British Politics: A Russian View
Analysis
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Peter Pomerantsev asks why new techniques in political campaigning have succeeded and what the consequences are for society. He has a different view to most from his past career working inside the TV industry in Moscow.
The future arrived first in Russia. The defeat of communism gave rise to political technologists who flourished in the vacuum left by the Cold War, developing a supple approach to ideology that made them the new masters of politics. Something of this post-ideological spirit is visible in Britain. Centrism no longer seems viable. Globalisation is increasingly resented. Ours is an uncertain political landscape in which commentators and polls habitually fail to predict what is to come. There was a time when if you lived in a certain place, in a certain type of home, then you were likely to vote a certain way. But that is no longer the case. Instead, political strategists imagine you through your data. The campaigns that succeed are the ones that hook in as many groups as possible, using advances in political technology to send different messages to different groups.
Pomerantsev, one of the most compelling voices on modern Russia, is a senior visiting fellow at the London School of Economics and is the author of "Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: Adventures in Modern Russia".
Producer: Ant Adeane.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.6 | My name's Linda Davies and I commission podcast for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.4 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable |
| 0:14.3 | experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC |
| 0:20.4 | makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:36.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:40.0 | Thank you for downloading this analysis podcast. |
| 0:43.0 | In the last couple of years many of the certainties about how British politics work have been upended. |
| 0:50.0 | Peter Pomeransev argues, if we want to know what's likely to happen next, maybe we should look elsewhere. |
| 0:56.2 | To Moscow. |
| 0:58.2 | Remember this? |
| 0:59.2 | We gave the right of judgment on this issue to the British people they made their choice they |
| 1:04.0 | want to leave the EU the question every member must ask themselves as they go through |
| 1:08.6 | the lobbies tonight is do they trust the people? The dividing lines in this election could not be clearer from the outset. |
| 1:18.0 | It's the establishment versus the people. |
| 1:21.0 | It's our historic duty to make sure the people prevail. |
| 1:26.5 | The people, the many. We've been hearing a lot of this language recently, both in the Brexit referendum and the last general election, |
| 1:36.0 | sometimes the people, meant leave voters, sometimes economic left behinds, the many, not the few. It can seem as if the very idea of the people or the |
| 1:47.0 | many is somehow malleable, as though it can be redefined by every campaign, but there's |
| 1:52.4 | something about the way these terms are being used |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.