Saudi rift with Qatar exposes growing division in the anti-Iran alliance

US and Gulf Cooperation Council forces conduct field training, in Kuwait in 2017.
U.S. Army, Francis O'Brien/

This is the worst diplomatic crisis in the Gulf region in decades.

On June 5, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt decided to break off ties with Qatar, accusing the Gulf state of supporting terrorism and of destabilising the whole region.

Qatar had fired the opening shot by what seemed to be open criticism of the Saudi-led and US-assisted anti-Iran alliance pushed by Donald Trump after his visit to Riyadh on May 21.

On May 24, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, allegedly criticised the US-Saudi move and described Iran as an “Islamic power”. The Qatar News Agency quoted the emir as saying, “There is no wisdom in harbouring hostility towards Iran”. This infuriated Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Qatar then questioned the veracity of the comments and said its news agency was hacked. Nevertheless, the diplomatic rift been deepening, culminating in the current crisis.

Not the first diplomatic imbroglio

This is not the first time that Qatar, a thumb-shaped emirate of the size of the US state of Connecticut, has become embroiled a diplomatic imbroglio with its Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partners Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.



These three Gulf Arab states withdrew their ambassadors from Qatar’s capital Doha in early 2014, on the pretext that the country had links to the Muslim Brotherhood and gave refuge to its leaders after the fall of Egypt’s first democratically elected government in July 2013.

Saudi Arabia declared the Muslim Brotherhood, which it views as an alternative source of authority that’s opposed to hereditary monarchical rule, a terrorist organisation in early March 2014.

But the current crisis is much more serious than the 2014 diplomatic spat, which was resolved after eight months, with Saudi, Emirati and Bahraini ambassadors returning to Doha in November of the same year on the condition that Qatar would never allow the Muslim Brotherhood to operate from its territory.

Iran in the centre

Unlike the 2014 crisis, the current Qatari–Saudi rift is not just an intra-GCC falling out, as it involves Saudi Arabia’s regional rival Iran.

Qatar is seen by the Saudi government and its Emirati and Bahraini counterparts as a spoiler of efforts to forge a unified Arab–Muslim position, undergirded by the Trump administration, against Iran’s so-called “terrorist agenda” in Arab countries.

A week before US President Donald Trump visited Riyadh to consolidate the anti-Iran alliance, the Saudi arabic-language daily newspaper Okaz reported a secret meeting between the Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammad Bin Abdul Rahman Al Thani, who was officially visiting Baghdad at the time, and the Iranian Quds Force Commander Qasim Sulaimani.

The newspaper accused Qatar of exiting “early from the Arab-Islamic consensus” on Iran, adding “its defence of the Iranian terrorist regime shows the secret Doha-Tehran alliance intends to strike at Arab and Islamic solidarity.”

All of this while Qatar signed the anti-Iran Riyadh Declaration issued after the Arab-Islamic-America summit on May 21 2017.

But why would Qatar, a country that hosts the largest US air force base in the Middle East (Al-Udeid), veer off the Saudi-led GCC military and diplomatic track?


Gulf watchers know that Qatar is suspicious of Saudi goals under the GCC umbrella, and it wants an independent foreign policy, free from Saudi or Iranian influence.

Qatar hardly sees Saudi Arabia as a harmless neighbour. Tensions in Saudi-Qatar relations started right after the former emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khaifa Al Thani (1995 – 2013) came to power via a bloodless coup in 1995 by overthrowing his father Sheikh Khalifa Bin Hamad Al Thani. Sheikh Khalifa was visiting Saudi Arabia at the time, which embarrassed the Saudi government.

Sheikh Hamad’s takeover in 1995 was preceded by a Saudi attack on a Qatari border security post in September 1992, in violation of a mutual defence treaty the two states had signed in 1982.

Riyadh also thwarted Qatari initiatives to export liquefied gas to other GCC member states in the 1990s. Emir Sheikh Hamad began to pull Qatar out of the Saudi shadow, a policy that Emir Sheikh Tamim is also pursuing.

Qatari satellite news channel Al Jazeera occasionally broadcasts programs criticising Saudi Arabia and, much to the anger of Riyadh, it hosted Saudi dissidents in a popular talk show in June 2002.

The incident led to Saudi Arabia recalling its ambassador from Doha in September 2002. Full diplomatic relations between the two countries were restored five years later, in September 2007, on Qatari assurance that Al Jazeera would refrain from broadcasting anti-Saudi programs.

A big push in the region

At the same time, Qatar, with the massive amount of oil and gas-generated income in its coffers (US$191 billion GDP in 2012), has been pushing for a bigger foreign policy and diplomatic profile in the region.

Doha successfully mediated a series of conflicts in the 2000s. It broke the political impasse in Lebanon by persuading the Sunni-led Lebanese government and the opposition Hezbollah to sign the May 2008 Doha Agreement; it mediated the conflict between the Yemeni government and Houthis in February 2008 (though it failed subsequently to find a permanent solution to the conflict); and, in February 2010, it facilitated a ceasefire agreement between the Sudanese government and the opposition Justice and Equality Movement.

Sudanese parties sign Darfur truce deal.

These successful mediations brought the tiny country enviable diplomatic plaudits from home and abroad.

In 2011, to the surprise of many regional states, the Qatar military participated in the NATO-led intervention to dislodge the Gaddafi government in Libya. It wanted to achieve a similar goal in Syria – to topple the Bashar Al-Assad government – but did not succeed primarily due to Iranian and Russian opposition.

Despite being an autocracy, Qatar presented itself as a frontline Arab state for politically transforming the Arab world, under the rubric of the Arab Spring movements.

Its objective was to strengthen Qatari national security and foreign policy autonomy in the Gulf region, a neighbourhood dominated by giants such as Iran and Saudi Arabia.

What next?

Nonetheless, the diplomatic spat with Saudi Arabia does not bode well for Qatar. The Saudi-led diplomatic offensive has isolated it from the rest of GCC and the Middle East region by cutting off air, land and sea routes to Doha.

Doha has been accused again of supporting regional terror groups – al-Qaeda and ISIL in Iraq and Syria - and cooperating with Iran.

Qatar has always denied funding extremist groups, but the small country has been accused in the last few years of allowing terrorist financiers to operate within its territory with impunity.

The Qatari government has also pledged support for Hamas, the Palestinian group regarded as a liberation force against Israeli occupation by most Muslim countries, but as a terrorist organisation by the United States, Israel, Egypt and Canada.

Qatar can expect no serious help from Iran either, as any possible Iranian political or diplomatic help runs the risk of further embittering Saudi-Qatar relations and permanently subject Doha to Saudi wrath.

The Trump administration is definitely not on Qatar’s side, as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, speaking in Australia, indirectly hoped to resolve the intra-GCC irritants and put Qatar back in the Saudi-driven GCC orbit.

Cracks in the Saudi-Qatar relationship would undercut the joint Arab-US fight against regional terror and extremist groups. It’s difficult to say how long Qatar would be in the position to resist the Saudi diplomatic offensive.

But backing down from the fight with Riyadh looks set to produce two outcomes. First, Doha would be obliged to downgrade its support to rebel groups in Syria, linked to either Muslim Brotherhood or al-Qaeda. And second, it must be willing to shed some degree of its foreign policy autonomy to participate in the Saudi-led offensive against Iran.

In either case, Qatar has undermined the anti-Iran alliance, giving Tehran more time to reassess the situation and consider its options.

Mohammed Nuruzzaman, Associate Professor of International Relations, Gulf University for Science and Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Selling sex: Wonder Woman and the ancient fantasy of hot lady warriors

Wonder Woman embodies the male fantasy of warrior women.
Variety.com

When the film Wonder Woman is released in early June, it will surely join the blockbuster ranks of other recent comic book-inspired film franchises, including Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and X-Men. But that’s not just because it features a sword-wielding Gal Gadot in knee-high boots and a metal bodice.

Wonder Woman has long been a bestselling creation, originally imagined in 1941 by the psychologist William Moulton Marston, and the film follows some of the main plot lines developed in the comic books.

Wonder Woman is a superheroine known as Diana, princess of the Amazons, who is trained to be an unconquerable warrior. When an American pilot, Steve Trevor, crashes on the shores of her sheltered island paradise and tells tales of a massive conflict raging elsewhere, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat.

Though Wonder Woman was portrayed as a feminist icon in the 1940s, she is also a highly sexual character.



We can only wonder – no pun intended! – about the reasons for this imagined link between war and female sexuality. As a sexy but fierce lady warrior, Wonder Woman is hardly alone. Throughout history, cultures across the globe have envisioned and revered the femme fatale, from feline killers to sensual goddesses to sassy spelunkers.

The Sumerian “wonder woman”

In 3000 BC, in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk in Mesopotamia, the first kings of human history ruled over the south of modern-day Iraq, protected by Ishtar, a great goddess of war and love often associated with lions.

Ishtar, naked on a vase.
Louvre/Wikimedia

Ishtar would reveal the kings’ enemies and accompany them to the battlefield. It was said that she fought like an unleashed lioness protecting her young – in this case, the Sumerian people. Like Wonder Woman, Ishtar’s sacred duty was to defend the world.

She could also be sensual. More than merely worship the goddess, the Kings of Uruk claimed to be Ishtar’s lovers, who, according to royal hymns of the era, would enter her bed and “plow the divine vulva”.

For the king, receiving sexual and military favours from a goddess served his political agenda, legitimised his reign and made him into an exceptional hero for his people. In the Wonder Woman film, this role is filled by the American pilot.

References to divine lovemaking are also found among ancient Palestinians, Babylonians, though scholars can’t confirm what was really going on in those temples.

Cat girls from Sekhmet

Bastet as a lion.
Mbzt/Wikimedia, CC BY-ND

Lee Meriwether as Catwoman in the 1960s.
Ebay/Wikimedia

What’s more sexy than a powerful woman? Taming her, of course.

In ancient Egypt, the most fearsome goddess was named Sekhmet. Like Ishtar, she had two sides – fierce beast and loving companion.

Sekhmet was often portrayed as a terrible lioness, the butcher of the Pharaoh’s enemies. At times, though, she would transform into an adorable cat named Bastet.

Today, the feline is still symbolic of female sexuality. Catwoman, another comic book heroine, was born a few months before Wonder Woman (not that a lady reveals her age) and is the most contemporary avatar of a feline woman.

With her curves and her bondage fetish, Catwoman has always been hypersexual, though some critics regret that her sexuality – not her intelligence – has become her greatest asset these days.

Amazons, the lonely sailors’ dreams

Warrior women with sexual natures are also found among the ancient Greeks.

Their myth of the Amazons tells of a Mediteranean kingdom in which it was women who fought and governed, while the men were relegated to domestic duties. Marston’s Wonder Woman comic invokes the Amazons’ city, Themiscyra, and the name of their queen, Hippolyta.

He embellished his ancient Amazonian setting with details from the legend of the women of Lemnos, in the Aegean Sea, adopting the isolated island idea as Wonder Woman’s home.

According to the Greek story, the women of Lemnos had revolted and massacred all the men on the island, young and old. Living in a forced sexual abstinence, the ladies were delighted when sailors unexpectedly landed on a local beach. They immediately set upon the Argonauts, a team of beautiful and famous mythological heroes that included Hercules and Theseus, compelling them into long orgiastic intercourse.

The sex-starved but unattached women theme is another favourite male fantasy, offering imaginary satisfaction of sexual scenarios that may be difficult to realise in real life.

Our modern Amazon.
TombRaider Wikia

By the late 20th century, Lara Croft came along to update the idea of the Amazons and the ladies of Lemnos. Croft, an English archeologist-adventurer who started life as a character in the 1990s video game Tomb Raider, was the ultimate virtual-reality dream girl: she is an expert in martial arts, great with a gun and super smart.

Plus, she always leaves the guys wanting more. Reincarnated on the big screen in 2001 by actress Angelina Jolie, Croft often gave the cold shoulder to her male counterparts. Later sequels featuring Alicia Vikander continued to pitch Croft as a sex symbol while bolstering her feminist credentials.

Women and weapons, the ultimate fantasy?

The new Wonder Woman film seems to have made a careful choice of actress, looking beyond just a pretty face and a remarkable body. Gal Gadot has both of those, but she’s a lot like the heroine in other ways, too.

Voted Miss Israel in 2004, Gadot was also a sports coach in the Israeli army. In a August 2015 interview with Fashion magazine the actress, who was then 30, affirmed that her military experience prepared her well for a Hollywood career.

Gal Gadot in the Chinese film poster for Wonder Woman, to be released in China on June 2.
Reddit

On screen and off, the ancient link between femininity, sexual attraction and the military, seems to still be going strong today. Everything from Wonder Woman and the Instagram account of Israeli soldier-cum-amateur model Maria Domark to the rise of a new sub-genre of lady warriors in Asian cinema and, of course, American weapons catalogues, confirms the old masculine fantasy associating pretty faces with guns.

The new Wonder Woman film channels all this history. Pop culture attempts to showcase the heroine as a feminist cannot counteract thousands of years of global sexual fantasy. But you can bet it’ll be a hit at the box office.

Christian-Georges Schwentzel, Professeur d'histoire ancienne, Université de Lorraine

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Meet the villagers who protect biodiversity on the top of the world

Gyala Peri and Namcha Barwa - Tibet.
梁逸晨/wikimedia, CC BY-SA

It was a chilly February day. Dangwen and his wildlife monitoring team patrolled along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River. The river was frozen solid, easy for poachers to walk over.

That day, they encountered 220 blue sheep, five white-lipped deer, and a line of otter footprints. On the infrared camera traps that they had set up throughout the valley, three snow leopards appeared, a mother and two cubs – and the cubs had grown much bigger than three months earlier.

Dangwen comes from Yunta, a village located in Sanjiangyuan, Qinghai Province on the Tibetan Plateau. Sanjiangyuan, is a 400,000 km² area that serves as an important habitat for rich and unique biodiversity and a watershed of the three largest rivers in Asia, the Yellow, Yangtze and Mekong, which serve a billion people downstream.

Dangwen isn’t officially a researcher or an activist. But he has taken upon himself the task of monitoring local wildlife with a team of other villagers, as part of a conservation project driven by the Shanshui Conservation Center, a Beijing-based non-governmental organisation

A pilot village for conservation

A mining company attempted to prospect the area almost a year before wildlife monitoring in the region started. The villagers were deeply disturbed because mining the mountains would go against the spiritual values of Tibetan Buddhism and threaten their safety.

So, when the Shanshui NGO proposed in 2013 the idea of organising villagers to monitor wildlife and protect their lands, Dangwen volunteered without hesitation. Having grown up in the village, he is very familiar with the land, the river and the wildlife, and he is especially proud of the sacred mountains that surround all of them. This is the fourth year that Yunta villagers have carried out this monitoring, patrolled the village to spot poachers, and managed rubbish to keep the land and rivers clean.

Monitoring data shows that local wildlife populations, including snow leopards, are increasing. The villagers’ conservation conduct is officially authorised by the local government – their stories have been reported by China Central Television – and the mining company never returned.

An inspiration for the Tibetan plateau

Inspired by Yunta, four neighbouring villages began their own wildlife monitoring and anti-poaching patrols. With encouragement from local authorities, a village-based conservation network is being formed along the Tongtianhe Valley.

Recognised as a conservation priority in China, the Sanjiangyuan National Nature Reserve was set up in 2003 and designated a national park in 2016. But the area faces big conservation challenges: government agencies have limited manpower to manage this vast area and grazing rights to all its grasslands were given to households in the 1990s.

This means that conservation in Sanjiangyuan would not be possible without support from local Tibetan communities. As Buddhists, these communities embrace the value of respecting nature and caring for other living beings. Their system of sacred lands is very similar to modern protected areas.

That makes them natural allies for conservation. Yunta’s experience has proven that, with proper training, villagers can become very qualified conservationists. Essentially, they are providers of ecological services and should receive benefits from conservation in return.

Based on this experience, a policy recommendation was made to the government, and the newly designated Sanjiangyuan National Park quickly responded.

A total of 16,400 jobs as guards, with monthly salaries of 1,800 yuan (about US$260), are to be offered to villagers living inside the park (one per household). The next step is to explore the possibility of reducing grazing in key habitats to allow wildlife – especially large carnivores such as snow leopards – to increase, and to slow down grassland degradation.

Protecting animals and humans

The Tibetan Plateau is the last place in Asia that still maintains a relatively intact ecosystem where large carnivores and ungulates, many unique to the region – such as the snow leopard, the Tibetan brown bear, the Tibetan antelope, the wild yak, the Tibetan wild ass, the Tibetan gazelle, and the blue sheep – roam freely.

Maintaining this vast ecosystem is challenging because its population of pastoralists is rapidly increasing. The human population of Sanjiangyuan has doubled since 1980.

Meanwhile global climate change may have added to pressures on the grassland. Is it possible, under these conditions, to protect the ecosystem successfully while supporting the cultural and economic well-being of Tibetan communities?

A red-billed chough, thought to be the reincarnation of this woman’s daughter, sits on her shoulder.
Tashi Duojie, Author provided

After three decades of fast economic development, and demands by the Chinese people and government, a better environment is becoming a higher priority. Several large ecological programs have been initiated – perhaps among the largest financial schemes in the world – to pay for protecting and restoring forests, grasslands and wetlands, though their effectiveness could be improved by more scientific planning and participation.

The call for nature education from citizens, especially parents, is rapidly growing, and this has generated broad concerns over ongoing ecological degradation. Public participation in conservation is now protected by environmental laws. Political will, the interests of society, and traditional values are all coming together.

This makes us believe that co-existence between humans and nature is not just wishful thinking. Yunta offers a strong starting point.

This article is a joint initiative with the UN Environment magazine Our Planet and a contribution to World Environment Day 2017.

Lü Zhi, Professor for Biology, Peking University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

What the UK election means for Brexit and America

How each U.K. party leader would drive Brexit is the key issue on voters’ minds.
AP Photo/Matt Dunham

Despite the many distractions of a full news cycle, it’s time to start paying closer attention to Thursday’s elections in the U.K.

Much has changed since U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May stunned the world in April by calling for snap elections. For starters, after the two recent terrorist attacks on British soil, security has joined Brexit, health care and the economy as a central issue facing U.K. voters. In addition, May’s closest rival, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn – seen as a long shot back then – has succeeded in tightening the race. While May’s Tories look set to hold onto their parliamentary majority, they will likely receive a much slimmer mandate than they had hoped.

But by and large, the most important issue continues to be Brexit, as the latest surveys show. And whichever party wins on June 8 will determine how Britain – the world’s fifth-largest economy – defines its economic future, with significant consequences for the United States. For me, a political scientist by trade, this may be the most important election since I began following British politics while studying there in the late 1990s.

A floral tribute in the London Bridge area following the attack in London on June 5.
AP Photo/Alastair Grant

A tale of two Brexits

In a much-contested vote last June, the U.K. committed itself to leaving the European Union, the deeply integrated bloc of 28 countries that it joined back in 1973. Though the winners of this election are unlikely to reverse Brexit, they would have the power to negotiate the important details surrounding the departure.

May, who supported remaining in the EU during the referendum, has promised to respect the people’s will by negotiating a “hard Brexit.” She is willing to sacrifice privileged British access to the European single market in order to ensure the country’s control over its borders. For May and the Conservatives, if Britain is going to leave Europe, it should do so fully.

On the other hand, if Labour manages an unexpected victory, we might see a “soft Brexit,” one that preserves more mobility across the U.K.’s borders and more connections with the continent. Under Labour, British negotiators would probably push for continued preferential access to the single market. They could be forced by Brussels, in exchange, to accept limitations on border control as well as certain European regulations.

Back in April, polls suggested that the Conservatives would win in a landslide, taking dozens of additional seats in the House of Commons. The latest polling averages, however, show that their lead has narrowed to under 7 percentage points over the Labour Party from about 18 points in April.

Only the Liberal Democrats oppose Brexit and, were they to stun the country and win, might put the brakes on the process. With polls putting them at under 10 percent, that seems highly unlikely.

An open question is what happens to the ‘special relationship’ after Brexit. It will depend on who’s in charge of it.
AP Photo/Matt Dunham

What this means for the US

While it seems nearly certain that Britain will leave the European Union some time in the next few years, the choice between a “hard” or a “soft” Brexit is still up in the air. How will this choice affect the United States?

One argument is that a “hard” British withdrawal from the EU would be a good thing for America. Without a special relationship with Europe, some say, Britain may come to prize its “special relationship” with the United States even more. It may reorient both its economy and its military strategy in a more American direction.

Beyond that, the withdrawal of Britain from the EU, whether “hard” or “soft,” would finally kill the idea that the euro (which the U.K. might have eventually adopted) will someday supplant the dollar as the world’s dominant currency, good news for America’s international economic influence.

While both of these effects may be real, Brexit would also have some serious drawbacks for the United States. For one thing, many American businesses depend on the U.K. as an entryway into the European market. Britain is an English-speaking country with a similar business culture to the U.S., but one that nevertheless has full access to the EU. This will change with a hard Brexit.

American financial and legal firms with large operations in London are already preparing for Brexit, and many will likely shift at least some of their operations to the continent. Other American companies may follow, especially if Brexit is hard and results in a reimposition of trade barriers. The costs of these adjustments will, of course, be more serious for the U.K. than for the U.S., but they could nevertheless be significant for American companies.

On the currency front, while Brexit will likely reinforce the special role of the dollar, it may also weaken U.S. exports to Europe in the short run. In combination with the euro crisis, the prospect of British withdrawal has strengthened the dollar mightily against both the pound and the euro, making U.S. exports more expensive.

May with European Council President Donald Tusk at 10 Downing Street. Negotiating a breakup with Europe will be one of the toughest tasks for the next PM.
AP Photo/ Dan Kitwood

The future of Europe

Other potential problems for the U.S. transcend immediate economic concerns. Because the British government often shares the American perspective on economic and security issues, its absence from the EU will likely reduce American influence in Europe.

More seriously, Brexit could lead Scotland or Northern Ireland, both strongly pro-European, to threaten the territorial integrity of the U.K. The Scottish National Party is again calling for an independence referendum, and there are renewed demands in Northern Ireland to merge with the Irish Republic.

On the European continent itself, Brexit could threaten the cohesiveness of the EU, though this is not a likely outcome given the recent elections in France and the Netherlands in which pro-EU candidates won.

In any case, the instability that Brexit has introduced into Britain and Europe risks weakening America’s most important liberal allies in the face of resurgent threats around the world.

All of this fallout, while probably to some degree inevitable, would be exacerbated with a harder Brexit. It would also be worsened by drawn-out negotiations that extend the current uncertainty into the indefinite future.

In the final analysis, this election and its aftermath will help determine whether Britain and Europe can quickly return to the economic prosperity and stability of the recent past.

Charles Hankla, Associate Professor of Political Science, Georgia State University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

Rise of 'anti-politics' produces surprise result in the UK election – and it's playing a role in Australia, too

Theresa May’s gamble on calling an early election has not paid off.
Reuters/Toby Melville

A little over a week before the 2017 UK general election, the improbable occurred. A poll indicated that Prime Minister Theresa May could lose the Conservative majority. The shadow of a hung parliament was cast over the UK parliament again. It was a claim credible enough to the markets for the sterling to drop. Most political analysts, however, did not take it seriously.

But these are unconventional times. There is an unlikely president in the White House. No pundit predicted Brexit. And now, a Labour Party led by an “anti-politician” in Jeremy Corbyn has delivered a hung parliament.

While Theresa May will soon be on her way to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen’s permission to form minority government, the unlikelihood of a stable coalition government means Britons may be heading back to the polls much sooner than they expected.

A win for anti-politics?

“Anti-politics” is often used to describe:

• a growing distrust of career politicians;
• hatred of partisan politics; and
• disaffection with democracy.

Among its causes is complacency in rich Western nations, as well as disinterest in institutions (especially from the young). Many see anti-politics as a tide sweeping away much that was previously taken for granted.

According to leading UK scholars, anti-politics is not a democratic de-alignment as much as the result of political realignment. In other words, it is not that we are turning off democracy – but that we are turning away from political elites and major party politics.

A recent Australian survey found righteous indignation among its citizens. This anger is directed at parties and politicians who are swayed by the quest for power and seem to break promises without impunity.

One of the significant lessons from the 2017 UK poll is that “anti-politics” voters are no longer welded on to any one party. There is growing volatility in the UK electorate. In the 1960s, less than 10% of voters changed their allegiance between elections. In yesterday’s poll it was closer to 40%.

Thanks to anti-politics, gone are the days when voters supported a political party in the way they might support the family football team.

But how then do we explain the strongest combined major party vote for two decades (Conservative 43 / Labour 40)? Does this suggest a return to two-party politics?

No, because one side – Labour – was playing anti-politics.

Corbyn’s success in context

There is no doubt that no-one expected the dramatic growth in the Labour vote. But there are two stories to tell.

First, the support for Corbyn came against economic and political convention. Labour focused on larger cities and university towns, targeting students, service industries and the public sector. It promised to end austerity, nationalise utilities, increase taxes, and invest heavily in public services. It was an anti-political appeal.

Second, the Labour vote was a big enough to hamper the Conservatives, but not much more.

Despite Labour’s celebration over approximately 30 seats, the 2017 result is only eight seats more than when it lost power in 2010. The reality is that Labour is little closer to the 60-plus seats it needs for power than it was last week. What will make this a potentially insurmountable gap is an unacknowledged divide in the UK electorate.

A deeper UK divide

Recently, UK researchers analysed the 2015 UK election results. They found that anti-politics attitudes spread across all voter groups. But what was really challenging for parties was not a traditional split along class lines, but a growing “bifurcation” in the vote of cosmopolitan and provincial England.

Cosmopolitan voters had benefited more from globalisation, were more outward-looking, pluralist and open to the EU. In contrast, those in provincial regions of economic decline were more inward-looking, illiberal, and negative toward immigration.

Perhaps there are no great surprises here. But what is interesting is that this division had real effects that challenged political parties. In other words, these shifts made it harder for larger parties to develop a platform that spans these “two Englands”.

In 2015, this resulted in cosmopolitan votes for Labour and the Greens. It saw provincial support for UKIP and an element of both for the Conservatives.

This suggests that the Conservatives’ 2015 success was due to being more adept at targeting appeals to both cosmopolitan and provisional electorates, while being more pragmatic around taking nationally consistent positions.

What happened in the 2017 general election?

While the Conservatives won 5.5% more of the vote (but lost a dozen seats), Labour won a 7% swing in cosmopolitan areas that had voted Conservative and “Remain”. While participation was up 2.6% overall (up from 66.1% in 2015), it rose by over 5% in seats Labour won.

On the back of record youth enrolment to vote, Labour surged in the youth vote in cosmopolitan areas. Meanwhile, Conservative London cosmopolitan seats changed hands, while Labour won university seats like Sheffield Hallam from the Liberal Democrats.

Yet the challenge for Labour remains. Its wins were cosmopolitan, with little progress in the provincial areas that it needs for a majority in the future.

Meanwhile, the Conservative appeal to provincial England through an emphasis on Brexit and bringing down net migration were successfully targeted at a collapsing UKIP and winning some SNP seats. But it compromised the Tories’ cosmopolitan wins from 2015.

Here lies the challenge for all large party leaders: how do they connect with prevailing moods in both cosmopolitan and provincial areas when they diverge in such opposite directions?

What might this mean for Australia?

It is not unreasonable to suggest Australia may be seeing its own version of the “bifurcation” challenge.

Australian demographer Bernard Salt has already identified a tale of two nations. And as Ken Henry recently observed, the Australian population continues to grow beyond the capacity of existing capital cities and puts pressure on economic performance and infrastructure planning. This can only contribute to “two Australias” that are divided by geography, economic opportunity and even identity.

Meanwhile, some states (hit hard by globalisation) have turned to provincial, protectionist and issue-based politicians. And, as national votes become harder to span, the notion of slim majority as mandate will become even more problematic.

Many argue that former prime minister John Howard’s ability to win traditional Labor voters was at the heart of his sustained electoral success.

However, the challenge for today’s Australian leaders is more complex than it was during the Howard era. Not only must they manage competing ideologies in their parties and span diverging nations, they must also respond to a volatile electorate that is decidedly “anti-politics”.

Brenton Prosser, Senior Fellow, Australian National University and Gerry Stoker, Fellow and Centenary Professor, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra

This article was originally published on The Conversation.