Smug Lefties Most Likely To Think They're Right And Everyone Else Is Wrong

A polling group called More In Common has found that the “young, highly educated and socially Left-wing”, which the group euphemistically calls Progressive Activists, constitute just 8% of the UK population, but are found in far higher proportions in public-sector bodies and charities. They could have added in the BBC.

Daily Sceptic readers are, of course, unlikely to be knocked over in disbelief either by this startling revelation or by what else the survey discovered.

The study was originally covered by the Guardian of all places:

Left-wing activists in Britain are less likely to work with their political opponents than other groups and more likely to think those holding different views have been misled, a study has found.

The study by the polling group More in Common finds that 8-10% of the population, whom they classify under the heading “progressive activists”, hold strikingly different views on a range of issues than the rest of Britain.

The research also shows the group is more likely to dislike and criticise those that disagree with them than other voting blocs, a trait the report’s authors argue has contributed to the repeated failure of progressive campaigns and the rise of the global far Right.

Luke Tryl, an Executive Director at More in Common and co-author of the study, said: “Progressive activists are the backbone of many of the UK’s campaigning organisations and have often been the drivers of social change in the UK. However, their political outlook and approach to bringing about change makes them outliers from much of the wider public and those they are trying to win over.

“In particular this report finds that a tendency to impose purity tests on those they will campaign with, overestimating how many people share their views, and using language that is inaccessible to the wider public is potentially driving a backlash against progressive causes rather than helping them to win people over.

“If the liberal Left are going to get back on the front foot it will require a much more deliberate approach to meeting people where they are, and engaging with the old-fashioned work of persuasion, rather than expecting people to be on board with social change from the outset.”

Anyone with even just casual knowledge of such “progressive activists” will know there isn’t a cat-in-hell’s chance of them changing track, since the whole point is to go around being right while everyone else is wrong and possessing a total intolerance of any divergence of opinion from their own. This is why they go beyond disagreeing with others and actively dislike them too.

The Mail of course couldn’t resist diving in, focusing on the evidence that “smug Lefties” (a.k.a. “progressive activists”) are far less likely to be able to cope with anyone who believes or does anything they disagree with:

This group also believes that a quarter of people would agree with letting more refugees into the country, when the actual figure is 8%.

Two-thirds of those polled said they would never be willing to campaign alongside someone who had voted for Reform, while 46% would not do so alongside Conservative voters.

In focus groups, researchers found that progressive activists were more likely than other voters to believe their opponents had been misled by misinformation and to hold a negative view about them.

The research also found that 72% of progressive activists view Leave voters negatively, compared to just 24% of “backbone conservatives” who view Remain voters negatively.

This of course indirectly links to another phenomenon: the fragmentation of the Left as a consequence of the incipient rise of sectarian politics in the UK, which is affecting the Left far more than the Right. Among other topics, Nigel Farage appears in a video on YouTube with Australian Sky News host Peta Credlin discussing this here, uploaded on February 18th 2025.

You can read the Guardian’s report in full here, the Mail’s here, and the original polling report here.