The Bubble Burst: Talking Politics in St Andrews

We often give St Andrews the nickname of “the bubble.” So much so that during graduation the iconic “The Bubble Will Miss You” slogan is projected on the walls of St Salvador's Hall. 

For many, the town's three streets are paved of gold. Populated by the young, beautiful, and wealthy, here to receive a top tier education before “entering into the real world” - that which St Andrews is definitively not. Weekends are spent attending black-tie events for which tickets cost up to a hundred pounds and discussions center around where people vacationed over the Christmas holiday and how glamourous they looked in their instagram posts. St Andrews has taken the form of a depoliticed oasis. 

I recall sitting in an International Relations tutorial my first year during the initial period of conflict between Israel and Palestine. I briefly referenced the geopolitical tensions taking shape in the West Bank before getting cut off by my tutor who asked me to refrain from discussing the issue. She explained to me after class that she was fearful of the possibility of conflict it could create within the class. I was dumbfounded, unable to understand how political debate was something to be avoided instead of encouraged. 

A few days ago – Sunday, February 1 – some friends and I were at my local pub, around the corner from my flat. We went for a cheeky pint before dinner and a game of darts. Myself, with horrible aim and less than sufficient math skills to tally the points, was left in the position of observer. Standing in conversation with a friend (who was wearing a backwards baseball cap), a middle aged man taps his shoulder asking, “Hey mate, wanna switch hats?” Hiding his bald head was a bright red cap marked with the slogan “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.” The bubble popped.  

Member of the conversation arm wrestling MAGA supporter, loser has to take off the hat. Credit: Tara Phillips

Russell Woods, a third year Modern History student, and participant in the ongoing darts match, was quick to ask, “You’re Scottish. You’re not even American. So why the hell are you wearing the hat?” Quickly, the conversation spiralled into a politically charged debate. 

Woods commented, “I think to an extent, it's good that it [the St Andrews bubble] isn't popped. That kind of symbol, especially with what's going on, to people's families, a lot of them who are students in this town right now, is pretty horrific.” The debate that took shape is an incident that is fairly isolated. “While, there might be a lot of negatives about the bubble. I think this is one of the few things that gives St Andrews a bit of value. And obviously it's kind of sad to see somebody that's not even American breaking that a bit,” he added.

The MAGA representative, and supporter of Trump, had grown up in the surrounding area, never living outside of Fife. For Woods, “It was weird to see the kind of Americanization of St Andrews not coming from Americans for once… The fact that this political figure that he's had no real interaction with has gained that traction is pretty shocking. Seeing MAGA hats in St Andrews has become, even if uncommon, still not exactly, you know, out of this world, but seeing it on a local, I think, is a new one for me.” It speaks to the globalization of political identity, a lot of which is due to media and algorithm-driven platforms acting as cultural intermediaries. 

Woods agreed and said, “Politics has become extracted from any kind of actual local issues and policies, and has just become a feature of an online culture war that's not really connected to people or things happening in people's lives. It's weird. He came to a pub by himself expecting other people to be cheerleaders for CNN, which, again, the majority of people in St Andrews and especially in Scotland, don't, of course, even watch. But I think it's a feature of how your typo localized media consumption can lead you to believe that there's a whole other world out there that doesn't necessarily exist.” 

Increasingly, the world stage is getting further divided between the right and the left from Brazil’s polarisation around Bolsonaro to the the rapid tilt towards the Reform party in the UK, one can’t help but wonder if identities become shaped by distant digital narrative and not shared experience, what will become of local political life? 

The politically charged conversation in the pub persisted for up to an hour, with only a couple interruptions from bar staff asking the volume to be kept down. Although, “You could kind of tell exactly how it was going to go from the first two minutes, and nothing really got said. Because nothing really ever gets said in these kinds of conversations,” said Woods. “Apart from establishing that he had no real link, he didn't have some greater support, more than just sound bites. To some extent from our side as well, it just kind of devolved to sound bites, where you're, repeating back things. No matter what you say, you were just spewing propaganda. You can't find any common ground,” he added. 

For Woods, the bubble remains intact, “I think even if there are these kinds of protrusions, we still are able to just experience the sound bites of politics, rather than, again, what the actual horrible stuff is that is going on in America at the moment… Even within the American population at St Andrews, it would be very weird to see an American wearing a Trump hat in this town, which obviously isn't representative at all of what's going on.” 

By the time the conversation dissolved, the MAGA associate had bought Woods three pints, who felt “I fear he may have just been a bit lonely. I doubt he’d be so hyperfixated with American right politics if he did have more friends.”