The EU referendum, religion and identity: analysing the British Election Study

The post-2015 British Election Study ran from May to September last year surveying a random sample of the British public regarding their vote choice in May 2015. It also asked broader questions including attitudes towards the EU and whether respondents would vote Leave or Remain in a future referendum. Demographic data, including ethnicity and religious affiliation and attendance, were also gathered in the study. Here Siobhan McAndrew analyses this data, finding a notable difference in voting between Anglicans and members of other faith groups, as well as how an English identity (or its manifestation as distinct from Britishness) has a strong association with referendum voting intentions

Religion and party liking: how members of different faith communities feel about different political parties

Is religion likely to matter for British party politics in the coming election? Here Siobhan McAndrew investigates the most recent wave of the British Election Study online panel. She finds that overall religious affiliation matters for how people feel towards the major parties but there is a substantial overlap between religious affiliation and other identities and basic values

Standing in front of bulldozers? Explaining policy stability in land use planning

Policy towards planning presents scholars of politics and public policy with a significant puzzle. Since 1947, there has been a surprising level of stability in the system used to plan the use of land. On the other hand, there has been growing evidence that insufficient land has been released for development. The paper considers the question why, in spite of the planning system demonstrably failing to allocate sufficient land, fundamental reform of the system has not been achieved. In answering the question, the paper considers in particular attempts at reform under the Labour governments from 1997 to 2010. It argues that there is an interplay of interests, ideas and institutions: public attitudes, the interests of certain sections of the population, and institutions which are responsive to these attitudes and interests combined to stymie policy reform. As a consequence, radical reform was not achieved, and the paper concludes that attempt to find a technical “fix” to the planning system are unlikely to succeed. A diagnosis recognising the political and distributive nature of the problem will be required

Social capital and belonging: the 'citizens of somewhere' are more likely to be pro-EU

A notional divide between 'anywheres', 'nowheres' and 'somewheres' has emerged since the EU referendum. Paula Surridge, Siobhan McAndrew and Neema Begum (University of Bristol) explored attitudes towards the EU in the context of social identities, social capital and neighbourhood belonging. Counterintuitively, they found that people with a stronger attachment to their locality tended to be more pro-EU. Imagined communities based ..

Violent extremist tactics and the ideology of the far left

This study addresses the question of whether a relationship exists between sympathy for violent extremism and openness to ideological positions associated with the revolutionary far left. We begin by analysing the characteristics of British far-left sectarian groups: that is, small, ideologically homogeneous organisations, each of which rejects parliamentary politics as a route to socialism and instead aspires to become the ‘vanguard party’ of Leninist revolutionary theory. We distinguish the members of such groups from members of the public who identify as ‘very left-wing’. We then develop a survey instrument derived from publications by sectarian far-left groups and pilot it on a stratified random sample of the selfidentified ‘very left-wing’ (N = 1073). The data collected is then re-used as a boost sample for a nationally-representative sample of the British public (N = 3823). Using these data, we test the hypothesis of a positive association between the belief system disseminated by the sectarian far left – which we term ‘revolutionary workerism’ – and sympathy with violent extremist tactics. We find a relationship which is highly significant in both statistical and substantive terms: those who express strong agreement with revolutionary workerist ideas are far more likely to express sympathy with violent extremist tactics than those who express strong disagreement. We also find a positive relationship between sympathy for violent extremism and a geopolitical outlook resembling the ‘anti-imperialist’ ideology promoted by the sectarian far left, in that those who see the US and the UK (and, among the ‘very leftwing’, also Israel) as a greater threat to world peace than NATO strategic adversaries such as North Korea tend to be more sympathetic to violent extremism than those who do not

Establishment of an Innovative Telehealth Speech and Language Therapy Placement as a Rapid Response to COVID-19: Sharing the Learning

The aim of this evaluation was to explore practice educators’ and speech and language therapy (SLT) students’ experiences of a rapid response telehealth placement in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in order to inform quality improvement. In March 2020, public health restrictions were imposed across Ireland in efforts to ‘flatten the curve’ in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. All placements were cancelled. According to an Irish Association of Speech and Language Therapists survey in April 2020, 47% of SLTs were redeployed to swabbing and contact tracing roles, and many remain redeployed seven months later. This redeployment, along with strict public health measures in clinical sites, significantly reduced the availability of clinical placements. A rapid response was required to enable students to develop clinical competencies. Although telehealth has been used to deliver speech and language therapy in other countries, it had not been used routinely in service provision in Ireland. In this article, we outline how we built on existing partnerships with practice educators, both on- and off-site, to design a much-needed telehealth placement. We explored educators’ and students’ experiences using an online focus group and online survey respectively. The evaluations of practice educators were positive in that despite their initial apprehension, they reported that this placement provided valuable learning opportunities for students while also providing benefits for clients. They also reported some technological and sustainability challenges. The students also evaluated this placement positively with 83.3% of respondents rating the placement as ‘excellent ‘and 16.7% rating it as ‘good’. All stakeholders valued this learning experience

Brexit and the Cultural Sector

A collaborative ebook on the effects of the Brexit vote on the UK's cultural sector and its agents: "It's not just the economy, stupid! Brexit and the Cultural Sector", edited by Gesa Stedman and Sandra van Lente. Our contributors come from a broad range of cultural and artistic practice and many of them worry about two aspects which have come to the fore in the context of Brexit: the stark social rift which separates the Leave and Remain camps, and the nasty rise of xenophobia and insularity in all its different shapes and forms. Although our authors do not intend to be read or viewed as all-encompassing, and although they differ in respect to the focus they chose for their essays, poems, or statements, one aspect unifies their utterances: passion. Passion for the multi-faceted characteristics of culture, language, exchange, dialogue, border-crossings, passion for an outward-looking approach to both Britain, its different nations, and its neighbours close and far. A passionate fear of what Britain might lose in the process of departing from the EU. And the fear of loss does not concentrate on the loss of revenue or even on the probable obstacles to travel and artistic exchange once Brexit is in place. But the loss of ambivalence and ambiguity, the loss of conflicting opinions, texts, stances, diversity, in short: everything that culture, which is free to find its own forms of expression, is valued for