Luke Shuttleworth

A worldview that divides people into givers and takes will prevent people from supporting redistribution, inclusion, sustainability and other progressive values. It will prevent people from voting Labour in elections. Labour is shaping public opinion against progressive politics.

🚨What are the political consequences of memory policy?

In a new paper @francescocolombo.bsky.social and I show that a public initiative to rename antisemitic streets in Berlin mobilized left voters, induced no backlash, and benefited left parties in the subsequent election.

osf.io/preprints/so...

Abstract for the article: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41296-025-00779-4

🚨new article🚨

"Polarisation" has become one of those terms commonly used to discuss the dire state of politics and democracy today

Here @juanroch.bsky.social, @daniel-balinhas.bsky.social and I argue that this simplistic framing is counterproductive

🧵Thread🧵

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

As people still need to hear this: the Danish social democrats are polling at below 20%. In this poll, the radical right in Denmark also nearly receives 20%. It remains striking how often Denmark is still referenced as a case were social democrats beat the radical right.

📣 New publication! The second article of my postdoc project on the far right and anti-gender mobilization is now out #openaccess in #GermanPolitics doi.org/10.1080/0964...

It examines antifeminism in far-right party politics through the case of AfD

Key findings:

Antifeminism ✅
Radicalization ✅

New Publication with @lhaffert.bsky.social in @ejprjournal.bsky.social!

We study the role of generations in the urban-rural divide, which is increasingly shaping the politics of many democracies.

Studying Switzerland, we show: The urban-rural divide is stronger among younger generations. (1/10) 🧵👇

🎉 New publication 🎉 Why do #youngpeople vote for the #AfD? This question has kept our research project busy for quite some time, so I'm beyond excited that our first article - co-authored with @timonscheuer.bsky.social - is now out in #GermanPolitics! 🤩 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

📣 The Politics Lecture Series is back with a fantastic line-up!

Opening talk: Melissa Sands (LSE) on “Measuring Racial Avoidance on Virtual Streets”
Tue, 28 Oct 2025, 12–1 pm, Room 002

Everyone is welcomed to attend!

Headline: Asylum system in UK ‘out of control’ and dividing country, home secretary says

Covering what is going on based on what the Home secretary is saying or highlighting the moral panic she is whipping up is an editorial choice

The Guardian as often when it comes to this government chooses to follow power over scrutiny. Doing so, it also chooses to mainstream far-right politics

UK set to limit refugees to temporary stays Shabana Mahmood is expected to say the era of permanent protection for refugees is over, in major changes to the UK's asylum and immigration system.

Research on this is clear: the uncertainty created by this policy will lead to people integrate less into British society. It is trading-off the reasonable policy goal of integration for the useless symbolism of immigration numbers. Bad policy to appease the far right.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

When the government accuses asylum seekers of being given "golden tickets" and "tearing the country apart" and the media cheers them on, you know the mainstream elite has accepted fascism as a valid alternative to the radical change needed to address the many crises this country is facing

🚨Elites often warn: taxing the rich hurts everyone.

🤔But do citizens buy that story?

With @bcastanho.bsky.social & Hanna Lierse, we find: They don’t! Most people believe progressive taxes can deliver both — more equality and more growth. @jpublicpolicy.bsky.social #openaccess cup.org/3JVuvHm

Most British young men reject the far right - UK in a changing Europe Emilia Belknap and Stuart Turnbull-Dugarte explain their analysis on the demographics of Reform UK voters in the UK. They argue that while the dominant narrative is that young men are the most likely ...

🚨 🆕 analysis w/ @turnbulldugarte.com: most British young men reject the far right @ukandeu.bsky.social Despite media claims, 71% of young men & 75% of young women say they’d never vote Reform UK. The gender gap exists, but it’s steady across ages—not youth-driven.
🔗 ukandeu.ac.uk/most-british...

🚨 Job alert! 🚨

A full-time postdoctoral position (100%) is available at my chair starting February 1, 2026. We are looking for a candidate with knowledge of quantitative methods and expertise in relevant subject areas.

Visualized here. Hot tip for journalists: the real question isn’t why Wilders lost, but why the far right has consolidated — despite Wilders's ineffectiveness in government.

Seems like today is a good day to re-share in light of the Dutch elections

In etwa einem Monat möchte sich die neue #Jugendorganisation der #AfD gründen. Mit @szde.bsky.social habe ich darüber gesprochen, dass es wohl vielmehr um organisatorische #Professionalisierung als inhaltliche Mäßigung gehen wird. Mehr zum strategischen Wandel 👉 www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/afd-...

With the official prognosis giving one additional seat to PVV and one to FvD compared to the ext poll, the narrative should really not be that the Netherlands/Jetten has beaten the radical right. The far right bloc remains remarkably stable.

Es gibt nun Leute, die schreiben, Merz musste das nicht wissen. Das genaue Goebbels Zitat vielleicht nicht. Aber dass im NS Stadtbilder buchstäblich gereinigt wurden, "judenfrei" gemacht wurden schon. Dass er Bilder in unheilvoller Kontinuität bedient, ist nicht zu leugnen.

Title and Abstract of the paper "Far-right contention in civil society: multiple lenses on action repertoires, actors, and targets". Authors: Hans Jonas Gunzelmann, Christin Jänicke Abstract: Over the past decade, the far right has been on the rise in civil societies across Europe. Civil society organizations have been challenged by the far right in governments, political parties, and within their own ranks. However, there is little systematic research on how the far right stirs conflict within civil society. Civil society research has tended to ignore ‘uncivil’ society and has instead focused on social capital and cohesion. Research on the noninstitutional side of the far right has been growing but has largely neglected the consequences for established civil society organizations and their members. This article addresses these blind spots by providing a conceptual framework and a methodology for studying the far right in civil society, which is applied to a case study. First, we construct a conceptual framework that adapts the contentious politics paradigm to the study of civil society. We delineate far-right contention within civil society and construct typologies of the action repertoires, actors, and targets. Second, we develop a methodology that combines different lenses to expand our view on far-right contention in civil society. We propose a mixed-methods research design for mapping far-right contentious events. Third, we apply our conceptual framework and methodology to the case of Germany by empirically mapping the action repertoires, actors and targets. Our findings fundamentally shift the scholarly understanding of the far right in civil society: We find that far-right contention in civil society goes well beyond adversarial actions by far-right actors. This has important implications for researchers and practitioners.

💫New paper out with @chjncke.bsky.social in @europeansocieties.bsky.social:

📝"Far-right contention in civil society: Multiple lenses on action repertoires, actors, and targets"

🧵A short thread about the paper:

Konservativer Anti-Migrationskurs befeuert die AfD Wenn konservative Kräfte die Narrative von Rechtspopulisten übernehmen, hilft das den Rechts-Außen-Parteien statt sie zu schwächen. Das zeigt die EU-weite Forschung des Politologen Tarik Abou-Chadi.

Mit WDR 3 Resonanzen habe ich heute über die Aussagen von Friedrich Merz gesprochen, darüber wie sein Kurs die radikale Rechte normalisiert und stärkt und warum er vielleicht mal öfter mit jungen Frauen sprechen sollte.

www1.wdr.de/mediathek/au...

Wie die AfD die Rhetorik der anderen Parteien beeinflusst&die Debatte zu Migration bestimmt. Die Ergebnissen unseres Papers mit @dasalgon.bsky.social in der @tagesschau.bsky.social

German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers

Könnte das bitte jemand Friedrich Merz zur zwingenden Lektüre vorlegen?

German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers Mainstream parties are increasingly allowing the far right to set the agenda, researchers in Germany have found, describing it as a shortcoming that had unwittingly helped the far right by legitimising their ideas and disseminating them more widely. The findings, published in the European Journal of Political Research, were based on an automated text analysis of 520,408 articles from six German newspapers over the span of more than two decades. Continue reading...

German far right setting agenda as opponents amplify its ideas, study finds

Unzählige internationale Organisationen und Zeug:innen dokumentieren das unbeschreibliche Leid in Gaza, aber in Deutschland denkt man sich zuhause vorm Bildschirm „die sehen gar nicht so mager aus“. An welchem Grad an Entmenschlichung sind wir angekommen, wenn so etwas Teil des Diskurses ist

The pretence of the cordon sanitaire: non-collaboration as a distraction from discursive congruence Much has been written about how mainstream parties respond to far-right challengers in liberal democracies. Whereas some mainstream parties have become more open to forming coalitions with far-righ...

In France, it seems the cordon sanitaire around the far right may be about to break

@luke-shuttleworth.bsky.social, @k8ebrown.bsky.social and I argue in this article that its efficacy has been consistently damaged by the mainstreaming of far-right discourse

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Abstract

New paper out with @dasalgon.bsky.social: “Far-Right Agenda Setting: How the Far Right influences the Political Mainstream” doi.org/10.1017/S1475676525100066 #openaccess in @ejprjournal.bsky.social🧵

When writing this we did it with the hope that it wouldn't remain an ever-green comment on the state of the Labour Party.

For a brief moment during Starmer's conference speech I became more hopeful. As Starmer talks about Labour's latest radical right policy today, I've corrected myself.