Hello, I'm Alva. And I'm Armando. Welcome back to Westminster Reimagined,

a special series on the new states and podcasts that looks at how politics works and if it can

be done better. In this episode we'll be joined by former Labour MP Sean Woodward and Professor

of Politics at Strathclyde University John Curtis to discuss whether we're witnessing the rise

of playlists politics as voters and politicians choose to pick and make different political issues

unconstrained by traditional party lines.

Night Armando, why are we discussing playlists politics?

Playlists politics, this description, this phrase that we've cunningly come up with.

Is this your own coinage?

I'm not going to say it is then, just in case it makes any money.

For a while I've been thinking, well first of all I think votes for the traditional parties

have been going down over the last few decades but I think more recently there's been the rise

in single issue politics. I think with social media there's an emphasis on kind of identity

politics. I think also the huge impact of Brexit I think has transformed politics in that

parties are now identified as to whether an MPs and politicians are identified as to whether

pro or anti-Brexit. I wonder whether this chimes with the way the young people I used to know

anyway. You can choose any number of pieces of music from any number of albums, everything

is available to us. I wonder whether that's also signifying a change in how people think about

politics and whether rather than identifying with one single party irrespective of the policies

that party has, there's no tendency to kind of go out and look and identify with individual

issues. And especially suppose at the moment the way Labour and the Conservatives, they don't

necessarily campaign on the traditional, the social campaigning versus the economic positions,

...