Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

They're right - and he is running to lead Unite one of the biggest unions in the country. If your line about Priti Patel is not something you'd say about Theresa May (e.g. "Priti Patel should be deported") - consider if it's racist before posting it. Similarly if it's something you'd say about May or Patel, but not Sajid Javid or David Blunkett - consider if it's misogynist before posting.

It was a stupid anger driven post which was obviously going to be spun this way, but it clearly wasn't racist in itself.
IIRC it was something like rather than innocent people we should be deporting people like patel and those who share her views. Her being a horrid excuse for a human being was clearly the target and her race was irrelevant. I see no reason to think the same thing wouldn't have been said had she been white. It's a pretty common refrain you see that we'd rather be deporting far right nutters rather than the people they hate (and obviously meant non-literally considering most people with those views are hyper inbred white as white Englishmen).

Although where those per capita numbers based on the incorrect estimate?

Obviously settled status applications are not definitive - because many people will have chosen not to make an application. But about 260,000 Bulgarians and about 850,000 Romanians have applied for settled status - the estimates for both were way off about 100,000 Bulgarians and under 400,000 Romanians.

And in terms of Lithuanians 230,000 have applied for settled status - which is about 8% of Lithuania's population (about 2.8 million) so not an insignificant number

This does also suggest one of the risks with free movement that I've thought about for a while that it maybe creates a European level version of "left behind"/Trumpy diners in Ohio. So lots of young, often well-qualified people move to local big cities and also to bits of Western Europe that are already doing well - leaving behind increasingly old populations that see a demographic crisis causing a bit of a panic about immigration and the state of the country leading which helps the rise of politicians liks Duda and Orban - who are in turn supported by younger, often more liberal likely opponents leaving.

Yes, its definitely an issue.
Though I remember chatting with a Pole about this once and she said there's a stereotype there that those who move to Britain are generally looked down on a bit as being of the sort who in Britain would normally be rotting in their hometowns.
Obviously this isn't completely the case, plenty of educated Europeans in good jobs about. But I don't think its quite so uneven as you get domestically with it being both sorts of young person heading off in large but not absolute numbers.
They've also got their domestic major city drain to deal with too, which is a few decades behind the west but really taking off in recent years.

[Sheilbh]

This is the Tweet:


I've never heard anyone say Theresa May or Boris Johnson should be deported - with the implied meaning that they don't really belong here or are here sort of conditionally subject to good behaviour. And as I say if it's something you wouldn't say about a white politician - and I don't think it is - then put just put it in your drafts and think if it's possiby racially prejudiced. He has now been suspended from Labour which is the right decision. Maybe he would also say that about May or Johnson - but I've never seen anything like that.

And, of course, this does go for both sides - I think there are many examples of comments about Diane Abbott (especially) or David Lammy that would not be made about a white politician. But I think to call that out we should also call out people on our side making comments about deporting British-Asian politicians and not just let it slide by.

But also he's not a random. He's running to become General Secretary of the largest union in the country - if we've learned nothing about the past few years, surely we've learned to keep people prone to stupid anger driven tweeting away from any position of responsibility

[garbon]

A google search reveals protesters use to chat Deport Theresa May.

[garbon]

When I did a search with quotes around "deport [insert name]", May had about 500 hits, Boris about 100, Diane Abbott had 4, Dawn Butler had 1, Corbyn had 4, Lammy had 49 though most looked to me things he said about deportation, Sadiq has 9.

[Josquius]

I've definitely seen this same remark being made aimed at white as white can be far right people. I know I've used it too. Its not an uncommon insult for the deport-em-all brigade.
An error on his part for sure but I really don't think he was being racist so much as not considering that people might choose to interpret it as racist.

It really does seem to be taken up as some kind of a left-eyes hoisted by their own petard, "how do you like cancellation now" party by online fascists. Completely ignorant that this isn't exactly the same kind of left winger that you see getting involved in petty culture war bollocks.
And again raises uncomfortable questions about to what extent the tories are fully expecting this sort of thing and keep someone so incompetent as Patel in her post in large part to give an anti-racism shield.

[Sheilbh]

When I did a search with quotes around "deport [insert name]", May had about 500 hits, Boris about 100, Diane Abbott had 4, Dawn Butler had 1, Corbyn had 4, Lammy had 49 though most looked to me things he said about deportation, Sadiq has 9.

Okay that's fair - although I wonder how many of the May/Johnson ones are today with people arguing this exact point?

And also maybe just stick to "Priti Patel and these policies are disgusting" rather than bringing up deporting her.

It really does seem to be taken up as some kind of a left-eyes hoisted by their own petard, "how do you like cancellation now" party by online fascists. Completely ignorant that this isn't exactly the same kind of left winger that you see getting involved in petty culture war bollocks.
And again raises uncomfortable questions about to what extent the tories are fully expecting this sort of thing and keep someone so incompetent as Patel in her post in large part to give an anti-racism shield.

The reason she's in her post is because among Tory members she is one of the most popular cabinet ministers. All the talk about who might succeed Johnson is about her, Sunak and Truss. She's catnip to them - there's nothing they love more than an authoritarian "law and order" Home Secretary - it's been the model since Michael Howard's "prison works" speech.

But I think the other way also applies - I have seen people on the left make arguments about black and Asian Tory MPs and cabinet minister that they would never accept if they were about Labour MPs/shadow cabinet. Similarly the Steve Bell cartoon of Patel as a cow. It's just always worth thinking - would I say this about another politician, how would I react if someone said it about a politician on my side just as a sense check for misogyny or racial prejudice or anti-semitism or homophobia or whatever else.

[The Larch]

More horror stories from EU nationals getting detained while trying to enter the UK.

Hostile UK border regime traumatises visitors from EU
Italian woman visiting family was locked up in detention centre as they waited at the airport, Guardian told

Britain's hostile regime for potential EU migrants is traumatising visitors caught in its web and provoking further worries for European families receiving visits from relatives, according to accounts provided to the Guardian.

The slightest suspicion that someone may be entering Britain to work is often enough for them to be locked up, held at detention centres for up to a week and then expelled to wherever they have travelled from, some of those caught up by the policy have said. Complaints from relatives and host families in the UK have either gone unanswered or been ignored by the Home Office and some local MPs, they say.

An Italian NHS consultant told of his horror when his niece arrived from Italy for a short visit but ended up in a detention centre surrounded by barbed wire.

There is growing anger over what campaigners and MEPs have said is a "disproportionate" and "heavy-handed" implementation of post-Brexit immigration restrictions on EU citizens.

On Friday the EU's co-chair of the post Brexit UK-EU partnership council, Maroš Šefčovič, told a group of Romanian MEPs he would be raising it with the UK authorities.

Giuseppe Pichierri, who has worked for the NHS for 15 years, told the Guardian he had waited for hours at Heathrow airport on 17 April with his four-year-old daughter to collect his 24-year-old niece Marta Lomartire with balloons and cards.

But she did not show. She had been stopped, quizzed and issued with an expulsion order before being locked up in Colnbrook detention centre for the night.

Pichierri took his tearful daughter home and was called in the middle of the night and told Lomartire was being taken into detention. "We were never approached or told where she was," he said. The following day, despite being on call at Kingston hospital, he tracked her down to Colnbrook and had to travel to the detention centre to meet Lomartire, who was scared and upset.

She did not understand where she was being taken and believed it was a prison.

Lomartire, now back home in Puglia, said: "It has been a really ugly experience, but now that I have had time to think about, I'm not going to let that stop me from returning. I'm determined to see my cousins." She said, however, that she was scared she might be stopped at the frontier again and barred from entry because of the stamp on her passport.

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"I was expecting to have a beautiful evening with the kids and my cousins, but instead this nightmare started, instead of a reunion with my little cousins. Instead, I was behind bars and barbed wire. It was the complete opposite to what I had expected."

Pichierri welcomed his niece's visit so she could improve her English and help him and his wife, Jennifer Pichierri, who also works in the NHS with babysitting their 11-month-old baby and two older daughters.Conscious of the Covid-related travel restrictions, Giuseppe had provided her with a letter "outlining she could come and stay with us as an au pair, not realising that work, paid or not, is not permissible post-Brexit without a visa".

He wanted to explain what he called his "honest mistake" to the authorities but never got the chance as Lomartire was expelled.

Jennifer says she fears the stamp on Lomartire's passport may mean she is barred until she gets a new passport.

Her case emerged 24 hours after the Guardian reported on cases of Spanish, French, Bulgarian and Czech citizens being detained at airports overnight and taken to immigration removal centres.

Questions are being asked about why those without the correct paperwork are not just asked to return to the EU. The cases also highlight what appears to be an inconsistent approach at the border.

The German embassy said it also had citizens trying to go to the UK who said they were doing au pair work, and they were questioned at the airport but let through.

A spokesperson said: "The embassy is aware of a low single-digit number of cases of German nationals that were temporarily held at the airport after arrival. The persons concerned, who stated au pair work as their reason for entry, were allowed to leave after a few hours on the condition that they leave the UK within a few days."

But the Romanian MEP Alin Mituța told the BBC he knew of five Romanians who had been detained. The Bulgarian embassy has also been told of citizens being taken to detention centres.

Mituța said the action was disproportionate. "They should be held in the airport and sent to their home countries as soon as possible. Sending them in detention centres for a couple of days without access to [their] phones and to be able to communicate with the family is not something that we expect from a country with which we expect to have a good relation in the in the future," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

Luke Piper, a lawyer with the campaign group the3million, said he was not asking for EU citizens to be treated differently to other nationals, but just "fairly and not disproportionately". He added: "It would appear that people have been treated disproportionately and heavy-handedly."

The Home Office has been contacted but has yet to respond. However, it admitted that there had been a limited Covid outbreak at Yarl's Wood detention in Bedford, where EU citizens are locked up after being stopped at Gatwick. "We are aware of small number of confirmed coronavirus cases," a spokesperson confirmed.

Government sources argue that Border Force decisions have been complicated by the lack of return flights for those who enter the country without a necessary work visa and because of Covid.

In a letter sent to her MP, Paul Scully, the Home Office and numerous newspapers, Jennifer Pichierri said they never had an intention to employ Lomartire and she felt "heartbroken and betrayed".

"She is a family member coming to spend time with her family. We only intended to demonstrate that we needed her help and that we are in a position to fully support her during her stay."

"We tried to explain all of this to immigration (although my husband only had one short conversation with an immigration officer) to no avail. They denied her access to the UK," she added.

"We are honest, hard-working citizens and if the decision had been made to deport her of course we would have returned her to the airport the next day.

"This is not the same country I grew up in, the same country that I have left to travel the world several times, that I have always raved about, felt proud of and looked forward to returning to. This is not the same country that my husband entered 13 years ago and decided to stay and dedicate his career to, have a family and build a life in."

Alberto Costa, the Conservative MP for South Leicestershire, and longstanding campaigner on EU citizens' rights said if any EU citizen "had entered the UK insisting that they are complying with the rules, and these rules are not being applied fairly, then I am sure the government would wish to be informed of and rectify any discrepancies with the new system".

It seems that all the brouhaha has yielded results:

Stop locking up EU citizens in removal centres, UK ministers tell border force
Passengers refused entry to UK but who cannot get flight home will be allowed to enter on bail conditions

UK ministers have told border officials to stop locking up EU citizens in detention centres, it has emerged.

After 48 hours of criticism over "disproportionate" and "heavy-handed" decisions to place EU nationals without the correct paperwork for entry into the UK in immigration removal centres for days, the Home Office has issued new guidance to its border force.

It has advised border officials that, where appropriate, they should grant EU nationals immigration bail instead. This means passengers who are refused entry to the UK but cannot get an immediate flight home because of Covid travel restrictions will be permitted entry on bail conditions.

A Home Office spokesperson said: "While international travel is disrupted due to the pandemic, we have updated our guidance to clarify that overseas nationals, including EU citizens, who have been refused entry to the UK and are awaiting removal, should be granted immigration bail, where appropriate.

Interesting comment in the article by an inmigration lawyer:

The immigration barrister Colin Yeo said the new government guidance was "welcome as a short-term fix for the Home Office to stop automatically detaining people in the detention centres instead of putting them on planes".

But he said it was not a long-term solution to the fact many in the EU do not know about the new rules because they are not obsessed with Brexit.

[The Larch]

Why is the UK so attractive to immigration, but France doesn't seem to have the same reputation?

The UK was very popular for a long time for certain kinds of EU inmigrants, mostly young people, many fresh out of university, who went there with the aim of improving their English and/or make a quick buck. These people would overwhelmingly go to London and work hospitality jobs. In the mid/long term, they'd either go back home once they filled their piggy banks or felt homesick, or would end up settling in the UK because they coupled up while there, carved some kind of career they'd be unable to have back home, or the like. You'd also have other kind of groups of people, like young doctors, nurses, pharmacist, etc, also fresh out of uni, that the NHS would recruit by the bucketload from abroad in order to cover the lack of UK candidates, and assorted young-ish professionals that would move there maybe as part of their career (academics, bankers, etc.). Once the EU expanded eastwards and the UK allowed people from those countries to move and work there, you got a massive influx of Eastern Europeans going there (besides the ones doing a similar gig to the ones already described above) mostly going for blue collar jobs (the canonical "Polish plumbers"), as well as lots of I think Romanians and Bulgarians that were very popular for seasonal agricultural jobs. It is my impression that the first group of EU inmigrants stayed mostly linked to London and the larger cities while the second group ventured much more in the countryside.

[The Larch]

Why is the UK so attractive to immigration, but France doesn't seem to have the same reputation?

I remember checking the numbers for this, and we aren't. Not in absolute numbers and definitely not per capita.
Germany gets far more and I believe France does have more too- Bulgarians and Romanians especially feel more at home in France (and Italy) than the UK.

Germany does attract its fair share of inmigrants, yeah, and it shouldn't be strange at all. They're the largest country in the continent, with a huge industrial base, well established inmigrant communities stemming from the gastarbeiters of the 50s and 60s and an apparently insatiable thirst for technical workers. It's always been in the news how Germany always needs thousands and thousands more engineers that its universities are able to produce, for instance. Also Berlin is quite the destination for the more bohemian-minded or artistically inclined inmigration of the continent as well.

Half of Lithuania is in the UK though apparently.

Yeah, and for smaller countries like the Baltics this is quite noticeable, as all those young people emigrating are detracting from a not huge population base to begin with. Many of these countries are doing plenty of efforts to bring back some of those inmigrants, as they worry for their long term prospects.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, and for smaller countries like the Baltics this is quite noticeable, as all those young people emigrating are detracting from a not huge population base to begin with. Many of these countries are doing plenty of efforts to bring back some of those inmigrants, as they worry for their long term prospects.

Lithuania is actually the most striking with apparently 8% of the country applying for settled status - but some of the figures are not a world away. Romaniais similarly striking - over 800,000 Romanians (a country with about 19.5 million people) have applied. Latvia's sort of between the two. And my assumption is the majority of applicants for all countries are working age. That sort of level to the UK alone - ignoring Germany and France etc must, as you say, be really noticeable.

But it is patchy - other countries have very few. And in overall terms of applications the top 5 aren't that surprising: Poland (900k), Romaia (850k), Italy (475k), Portugal (350k) and Spain (300k).

Obviously this doesn't reflect total migration as it only covers people who are aware, thought they were eligible and have applied for settled status (so far 97% of applicants receive settled or pre-settled status, with 3% being withdrawn, void/invalid or refused). So many people may have moved on (especially given covid), or got UK citizenship or residency through marriage - and a number may just not be aware of the scheme but in the country now.

Luke Piper, a lawyer with the campaign group the3million, said he was not asking for EU citizens to be treated differently to other nationals, but just "fairly and not disproportionately". He added: "It would appear that people have been treated disproportionately and heavy-handedly."

But isn't that the issue? Especially since May's "hostile enviroment" our immigration system is unfair, heavy-handed and disproprortionate. They lose 75% of the cases that are appealed. It's just it now affects European citizens too. I hope the3million work with other migrants' rights groups to fight it more broadly.

And it's been building for at least two decades when New Labour started to focus on asylum seekers - removing their right to work/choose where to live, building detention centres etc. Our immigration policies are awful across the board - horrible at the border, horrible in the snooping they force other people to do and horrible in the enforcement.

[Richard Hakluyt]

They are also ineffective 

Nasty and ineffective is such a poor combination.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Re the Unite tweeter ... I think it was a pretty racist thing to say; and I can't see that a non-racist would say such a thing.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting and unexpected report in Pink News:

Boris Johnson and Liz Truss planned sweeping, vital reforms of gender laws. This is why they were dropped
Vic Parsons May 15, 2021

Tory equalities chief Liz Truss was planning proper reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) and had Boris Johnson's support – but changed her mind and scrapped reforms after input from the NHS's National Advisor for LGBT Health.

The revelation is contained in evidence submitted by the Government Equalities Office (GEO) about the behind-the-scenes wrangling over GRA reform in the first half of 2020 to a judicial review at the Northern Ireland High Court into the need for medical evidence in legal gender recognition.

In the written judgment from the High Court judicial review, it has been revealed that Liz Truss was "minded to remove the requirement for a gender dysphoria diagnosis" from the Gender Recognition Act (GRA) as of 11 June, 2020.

The GRA provides the mechanism by which adult trans men and women can change their legal gender, by applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate that can be used to obtain a new birth certificate in the correct sex.

Applicants must have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, be able to prove they've lived in their "acquired gender" for at least two years and intend to live as such for the rest of their lives.

Two separate medical reports must also be obtained by applicants: one containing details of the person's gender dysphoria diagnosis – which is a psychiatric diagnosis, meaning it can't be made by a GP and has to come from a gender specialist – and one containing details of any medical transition the person has gone through or is planning.

Given the lengthy waiting lists for an NHS gender clinic, it can take as long as five or six years to get a gender dysphoria diagnosis on the NHS. The process of having to get a psychiatric diagnosis before being able to access legal gender recognition was described by human rights groups as "dehumanising" and reinforced the view that trans people are mentally ill. LGBT+ groups called for this requirement to be removed from the Gender Recognition Act in the 2018 consultation.

But the GEO's court documents show Truss was told that Dr Michael Brady, National Advisor for LGBT Health, said there wasn't "any stigma attached" to including a gender dysphoria requirement in legal gender recognition .

Dr Brady – who is also medical director at the Terrence Higgins Trust and a sexual health and HIV consultant for Kings College Hospital – had earlier provided "helpful insight", in May 2020, that "removing the diagnosis of gender dysphoria... would be an impractical step".

"It has become clear from our discussions with the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and the helpful insight provided by the National Advisor on LGBT Health, Dr Michael Brady, that removing the diagnosis of gender dysphoria while maintaining a medical aspect to this process would be an impractical step," officials said.

"For those seeking medical support to change their gender, the NHS would continue to provide a diagnosis of gender dysphoria or gender incongruence even if we removed this requirement from the GRA process.

"The view of the DHSC and NHS England officials and advisors was that such a change would create confusion and uncertainty among clinicians and so they do not currently support such a change."

According to the High Court judgment, it was the view of DHSC that the decision to remove the diagnosis of gender dysphoria from the GRA should be "clinician-led".

There was "no evidence" submitted to the court to suggest that the views of clinicians were considered other than Dr Brady.

Gender dysphoria and stigma

Documents were submitted to the court which refer to a meeting between GEO officials, DHSC officials and Dr Brady on 12 May 2020.

The meeting notes quote Dr Brady as saying that: "Gender dysphoria is the accepted terminology (although there is a move towards using gender incongruence)" and adds that "he had not been advised by trans people that the diagnosis or label was stigmatising; but felt that the process overall was stigmatising and that the issue of stigma should be seen in that context."

In May 2019, the World Health Organization stopped classifying being trans as a disorder by moving from a diagnosis of "gender identity disorder" under its mental health disorders chapter to a description of "gender incongruence" under its sexual health chapter.

WHO officials said at the time that this change was made to "reduce stigma". The Human Rights Watch said governments should "move swiftly" to reform "laws that require this now officially outdated diagnosis".

But Brady's view, as per meeting documents submitted to the court, was that it didn't matter "where the diagnosis was categorised (whether under mental health or sexual health): it remained a diagnosis but was not perpetuating a mental health stigma".

According to the meeting notes involving Dr Brady: "The National Advisor on LGBT Health did not appear keen on assessing psychological readiness or 'fitness to proceed', the additions of which he considered would further medicalise the process and more intrinsically link gender recognition to medical treatment.

"Ultimately, [Brady] recommended 'using the terminology that is used in the medical community, and that is gender dysphoria'.

"However, it is also recorded that he 'wondered how the LGBT sector would receive this; thought there would also be kick back from clinicians'."

Liz Truss originally planned full reform, including a Gender Recognition Act Reform Bill

Liz Truss had been planning on reforming the Gender Recognition Act and scrapping the gender dysphoria diagnosis requirement since at least 3 March 2020.

At this time, GEO officials had prepared a draft statement for Truss on the government's response to the Gender Recognition Act consultation "on the basis of 'Option A' (a GRA Reform Bill accompanied by non-legislative reforms) 'given your previous steers on this issue'".

"It is clear from the content of this submission, that [Liz Truss] had discussed the issue generally with 'Number 10′," Mr Justice Scoffield said in the High Court judicial review judgment. "The then current lead option was to take forward reforms to the 2004 Act, accompanied by some wider non-legislative reforms.

"The [GEO] officials understood that one of the key legislative reforms that both the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister's Office wanted to include in a Bill related to the need for medical reports and the required diagnosis of gender dysphoria."

Both Truss and Johnson were "keen to move away from the diagnosis of gender dysphoria required by the current legislation" while retaining the need for trans people to provide some supporting medical evidence in their application for legal gender recognition as an "important safeguard" that would "deter vexatious applications".

"It is clear that there was an eagerness to move away from a diagnosis of gender dysphoria being required," Scoffield said.

On 29 May 2020, GEO officials wrote to Truss letting her know that they'd encountered some difficulties in their communications with the Department of Health and Social Care around removing the requirement for a gender dysphoria diagnosis – specifically, Dr Brady had said it would be "impractical".

After this, Truss' "previous enthusiasm for removal of the requirement for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria hung in the balance", the High Court said, "in light of concerns expressed by [...] the government's National Advisor on LGBT Health [Dr Brady]".

As of 22 June, Truss had changed her mind – she now wanted to "amend the existing legislation to remove reference to the diagnosis of gender dysphoria and replace it with a diagnosis of gender incongruence".

"The 'final' draft government response to the consultation which was attached to the 22 June 2020 submission now, again, proposed removal of the requirement for applicants to provide a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and replacing it with gender incongruence," the documents say. "GEO's position was that this reform should still be taken forward."

But by 2 July, Truss and Johnson had agreed to "keep the current legislation as it stands" and make an oral statement about Gender Recognition Act reform – scrapping their original plan from just months before to publish a GRA Reform Bill.

In September 2020, Truss announced that she wouldn't reform the Gender Recognition Act. Instead, the process of legal gender recognition would be moved online and the application fee reduced. LGBT+ groups condemned her decision as a "shocking failure of leadership" by not bringing about more meaningful reforms for trans people.

Last month, the fee was reduced from £140 to £5.

A Government Equality Hub spokesperson said: "The current legislative system allows people to change their legal sex in a safe and fair way.

"Following the consultation on the Gender Recognition Act, we are delivering on our promise to modernise the process of applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate and make it fairer and kinder by reducing the cost to £5 and moving the application online."

NHS England, on behalf of Dr Michael Brady, declined to comment.

[viper37]

Why is the UK so attractive to immigration, but France doesn't seem to have the same reputation?

Because you only read and watch english medias?

[Sheilbh]

I think there's a lot to this - as ever I think the US is slightly ahead of us. It's not just political but part of a wider cultural shift/fragmentation - which is perhaps even more strengthened by the rise of social media where we are encouraged to perform for our followers:

Could England's future be a left-leaning south facing off against a conservative north?
John Harris
The pandemic has accelerated the movement of people, creating clusters of like-minded, homogenous communities
Sun 16 May 2021 14.11 BST

London is changing, and so is the south of England. Whether recent predictions of a lasting drop in the capital's population and emptied-out office districts will come true is still unclear. But something has definitely been happening, for the best part of a year: thanks to Covid and its disruptions, a sizeable number of people are deciding to leave the city and head elsewhere, chasing space, greenery – and, in many cases, the company of like minds.

Former Londoners, it seems, have recently set up home as far afield as Devon and Cornwall. Estate agents report relocations to such commuter-belt towns as Broxbourne in Hertfordshire, Reigate in Surrey and Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. At the same time, people seem to be pitching up in and around places associated with a liberal, remain-ish view of the world: Oxford, Brighton, Bath, the more affluent parts of Bristol. In Frome, the Somerset town where I have lived since 2009 and which is now a byword for a broadly Green political outlook and a trailblazing town council, you can hear the endless crashes and clunks of house renovations ordered by new arrivals from the Big Smoke.

All of this is accelerating a change that was starting to become clear before the pandemic: in many places once seen as conservative with both a big and small C, signs of a shift towards a different kind of politics. This is part of the explanation for recent English election results that suggested the mirror image of Tory successes in old Labour heartlands: Conservative losses in such counties as Surrey (where they shed 14 county council seats), Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and West Sussex; Labour's win in the mayoral contest that spanned Bristol, Bath and South Gloucestershire; and a strong showing for Labour and the Lib Dems in Oxfordshire, where the one-time party of the working class finished first in the well-known proletarian hotbed of Chipping Norton. The same applies to wins for the Green party in East Sussex, Gloucestershire, Suffolk and Kent.

For people on the left, this is good news. In the suburbs, the fact that one aspect of the story centres on a long-term move into greater racial diversity should also be a cause for celebration. But as England enters a new age of political polarisation, those endless lifestyle articles about whichever places beyond the capital are now held to have the correct mixture of artisan cafes and organic food markets also suggest other social changes that are much narrower, and introverted: what some people call "clustering".

More than ever before, the mobility enabled by affluence and the chance to work from home are allowing some people to put down roots alongside neighbours with similar – or, increasingly, identical – views and values, who live in much the same material circumstances. And after a year of lockdowns shutting us away in filter bubbles and tight social networks, what may be taking shape in parts of the shires and suburbs threatens something just as monocultural: a kind of economic and political uniformity that might be built on the politics of virtue, but can easily seem inward-looking and intolerant.

"London is a machine which sucks in young graduates and then later spits them out into the south east," wrote one economics blogger recently. In plenty of places, any dreams of an educated hipster utopia are rather compromised by justified local resentments about gentrification and rocketing house prices. Old Tory southern strongholds starting to feel the presence of new, left-inclined people are still a long way from being piled high with sourdough loaves and rainbow flags. Nonetheless, what is happening looks set to deepen the sense of England as a whole being an ever-more imbalanced country. If you want a possible vision of the future, picture a liberal, university-educated middle class concentrated – by choice – in the affluent south, while a reactionary conservatism speaks for more deprived parts of the country, and the tensions that surfaced around Brexit burst forth again and again.

In 2008, the American writer and journalist Bill Bishop published a very prescient book titled The Big Sort, sub-titled "why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart". He painted a picture of people settling into "extremely homogenous communities – not just by region and state, but by city and town", and set out his anxieties about things that would later explode so spectacularly between 2016 and the beginning of this year. He wrote about "segregation by way of life: pockets of like-minded citizens that have become so ideologically inbred that we don't know, can't understand, and can barely conceive of 'those people' who live just a few miles away".

As they stoke the so-called culture wars, the Conservatives are deliberately exacerbating comparable tensions. Meanwhile, Labour is led by people who do not know what to do in response. One thing, though, is clear: the danger of its recent public paroxysms about the post-industrial north and Midlands, and Keir Starmer's clunky attempts to appeal to these areas' supposed cultural conservatism is that they have emphasised our national divisions and suggested people have to choose a side. For a party that depends on somehow glueing very different elements of the electorate together, this is surely not the cleverest move.

In parts of the country that are often sneered at, there is an England that feels more inclusive, egalitarian and increasingly diverse: the more successful parts of the new towns built between the 1950s and 1970s, and the starter-home developments that now ring towns and cities. Politicians on the left should sample these places' atmospheres: at their best, they suggest something akin to the writer JB Priestley's postwar glimpses of "an England without privilege ... as near to a classless society as we have got yet".

There is also, I think, a conversation to be had about the media. Certainly, if "public service broadcasting" is to mean anything, it should ditch the kind of output that plays up our divisions (think, for example, of the weekly bear-pit that was pre-pandemic Question Time, or the anger that pours forth from radio phone-ins), and rediscover the importance of a kind of social and political reporting that reminds people of how the other half – seen from both sides – actually lives.

The Big Sort warns of the perils of societies "dividing by economic prospects, by years of education ... and by political persuasion". It insists that in any functioning democracy, we all need to understand that there are lots of people "who aren't just like you. They don't live like you, they don't have families like yours, and they don't think like you. They may not live in your neighbourhood, but this is their country too." Amid shifts and changes that are only just beginning, this is a truth we all need to swallow. If we do not, we risk a future that will be not just bleak, but politically impossible.

    John Harris is a Guardian columnist