How Brexit broke the structure of British politics. With Andrew Cooper

Data Malarkey - the podcast about using data smarter

In this episode of the Data Malarkey podcast, data storyteller Sam Knowles talks to Andrew Cooper, President and Senior Advisor at Yonder Consulting. A research, data, and insights man through and through, Andrew founded the market research company Populus more than 20 years ago, which helped to reinvent the way polling is done in the wake of the 2015 UK General Election.

Andrew ran research and polling and then strategy and political operations for the Conservative Party, either side of the 1997 Labour landslide for more than three years, and served as director of strategy to David Cameron in the Prime Minister’s Office for almost three years in the coalition government. Thanks to that service, Andrew became Lord Cooper of Windrush and has sat in the House of Lords for almost the last nine years. Today he splits his time between pollsters Populus, his new venture, Yonder, and the House of Lords.

Our conversation was recorded remotely, via the medium of Riverside.fm, on Friday 26 May 2023.

Thanks to Joe Hickey for production support.

Podcast artwork by Shatter Media.

Voice over by Samantha Boffin.

Two unexpected topics start this discussion: (i) Andrew and Sam’s shared love of ironing (to which Sam adds washing up and mowing the lawn, as activities with a defined endpoint), and (ii) the fact that Andrew now sits as a politically non-affiliated member of the second chamber despite years of working for the Conservative Party. His decision to go independent was thanks to the Tories becoming increasingly hard line – the de facto Brexit Party – in the wake of the 2016 EU Referendum, and “with malice aforethought”.

Although he did a degree in economics at the London School of Economics, Andrew stayed away from the mathematical side of the subject. He only fell into working intensively with data when he started working in political polling. As US President Lyndon B. Johnson is said to have said, “The first rule of politics is that you need to be able to add up”.

Andrew explains his approach to making sense of political (media, and consumer) intentions and choices by building a geodemographic model that brings together: census data, historical polling data, psychological archetypes from the BBC Great Personality Test, and a growing array of other sources. His Clockface model maps attitudes and behaviours on the two critical dimensions of security and diversity. The model explains the often bitter disagreements evident in politics everywhere and reveals “how Brexit broke the structure of British politics”. This reaction to the impact and realities of globalisation has been played out in countries around the world.

The TV programme that best sums up Britain – that appeals to all groups, irrespective of where they fall on the security x diversity axes – no matter whether they voted Remain or Leave in the EU Referendum – is … Love Island. Peep Show and Black Mirror are in Remain heartland, while Mrs Brown’s Boys is slap-bang in the middle of Leave’s core support.

Andrew unpicks the success of Leave’s chief architect, Dominic Cummings, and his “£350m a week to the NHS” trap, contrasting it with Remain’s inability to find a credible alternative number with a positive spin that captured the reality of the benefits of Britain’s membership of the EU.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Andrew on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewcooperpopulus/

Yonder Consulting and the Clockface – https://yonderconsulting.com/clockface/

Lord Cooper of Windrush – https://members.parliament.uk/member/4327/contact

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