Stephen Bush At least Brexit brings us fun reality shows

The EU poll highlighted existing divisions while inspiring programme makers

What do the numbers 28,867, 34,559, and 27,445 have in common? They are the number of people who, in the last election, ticked a box marked “Liberal Democrat – To Stop Brexit” in St Albans, Richmond Park, and Winchester respectively – enough to elect Daisy Cooper and Sarah Olney as Lib Dem MPS in the first two constituencies, but not enough to unseat Steve Brine in the last.

The headline results of the election were, from a Lib Dem perspective, an unmitigated disaster – they lost seats on 2017, their worst performancein terms of votes castin the party’s history, including that of their leader, Jo Swinson, and as a result of their failure to deny the Conservatives a majority, we will leave the EU, the greatest defeat for liberalism in a century.

Yet behind the scenes, there are reasons for cheer for the party. In 2017 they finished second in just 37 seats – now there are many more seats than they can plausibly target and win at the next election. There’s just one problem: will those 90,871 people vote Liberal Democrat again? They – and more than three million other people – voted to stop Brexit, and now it won’t be. Will they stick with their new party – or return to their old one? The Conservatives have the opposite problem – in the 55 seats they won from Labour, people voted for Brexit to happen. And while our politics will continue to be defined by Brexit for decades, by 2024, we will have formally left the EU – and on that metric at least, Brexit will be “over”. Will Conservative voters in those 55 seats keep up the habit and vote Tory next time? Or will they revert to their old habits and back Labour – or simply not vote at all?

One of the reasons so many opinion pollsters were privately licking their lips at the thought of another referendum on EU membership is because the referendum highlighted divides we all knew existed – but struggled to define.

Remember that for pollsters, their work on general elections is basically just advertising: for the lucrative contracts with big companies that pay the bills the rest of the time. Most products, when you think about it, are being marketed to Remainers or Leavers. Some firms cater almost exclusively to one side or another; others, like most supermarkets, have brand ranges for Remainers and other ranges for Leavers. Most successful reality TV shows are, when you think about it, about putting together Remainers and Leavers with hilarious consequences: Wife Swap, in which the mothers of two households traded places every week, went off the air in 2010 but every episode essentially put a Leave family and a Remain family in each other’s shoes. In 2017 Wife Swap went overtly Leave vs Remain when it came back for a one-off Brexit special (“Can families polarised by Brexit find any common ground?”). Come Dine With Me is a show in which Leavers and Remainers clash with hilarious consequences. Gogglebox watches Leavers watch Remainers – and vice versa.

Pollsters and marketers knew about this divide but struggled to define it, giving it all sorts of naff names like “Tote Bag Milennials”, “National Security Pensioners” and “Global Green Community” – I made two of these up, but you get the picture. While the Remain/leave divide is not perfect either, it highlighted rather than created a divide in politics. It may be driven by a different issue in 2024 – crime, perhaps, or human rights – but that divide between different values will endure long after we’ve left.

The big unknown is whether it continues to drive votes – or just inspires good reality TV shows.

Stephen Bush is New Statesman political editor