but at different speeds. And it’s this discrepancy that creates political tension and rewards parties like Reform.
The Silent Generation (born before 1945) became 12 percentage points more positive toward immigration during the 2010s (from 7% to 19% support for “allowing many” into the country), for instance. But Millennials (born 1986-1995) became 21 percentage points more positive (from 19% to 40%).
During the Brexit years, meanwhile, those with no qualifications became 16 percentage points more likely to say immigration made the country a better place (from 20% in 2014 to 36% in 2021). But degree holders became 23 percentage points more likely (from 50% to 73%).
The same goes for political allegiance. In the decade after 2011, Tory supporters became 20 percentage points more likely to say immigration was good for the economy (from 15% to 35%), but Labour supporters became 36 percentage points more likely to say so (from 29% to 65%).
To explain this, Professor Rob Ford, who co-authored the BSA report, describes a “two-speed liberalisation”. The 2010s saw the mean average move in a progressive direction, but with a wider gap opening up between those making this transition quickly, from a fairly liberal start-point, and those making it more slowly, from a less liberal one.
This gap is the terrain on which Britain’s culture wars are often fought. And part of the reason they are often so unpleasant is because they frequently involve fast liberalisers accusing slower liberalisers of bigotry. The latter, who have usually witnessed and often themselves welcomed massive social changes during their lifetimes, take umbrage at this.
If you look at the generational gap over time between liberal and authoritarian attitudes, you can see it closing between the Eighties and 2000s, as older generations embraced more liberal attitudes during a permissive period. But this was followed by a resurgence of the gap in the 2010s and the era of social media: younger generations moved rapidly in more progressive directions, but older generations did not follow.
There are many causes of this two-speed process, several of which are described in detail by Maria Sobolewska and Robert Ford in their book, Brexitland. Growing regional inequality means the experience of living in large cities like London and Manchester has become increasingly different from that of living elsewhere. Higher levels of university education have also created more liberal norms — especially in these big cities.
Then there’s the fact that migration itself has led to more diversity. This has increased the size of the target for the radical Right, even if the strength of public feeling is milder.
Added to this, the First Past The Post electoral system has skewed politics in favour of slower liberalisers, who are more evenly spread across the country. And the presence of social media has amplified every difference within the population, making it easy to mischaracterise the view of others as either “snowflakes” or “gammon”.
If you take a step back, the reality is that the British electorate holds a remarkably moderate set of views, wherever you look on the political spectrum. The inference is not that “progressive elites” must reconnect with anti-migrant majorities. It’s that the pace of social change requires leadership, public faith in the system, and a shared sense of direction and control.
We have seen none of this in recent years — the belief instead being that loud mood music, tough rhetoric or promises to “slash” immigration numbers can win the day. Bad money is thrown after good.
Instead, the gaps which two-speed liberalisation opens up must be reconciled, with coherent positions arrived at which are in the national interest. Some of these are thorny, requiring concessions from both sides to find common ground. Freedom of speech and equalities are two such areas. On the former, clear rules are needed about what’s sayable and what really is hate speech; within these parameters a less judgmental debate should be encouraged. On the latter, we need to be clear about goals and definitions.
On immigration, meanwhile, the most contentious of the lot, a position is needed which commands wide support. In my view this ought to combine higher migration with greater control. Britain could publicly promise more migration in key sectors — alongside a more humane asylum system — while also offering the control which would-be Reform voters and many others are clearly desperate for, such as through the introduction of ID cards to tackle illegal working. After all, control appears to be more important to the public than reducing the number of immigrants, and the hard-Right’s obsession with the latter should be challenged.
Such a position would require both fast and slow liberalisers to take certain elements on the chin. But it would be reasonable, fair and in the national interest. It could be defended in good faith.
I don’t doubt that some people, looking at the rise of the populist Right, will see a term like “two-speed liberalisation” as a piece of progressive jargon, designed to evade tough questions. But the goings on in EastEnders’ Albert Square over the past 40 years tell a different story. If the Left is to engage with Reform’s appeal, we need to start by seeing the British people for the social liberals they are.
