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As results were coming in from the Georgia run-off, I found myself thinking about polarisation in politics. The shape of Joe Biden\u2019s presidency hung on the small number of voters in Georgia who would, or would not, give the Republicans a Senate majority.<\/p>\n
In the end, both Democrat candidates won, though Jon Ossoff came in with just 50.6 per cent of the vote. Logically, this was just the last stage in a close election. Emotionally, the situation charged.<\/p>\n
We discovered how charged it was when rioters burst into the Capitol, desperate to stop Biden being confirmed as President-elect. One said: \u201cWe are the last hope for the world, at least in my mind and everything I\u2019ve seen. We are free.\u201d Another carried a banner with the word \u201ctreason\u201d. More worryingly, a Yougov poll<\/a> found 45 per cent of Republicans supporting the rioters. The UK is also no stranger to close votes. In the 2015 general election, David Cameron\u2019s government had a majority of just twelve seats \u2014 which came down to the choices of 1,271 individual voters in the six most marginal constituencies. Boris Johnson\u2019s government\u2019s 80 seat majority to \u201cget Brexit done\u201d rests on a 1.4 per cent increase in the Tory vote, and it\u2019s not clear how much of that was support for the Tories, or fear of Corbyn in No 10.<\/p>\n Then there\u2019s a 52:48 vote in the EU referendum, apparently called by David Cameron to end the matter \u2014 though Scotland\u2019s independence referendum points to the opposite conclusion. A wise government would listen to why people on both sides felt as they did.<\/p>\n This is about something deeper than compromise. In the case of Brexit this is sharp because the apparent compromise of staying in the Single Market and Customs Union but leaving the political structures would have brought to life the Brexiteers\u2019 nightmare of obeying EU rules but with no influence over them.<\/p>\n Splitting into simple binaries is something we learn as babies, at a time of life when we needed others to contain and voice emotions we didn\u2019t understand. It\u2019s something we can regress to under pressure. I suspect that Trump, and his supporters \u2014 and some of the architects of Brexit \u2014 are not so much \u201clying\u201d as putting words to people\u2019s emotions.<\/p>\n The problem is that\u2019s this is at a very raw level \u2014 \u201cright\u201d against \u201cwrong\u201d and \u201cgood\u201d against \u201cbad\u201d. I\u2019m tempted to add \u201cfear\u201d against\u2026 but there\u2019s fear on both sides. That\u2019s fertile territory for leaders who can put the fear into words, or \u201ctell it like it is\u201d. The snag is that understanding<\/em> is the first casualty of this.<\/p>\n What we actually need is a more mature approach that\u2019s stable enough to hear people\u2019s anxieties, build trust and help them engage with difficult realities. It\u2019s what enabled Nelson Mandela to navigate an end to Apartheid without civil war. It might be what enables Joe Biden to address the divisions aggravated by Trump. It\u2019s an empowered and rooted approach to the centre ground \u2014 and urgently needed.<\/p>\n
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