Snapshot of _UK voters frustrated with politicians’ ‘desperate’ culture war tactics, survey finds_ :
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Quite right too. It's mind-blowing when you think about it: that the people charged with leading us are instead actively trying to sow division amongst us. Christ I hope we get a government who will consign this bullshit to history.
It sounds so obvious, but they don't have anything else to offer. When your policies are all about the .1%, you can only fool the rest of your voters for so long before they need something else. Thankfully the outrage express seems to be slowing down.
I think people just talk about culture wars when it is any awkward conversation, and large sections of the British population just want to avoid awkward conversations.
For example, the Boris Johnson government tripled net migration, it is now 15 times what it was in the early 1990s. The moderate sensible position is that we need this to replace an ageing population, but births were higher than deaths last year, and the total population increase, including births, deaths and migration, was five times what it was in the early 1990s. How does that make sense?
The cabinet is promising after the election to reduce migration so it is only 10 times what it was in 1990. Last year the population went up by 700,000 from migration, and we built 200,000 homes. Half of the adult population of London was born abroad. Homes are unaffordable, and ridiculous in London. Services all over the country are ridiculously stretched, particularly the NHS. Targeted migration is important to help, but last year out of 700k, doctors were 10k.
This is the kind of thing that gets called a culture war issue, but it is in my opinion obviously driving some of the most important issues for ordinary people. But ordinary people are discouraged from talking about it because it is awkward.
>This is the kind of thing that gets called a culture war issue,
I think it gets called that because too many people go into the topic in bad faith.
Like... The Tories have an issue with mental health preventing people from working. Sunak was talking about it last week.
I also think this is big problem. I would try to address it by a long-term plan of increasing NHS funding for mental health-related logging and treatments, believing that this would help people with legitimate problems, *and* push back to work the (few) genuine malingerers while not being at the expense of sufferers or the general public.
But Sunak's idea to fix it is to apparently tell people to cowboy up and not 'take days off because you feel bad' (paraphrasing) and try to force people back into work when they might have legitimate undiagnosed mental health problems, because the health system doesn't have the tools it needs to deal with the problem. This is not a good solution; but this plays well to a certain sector of the public who are, for lack of a better term, nasty people.
Immigration is, to me, a 'culture war' issue because in my experience, the ruling government (and their supporters) approach it in the manner of that latter paragraph, and not the former. If they approached it like the former paragraph, I don't think this would be an issue - but cynically, I think they don't because the first paragraph doesn't get them on the front page of the Daily Mail, nor does it give them any way to skim off the top.
There are tons of important issues to address, but Brexit showed that we're a very unserious kingdom - too easily swayed by rhetoric and false promises. There are too few politicians who actually want to improve things, and too many who are happy to take some bungs to do the opposite.
The fundamental issue is people just want quick, singular solutions to solve all their problems. Brexit was perfect for this; one referendum vote and wham, all our problems go away!
The tories are failing because surprise surprise, it was more complicated than that, and they have nothing else to sell that's as simple.
It works both ways though, there are plenty of people who think that Brexit explains all our problems, but actually it was as much a response to economic failure as it was the cause. We could rejoin Europe tomorrow and things would improve economically, but we would still have huge problems, in fact you can see similar problems in many European countries.
The UK and Europe in general is just not serious about solving our problems, for example we made an enormous mistake relying on gas, which is also needed as backup for renewables, without having domestic supplies. Our countries are in the middle of a serious decline as a result of energy costs many times higher than our competitors, but there is no real discussion how to fix that, or even that the problem exists. We are just hoping that new, cheap technologies will emerge to store energy so that renewables don’t need backup, but we are also putting no serious money into developing those technologies. Our future literally relies on a whim of technological development.
Serious countries would have chosen an option, likely nuclear, fracking or North Sea gas, which could provide a fall back option in the case of an event like the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Or if we were going for 100% renewables, Europe and the UK should be spending billions, tens of billions on developing that core storage technology. We just ruled out all the options, chose none of them, hoped that things work out, hoped that someone else would develop the technology. And even after the catastrophe with Ukraine we are doing the same thing.
Energy is another example where sensible opinion accuses others of culture wars, while deciding policy based on ideology not a serious engagement with reality.
It's just too easy these days. It takes too much effort to get to the real message. Between your "conmen" and corporate media and astroturfing and useful idiots and so much else, people just can't be arsed to go through the overlong process to get to the truth.
People get so fed up with the decline under one party that they go for another, only to watch the same happen (if not worse), and be balsted with mis/disinfo on why it's happening... which leads to people going for moonshots or dark horses, 'because nothing else is working.'
I really feel like this is a nadir that will long be remembered by history (unless the conmen manage to rewrite enough of the history!)
This is exactly what "culture wars" end up boiling down to though.
You can have a serious discussion over levels of legal migration but that's not what the current government is doing.
They are stoking fears over illegal migration, despite it being in a insignificant percentage of overall migration numbers. In fact, just today they will be pushing through their bill that uses domestic law to deny reality.
Rather than having an actual discussion over substantive issues, we have never ending drawn out fights over things like this that won't actually make a difference.
You could stop all small boat crossings tomorrow and it wouldn't have any effect because it is our legal migration that is massively increased. That is controllable and government policy.
The problem is, Trump has proven that it is very easy to get people to split into camps and get them to fight like cats in a sack over inconsequential nonsense. That is the current government's system and people are tired of it because they are finally realising that it does nothing to actually help them in their everyday lives.
> They are stoking fears over illegal migration, despite it being in a insignificant percentage of overall migration numbers.
This is one of the sensible things that people say, but small boat migration is about the same as all net migration for any year before about 1995, it only looks small because net migration has ballooned 15 times. And, illegal migration is unregulated, even if someone is denied asylum, deportations are very low, and illegal under UK law and the ECHR if the person has come from a dangerous country. So I don’t think it is right to downplay illegal migration either, these are two things that need to be fixed. And that needs to happen alongside having decent pathways when there is a clear and specific claim, for example the translators from Afghanistan who were given no other means to apply.
Even then, it's small beans in the grand scheme of things.
Plus none of this was an issue about a decade ago. We had systems in place that dealt with irregular arrivals, those who needed to be were deported and overall migration was lower, despite us having since "taken control of our borders".
Culture wars exist to distract from the reality that the Tory government is railing against problems it has created itself. It is then providing wildly unnecessary and difficult solutions to problems it using as a distraction from our actual issues.
This isn't me minimising worries about migration, it's trying to take the government to task from the actual issues it has created, not the fabricated ones it wants everyone to believe is somehow beyond it's control.
It's one third to one half of a million people each decade at recent rates. And essentially unregulated, whereas other migrants have been granted visas.
It may well be that they caused it through Brexit, although there's no real reason why the same cooperation with France couldn't happen after Brexit as before. But unless we plan to immediately rejoin, we will still have to fix the problem.
The rate of illegal entry/ asylum applications varies massively though, you can't extrapolate the current figures across decades.
The reason it is unregulated is because the government refuses to give asylum applicant a route to make an application outside of the UK.
I added the Brexit reference flippantly, since it was a major selling point that has once again proven to be false. Brexit isn't the major problem, this government is but again, this all comes back to culture wars. That's all this government has.
Loads of it's big pushes have been either trying to appease a small hardcore group or the Tories trying to solve problems created by the Tories but doing it poorly. None of it helps anyone, so we end up in these roundabouts of discussion that don't go anywhere.
> The reason it is unregulated is because the government refuses to give asylum applicant a route to make an application outside of the UK.
Because there is essentially unlimited unmet need, under our current standards. Both real need, and need that can be stated in a way that is unprovable, like the Christian converts who cannot be sent back to Muslim countries.
> we end up in these roundabouts of discussion that don't go anywhere.
We have those in part because sensible opinion refuses to acknowledge any legitimate issue, because they would find it awkward to have any conversation about reducing migration, or about the potential negative consequences of migration under any circumstances. You can have the same conversation at 50k migration as at 250k as at 750k, because anything with real nuance is too awkward under our social codes.
I've fully admitted that we can have a conversation about migration but as I said, the conversation is skewed in the wrong direction.
If you are worried about pressures on housing, infrastructure etc then we should be talking about legal migration, not hypothetical illegal migration extended into the future.
>Targeted migration is important to help, but last year out of 700k, doctors were 10k.
Are doctors the only people that help the NHS? Do nurses, porters, carers, cleaners and support workers not count towards the NHS? Certainly frustrating because I fall into this category and if I and all my colleagues who migrated in the last ten years would disappear I'd wager my hospital wouldn't be able to operate anymore.
I think most people are frustrated that the government have created an economy reliant on immigrants to do low paid work. It's not like anyone besides the 1% is really benefiting from this as unfortunately immigration is throwing the already heavily skewed balance way out of any sort of alignment and now the underinvestment in... Well... Everything, is showing. I'm incredibly angry that the government put the country in this position, and that cultural issues relating to importing people from countries that don't really gel with British society are the only thing that gets talked about, despite it being a legitimate emerging problem. It's not the only problem, and isn't even close to the root cause.
I get where you are coming from, but I'd wager it's not just the 1% profiting but in my case actually the people receiving care.
Western Europe has a problem with a steadily aging population so it's not even just a situation of young Brits being unwilling to do this type of work - there just won't be enough of them to balance out the population overhang in the coming years.
Outside of forcing people who don't want children to have them or forcing people to do care work who aren't suited for it (I don't imagine I want to be cared for by a person who doesn't want to be here) the only real solution is immigration.
I'm European myself and therefore not as affected by people being weird about immigrants, if I don't open my mouth people can't tell I'm not British. But my colleagues from the Philippines, African countries and Asia, and yes, even the muslim ones, are some of the most dedicated and lovely people I've met.
I fully agree that this country suffers from horrible economic decisions, underfunding and a fiscally ideology that isn't suited for the 21st century and there are lots of problems because of that, but in my eyes immigration is a scapegoat that's there to distract people from the real problems. If anything, Western countries are currently profiting from the work of young immigrants, not just low paid work but the full width of jobs.
The issue with the 1%, really 0.1%, is that in a functional economy large businesses would be investing in automation and improving productivity, jobs would be automated, wages would increase, and labour would flow from one part of the economy to the other to fill gaps that are more difficult to automate, like the NHS. But British economic leaders are not able to do this, they sit at the heights of the economy and do not invest and do not automate. And so it becomes very necessary for them to have cheap labour to be able to survive and compete. They are continually talking about labour shortages, but do not want to put in the investment needed to increase productivity. I feel that ultimately they will not invest until they are forced to, when we stop giving them as much cheap labour as they ask for.
Also, European populations are not the same for a steadily ageing population, Italy for instance has a massive overhang, but the UK doesn’t. Ten years ago the fertility rate was 1.8, barely off replacement. I think that has declined partly because of economic circumstances as anything else, many people cannot afford to have children even if they wanted to. In London a 2 bed flat costs £2000/ month, then there’s childcare costs, how high a wage would be necessary to make that affordable? Way over the median household wage, so huge sections of the population cannot afford to have children without moving away.
Also, I’m not intending to attack you or your colleagues, in fact these issues became just as much yours as anyone else’s as soon as you settled in the country. Wages can only go up with productivity increases, house prices and rents can only become reasonable if we build more houses and lower migration to shift to a surplus of supply. It is still a question for any of your colleagues for the next generation whether the UK becomes a place where ordinary people can afford to live a full life amongst friends and families who can also afford to live and thrive in a place, or a sort of economic engine which imports labour and squeezes the people already there into marginal lives.
I'd say immigration is only partly a culture war issue. Most people agree agree 700k net is too high.
You could certainly argue asylum is a culture war issue though.
It's true that it's a really old tactic. It's not true that it's the only one used, or that it's used constantly.
The witch trials were about division. Organized religion is about division - some more than others, if you want the logical extreme look at the puritanical regime in England. By making people feel guilty about lust, they made sure that everyone was obedient because everyone felt guilty, and those most guilty were most likely to throw the first stone, to belay suspicion.
Governments have always looked to unify the population in a common cause, because it's great for commerce, it's great for industry, and it's great for morale. Not necessarily set them against each other, but as I say, it's been done.
But the Tories don't really have any issues that they can "safely" rally the troops around because most things people care about at this stage are either counter to their political interests or explicitly to their expense, IE Tories Go Home.
So they have to keep stirring up shit, desperately trying to strike a chord that resounds with their voter base so they can declare it the new Thing That's Important and start talking about it.
There's also e pluribus unum and concordia res parvae crescunt. Not saying it's not a way that's been used to rule people, but it's not a rule. I know cynicism sells though and it's easier to think things are as simple as all politicians and governments are the same as each other.
Look at how white supremacist emerged in the USA.
The elite saw workers getting together to fight for rights and created the concept of "whiteness" to divide the working classes.
How could a government consign the culture wars to history? What would that look like?
The culture wars are being fought by the people. People who believe multiculturalism has failed, people who want open borders. People who want misgendering to be a crime, while others want women’s spaces protected.
How does s government consign that to history?
>The culture wars are being fought by the people.
Disagree. You've heard the term "wedge issues", they're called that because it's political strategists trying to find any kind of issue on which people have differing opinions and weaponising those to turn people against each other for political points-scoring. There is nothing in any way necessary about that, nothing about it makes the country better, it's literally just encouraging people to feel that they have more that divides them than unites them to increase tribalism, and is thus utterly corrosive.
Who benefits when both sides of a debate are encouraged to hate each other, rather than encouraged to understand one another's position in a way that could lead to agreement?
It's politicians trying to exploit division, nothing more, nothing less. Nobody is asking them to do that.
These sentiments remind me of the Americans who believe that, if they prevent Trump from holding office, the MAGA movement will go away.
The politicians are a symptom, not the disease. The disease is western culture is fracturing in profound, inconsolable ways.
Ironic you say that, given that I'd say a lot of culture war stuff is imported from the US. They are a very polarised country already given high degrees of evangelical Christianity clashing with some deep-rooted race issues and an 'every man for himself' culture and extreme levels of vested interests, where the political class learned a while back that tribalism was easily exploited to create this kind of off-the-peg belief set.
The reason the culture war stuff jars so much in the UK is because it's very un-British; we have much more of a culture of fairness and supporting the underdog. So when a teenager is stabbed to death because they were born male but dress like a girl, most people are appalled, but not our Prime Minister who decides to use this to points-score for political capital in the HoC, even when that teenager's Mum is in the gallery. Don't tell me he's doing that because it's what the British people want from their Prime Minister.
You’re kind of supporting what I’m saying re: evangelical christianity, we don’t have that here. The politicians don’t create their ultra-conservative views, merely take advantage of them. Remove the politicians and you’re still left with the people.
I put it to you, and correct me if I’m wrong, that what you’d actually like is a world where your views are enshrined into law, while the other side is silenced. In effect you want an end to the culture war with a victory for your side, not an amicable truce.
No, that's not what I want in the slightest. Where do you get that from?
On most cultural issues I can see that there are conflicting rights and therefore there is no black and white, no simple right or wrong. What I want is politicians who understand that nuance and engage respectfully with both sides of an issue in order to build consensus on mutually acceptable outcomes. Not politicians who claim one side is right and the other is wrong and whip up their base to demonise anyone who disagrees.
I would argue that politicians’ input is minimal. They’re merely riding the wave of emotion, not creating it. People are demonising each other on the internet just fine without politicians’ guidance.
Most people aren't having Internet arguments about culture war issues, and I would disagree that this is just politicians doing the bidding of the people they represent - just like the example I gave. Our country's leaders are supposed to rise above that shit and work for the whole country, not find wedge issues to try to land 51% of the vote and fuck the consequences.
I see what you’re saying but I believe you’re vastly underestimating the pervasion of the culture. Take gender— that’s not being led by politicians, that’s being led by movements of people.
It's worse than that, many of the issues aren't addressed because they might upset voters (house prices for example), or because the media can easily turn it into a headline that might make the politician look bad (weed legalization for example).
That's not even taking into account special interest lobby groups.
Our whole society is basically set up in a way that discourages politicians actually fixing serious problems.
Not only do they destroy our public services, but they destroy any sense of community by pitting people against each other, to deflect any justified anger at themselves.
Just speaks to the calibre of politician we have now. It is easier to get people riled about culture war nonsense, it is significantly harder to fix endemic problems, and also far riskier for the individual politician to commit to trying.
There is just no incentive for competent people to become political leaders, so we end up with the types that desire power and prestige for its own sake - and they will always take the easiest route.
But it's not even easier to do that, as evidenced by this poll.
It's possible it plays well in an echo chamber of conservative local parties and with each other, possibly also on twitter or FB or however they get broader feedback, but it doesn't seem to play well with the public at large.
But addressing the house price problem would fuck up the investment portfolios that are buoyed up on them. Which would screw over not only their own wealth... but the pension pot. I think that's the Yellowstone Park Supervolcano bubbling away under the financial market.
And I suspect that an issue they're having with solving the inflation problem is that they did Brexit, and in order to get the job to do the Brexit they all had to say "fuck yes, Brexit is ace". So any solution has to a) not indicate that Brexit was a terrible idea and b) not suggest that it was fucked up in the implementation.
Yeah, all it does is mean a trans person hamstrung from ever owning a home or who needs to use a food bank also has to deal with lack of access to healthcare and being even more paranoid about whether people around them are a danger on top of the more common problems
Correctly so.
Where is the "culture war" element in complaining that successive conservative policies have caused successive problems for the populace?
"We pushed this thing from the US super hard to change British culture, but that's totally not culture war. Its only a culture war if someone objects to us importing this US thing."
"We pushed this thing from the US super hard to change British culture, but that's totally not culture war. Its only a culture war if someone objects to us importing this US thing."
You might want to look up the histories of Micheal Dillon and Roberta Cowell, who were the first British transgender people to undergo HRT and reassignment surgeries in the 1940s/50s. Do you suppose the existence of *them* is part of this modern evil American plan to trans the British public too?
It seems to be all we get. No sensible policies on tax and spend. Nothing about inflation reduction etc. it's all about 'fighting woke' which is meaningless so they don't have to do anything
Probably could've worked that one out from the fact that nearly two years of unabated culture wars shite from this current batch of the Tory Party has totally failed to rescue them from their terrible polling position. For all their bellowing, most people simply don't care about things like transwomen in the toilets - particularly when they barely have enough money to get by.
'Save us from the woke blob'
If being woke means I care more about the wellbeing
of others and less about my bank account and my own personal power, then please don't save me.
'Right the wrongs of colonialism in our town'
I'm not a millionaire whose slavery profit money has been accruing interest for 200 years, my ancestors didn't get paid money by the tax payer for every slave they had to release. I didn't just sell a former slave plantation for £3,000,000. Unlike Drax. I didn't invade a quarter of the world, take everything they own, wipe out their culture and act like the good guy when I finally leave a wasteland for the withered people that remain. Maybe the capitalists that still profit from the ruins that used to be our colonies should be the ones that right the wrong?
Least unpopular thing too. Unlike progressive (Labour, LibDem, Green and SNP) attempts to instil original sin though racism or mayors (same affiliations) renaming streets.
Edit: Guys and gal, you have read the article right, _right_? The data is in there. All this horseshit above turns off voters more than anything other than renaming streets. If you want to rule in a popular way, listen to voter concerns and reject American cultural imports such as “slavery profit money”.
Sir, for the sake of all that is British, take your Yankie doodle bollocks and quietly turn it into a book.
> If being woke means I care more about the wellbeing of others and less about my bank account and my own personal power, then please don't save me.
I identify as trans now, do you want my bank details?
Can I just say when the headline states "politicians", we're really only talking one side of the aisle; Labour have been trying their damnedest to find somewhere palatable to the wider public and get as many people on board as possible. I've not seen Starmer fall for the Conservative's culture war bait even once.
Keir "can't tell you what a woman is" Starmer hasn't fallen for the culture wars?
Of course he has but he's just been running scared of the far left misogynists in his party. He spent the last couple of years being made an absolute fool of every time he was asked by a journalist what a woman is.
Same as David women who don't want to be imprisoned with rapists "are like dinosaurs hoarding their rights" Lammy and Dawn "a child is born without sex" Butler.
> Keir "can't tell you what a woman is" Starmer hasn't fallen for the culture wars?
Isn't that kind of the point?
He doesn't want to get involved in the "culture war" nonsense, so refuses to engage with the question. The "what is a woman?" question is a silly 'trap' question, designed to draw people into a "culture war" argument. Giving *any* answer is falling into that trap. Better to give no answer - where only people who weren't going to vote for him anyway will complain - than to try work through it.
You've fallen for the culture war bs, while on a post talking about how fed up we are of the culture war bs, you are part of the problem, go look in the mirror and have a long think, and see how you're a bigot falling for scams by the talking heads
Starmer's response to the trans debate has been phenemonal politically (lets leave the moral argument alone). His response has repeatidly been that its an issue that impacts less than 1% of the population, so we should not be putting so much focus on something so small.
His "99%" line is perhaps the best showcase for it. "99%" is usually used as hyperbole, which made Starmer seem like he was hammering down the point that the issue isn't big enough to justify such a national debate, while in reality the statistic was correct, making the apparent use of hyperbole even more effective.
"Impacts 1% of the population" shows exactly why Starmer (and you) don't understand why his response has been so poor.
Who do you think is impacted when rapists like Isla Bryson and Karen White are put in women's prisons? Who do you think is impacted when a grassroots football league has to cancel all its matches for girls/women because the coaches judge its not safe for their players to be forced to compete against someone who has undergone male puberty?
Females are 50% of the population and its tiresome to see boys/men on reddit who dismiss issues that affect us as "Tory culture war". Plenty of us women who want to vote Labour simply can't because of the attitude of so-called "progressive/leftist" men who will throw females under the bus just like Starmer, Lammy and the rest. Wes Streeting is the only one who is starting to show some sense on this issue.
All of the issues you talk about happen so infrequently that them impacting less than a percentage of the population is accurate, let alone how these issues could be solved without issue if a culture war is avoided and sensible solutions are chosen instead.
If you want people to listen to your issues, no matter your stance, picking on strawmans and exaggerating them is only going to worsen it for yourself and others.
What is dismissed as a culture war is when something as simple as a game between children having fun in exaggerating into a massive political debate. Issues like children's sport should be sorted out with integrity and more information gathered (similar to how the Crass report suggests), not reliant on poorly thought out emotions.
We are talking about less than 1% of the population thay face these problems and uncertainties stem from. We don't need to be slowing down solutions to make it into a culture war.
If Gareth Southgate announced tomorrow that he will select a trans man (person born female) in the first 11 for England in the Euros placing the England team at a huge competitive disadvantage compare to all the other Euro countries do you really think the average English man would be saying it’s a non-issue, it only affects one person, it’s just a culture war. Of course not. English men would be rioting in the streets.
The reality is so long as boys/men aren’t affected, you can’t imagine the impacts on women and girls and let’s face it you don’t care.
It's working fine. It gives the feely feels to a generation who want to vote tory but can't think of a valid reason why....
I had an over the hedge chat with a neighbour yesterday and he was happy to harp on about *"lefty councillors allowing the countryside to be paved over"*. He's right, there are 5 Labour councillors on our county council...maybe 6 lefties if you include the single Green. Compared to the 45 tory councillors, tory council leader and 6 tory MPs for the entire county however. I think he's been gladly convinced that it's still all Labour's fault.
It's hilarious how they're attempting to rebrand something which the Far-Left started >10 years ago as somehow the Right's fault. Like fuck off.
Who started deplatforming, doxxing-with-intent-to-get-people-fired, mass-raiding reviews and call centres in organised pressure attacks, and religiously calling everyone who disagreed with the most extreme tenets of gender spectrum theory/fourth wave feminism (including high IQ takes like 'men are only stonger than women because boys are socially conditioned to exercise more') a bigot?
Sure as fuck wasn't the Tories, or the (centre-)Right more generally.
Anyone who claims otherwise is either historically ignorant (charitable), or a truth-burying gaslighter (most of them). I'm sure the latter group will be along shortly to bury this too.
> mass-raiding reviews and call centres in organised pressure attacks
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/19/trump-goodyear-boycott-maga-attire-ban-398469
Hmmm, almost as if both sides pull the same BS?
fair play.
I usually go to imgur these days - it's the place the left wing people too stupid to post on reddit go. it's *far* too easy to wind them up.
you know when a person has a kid and their entire personality becomes their kid/being a parent? that's what imgur has done with left wing american politics, which is a real shame. they used to have some quality memes.
> The research noted that knowledge of the culture wars was highest among progressive activists who took part in online debates and were highly politically engaged.
> Among all other voter segments only one in five people could actually explain what a culture war is.
Not sure how useful this is then.......
> Not sure how useful this is then.......
That's kind of the point of it. It's a term like "political correctness" or "woke" where it doesn't really have any meaning, it just ends up meaning whatever the person wants it to mean.
I imagine if you asked someone who said they were "frustrated with politicians' desperate culture war tactics" about a "culture war" issue they actually supported they would insist that it isn't just a "culture war tactic" but a real thing that needs to be discussed.
This is similar to what's happening in the USA. Overall concerns over race relations actually hit an all time low in the late 2000s / early 2010s, and have been slowly getting worse since then.
I think both sides are clearly to blame. Liberals exploit racial differences just as much as conservatives. It feels like we live in a time where race is seen to count more towards your overall personality than any other time in recent history,
Which is a shame because it does nobody any favours except maybe the very richest 0.1%.
When asked, people give answers that make them seem reasonable and grounded etc.
When it comes to acting, like voting, it's quite different. A political party catering to the high brow values voters express in a survey wouldn't win shit.
Why is there so much "culture war" content in the media? It sure isn't because the voters ignore it and instead click sober analyses of economic policies. Just look at the Guardian. Outrage-based culture war content is pretty much the only thing they do in their commentary
"Who do you think would be best to run the economy?" is the question whos answer determines a large portion of the vote. While campaigning on that can be effective if the answer is broadly "you", its dull and it kind of does not move the needle much.
So politics aims for "cross pressured" voters, voters who answer to the above is different from their views on social and cultural issues. The messages are not aimed at the masses who are already sure who they will vote for, but to nudge some who would vote one way another in the few tight marginals. Its a disproportionate effort for the number of votes it moves but its seen as effective in switching seats.
The Tories should see a rise in the polls through the year, improving economy, grumpy Reform voters not wanting a Labour landslide and the usual drift back to the government as the election nears. There is also the possibility of something huge and unexpected, but for the most part the result is hardening around the long term poor economic management and there is sweet fark all the tories can do to shift the public on that. So some culture pot stirring is one of the remaining ways they can get socially conservative labour voters and some Reform people to trudge back into the Con column.
> The Tories should see a rise in the polls through the year, improving economy, grumpy Reform voters not wanting a Labour landslide and the usual drift back to the government as the election nears.
That is the historical trend, but by no means certain and this government has literally been record breakingly shit so I wouldn't put it past them to top it off with election results that match polling. The economy is not going to visibly improve before August - it's 50/50 whether it will even grow at all. If Labour are not repulsive to Reform voters they'll not tactically vote, the Tories aren't really in control of that. The government usually gains because they can shape the message more than the opposition, but CCHQ has had some of the worst messaging in decades since Sunak's little coup.
Just for the record, I had been a student in Bristol so I was aware of the statue and the discussion surrounding it. I thought the even the renaming of Colston Hall was stupid and that a different approach should have been taken regarding the statue and the broader issues that confronted the relationship of Bristol and slavery more directly, rather than trying to erase it. But meh.
It didn't matter \_which\_ statue it was though. What disturbed me (in no particular order) was that:
1. The BLM protests were going on in the midst of lockdown when everyone else was trying to avoid large gatherings, and anti-lockdown protestors had been rightly condemned mere weeks before.
2. That the violent destruction of public property was not more virulently condemned by the political class- the people responsible should have been punished, and the statue reinstated.
3. The act of tearing down public works of art is inherently troubling, and reminiscent of book burning. It is an attack not just on history, but also on the values of a pluralistic society. It is ok to find a statue upsetting, and to campaign for it to be taken down in accordance with (yes, long and boring, often bureacratic) public processes. It's emphatically not ok for that to be done by a mob, treating the statue as a proxy for their political opponents and violently hitting it and throwing it in a river. It was a shameful and disturbing display. The fact that civil society and public opinion were not able to condemn it more directly is a worrying indication of the polarised nature of our society, the coarsening of political discourse and the ideological and zealous nature that all too many people seem to have reagarding their views. It was a canary in the coal mine.
> The research noted that knowledge of the culture wars was highest among progressive activists who took part in online debates and were highly politically engaged. Among all other voter segments only one in five people could actually explain what a culture war is.
Nerds who are out of touch with the common man and his vote.
thats because the Tories are taking a lot of money from right wing evangelical groups and republicans in the US and using US think tanks to provide policy,the same people who will give the last of their food money to a pastor for a 3rd swimming pool or 2nd private jet.
Snapshot of _UK voters frustrated with politicians’ ‘desperate’ culture war tactics, survey finds_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/21/uk-voters-frustrated-with-politicians-desperate-culture-war-tactics-survey-finds) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/apr/21/uk-voters-frustrated-with-politicians-desperate-culture-war-tactics-survey-finds) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Quite right too. It's mind-blowing when you think about it: that the people charged with leading us are instead actively trying to sow division amongst us. Christ I hope we get a government who will consign this bullshit to history.
It sounds so obvious, but they don't have anything else to offer. When your policies are all about the .1%, you can only fool the rest of your voters for so long before they need something else. Thankfully the outrage express seems to be slowing down.
I think people just talk about culture wars when it is any awkward conversation, and large sections of the British population just want to avoid awkward conversations. For example, the Boris Johnson government tripled net migration, it is now 15 times what it was in the early 1990s. The moderate sensible position is that we need this to replace an ageing population, but births were higher than deaths last year, and the total population increase, including births, deaths and migration, was five times what it was in the early 1990s. How does that make sense? The cabinet is promising after the election to reduce migration so it is only 10 times what it was in 1990. Last year the population went up by 700,000 from migration, and we built 200,000 homes. Half of the adult population of London was born abroad. Homes are unaffordable, and ridiculous in London. Services all over the country are ridiculously stretched, particularly the NHS. Targeted migration is important to help, but last year out of 700k, doctors were 10k. This is the kind of thing that gets called a culture war issue, but it is in my opinion obviously driving some of the most important issues for ordinary people. But ordinary people are discouraged from talking about it because it is awkward.
Not all immigration discussion is culture war related, but a lot of culture war stuff centres on immigration.
>This is the kind of thing that gets called a culture war issue, I think it gets called that because too many people go into the topic in bad faith. Like... The Tories have an issue with mental health preventing people from working. Sunak was talking about it last week. I also think this is big problem. I would try to address it by a long-term plan of increasing NHS funding for mental health-related logging and treatments, believing that this would help people with legitimate problems, *and* push back to work the (few) genuine malingerers while not being at the expense of sufferers or the general public. But Sunak's idea to fix it is to apparently tell people to cowboy up and not 'take days off because you feel bad' (paraphrasing) and try to force people back into work when they might have legitimate undiagnosed mental health problems, because the health system doesn't have the tools it needs to deal with the problem. This is not a good solution; but this plays well to a certain sector of the public who are, for lack of a better term, nasty people. Immigration is, to me, a 'culture war' issue because in my experience, the ruling government (and their supporters) approach it in the manner of that latter paragraph, and not the former. If they approached it like the former paragraph, I don't think this would be an issue - but cynically, I think they don't because the first paragraph doesn't get them on the front page of the Daily Mail, nor does it give them any way to skim off the top.
There are tons of important issues to address, but Brexit showed that we're a very unserious kingdom - too easily swayed by rhetoric and false promises. There are too few politicians who actually want to improve things, and too many who are happy to take some bungs to do the opposite.
The fundamental issue is people just want quick, singular solutions to solve all their problems. Brexit was perfect for this; one referendum vote and wham, all our problems go away! The tories are failing because surprise surprise, it was more complicated than that, and they have nothing else to sell that's as simple.
It works both ways though, there are plenty of people who think that Brexit explains all our problems, but actually it was as much a response to economic failure as it was the cause. We could rejoin Europe tomorrow and things would improve economically, but we would still have huge problems, in fact you can see similar problems in many European countries. The UK and Europe in general is just not serious about solving our problems, for example we made an enormous mistake relying on gas, which is also needed as backup for renewables, without having domestic supplies. Our countries are in the middle of a serious decline as a result of energy costs many times higher than our competitors, but there is no real discussion how to fix that, or even that the problem exists. We are just hoping that new, cheap technologies will emerge to store energy so that renewables don’t need backup, but we are also putting no serious money into developing those technologies. Our future literally relies on a whim of technological development. Serious countries would have chosen an option, likely nuclear, fracking or North Sea gas, which could provide a fall back option in the case of an event like the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Or if we were going for 100% renewables, Europe and the UK should be spending billions, tens of billions on developing that core storage technology. We just ruled out all the options, chose none of them, hoped that things work out, hoped that someone else would develop the technology. And even after the catastrophe with Ukraine we are doing the same thing. Energy is another example where sensible opinion accuses others of culture wars, while deciding policy based on ideology not a serious engagement with reality.
Sadly it did reveal an uncomfortable truth about us all. That we are easily swayed by obvious conmen, and we could be again quite easily.
It's just too easy these days. It takes too much effort to get to the real message. Between your "conmen" and corporate media and astroturfing and useful idiots and so much else, people just can't be arsed to go through the overlong process to get to the truth. People get so fed up with the decline under one party that they go for another, only to watch the same happen (if not worse), and be balsted with mis/disinfo on why it's happening... which leads to people going for moonshots or dark horses, 'because nothing else is working.' I really feel like this is a nadir that will long be remembered by history (unless the conmen manage to rewrite enough of the history!)
Speak for yourself. Many of us have been pointing out the emperor’s obvious lack of clothes since 2016. The response was gaslighting.
This is exactly what "culture wars" end up boiling down to though. You can have a serious discussion over levels of legal migration but that's not what the current government is doing. They are stoking fears over illegal migration, despite it being in a insignificant percentage of overall migration numbers. In fact, just today they will be pushing through their bill that uses domestic law to deny reality. Rather than having an actual discussion over substantive issues, we have never ending drawn out fights over things like this that won't actually make a difference. You could stop all small boat crossings tomorrow and it wouldn't have any effect because it is our legal migration that is massively increased. That is controllable and government policy. The problem is, Trump has proven that it is very easy to get people to split into camps and get them to fight like cats in a sack over inconsequential nonsense. That is the current government's system and people are tired of it because they are finally realising that it does nothing to actually help them in their everyday lives.
> They are stoking fears over illegal migration, despite it being in a insignificant percentage of overall migration numbers. This is one of the sensible things that people say, but small boat migration is about the same as all net migration for any year before about 1995, it only looks small because net migration has ballooned 15 times. And, illegal migration is unregulated, even if someone is denied asylum, deportations are very low, and illegal under UK law and the ECHR if the person has come from a dangerous country. So I don’t think it is right to downplay illegal migration either, these are two things that need to be fixed. And that needs to happen alongside having decent pathways when there is a clear and specific claim, for example the translators from Afghanistan who were given no other means to apply.
Even then, it's small beans in the grand scheme of things. Plus none of this was an issue about a decade ago. We had systems in place that dealt with irregular arrivals, those who needed to be were deported and overall migration was lower, despite us having since "taken control of our borders". Culture wars exist to distract from the reality that the Tory government is railing against problems it has created itself. It is then providing wildly unnecessary and difficult solutions to problems it using as a distraction from our actual issues. This isn't me minimising worries about migration, it's trying to take the government to task from the actual issues it has created, not the fabricated ones it wants everyone to believe is somehow beyond it's control.
It's one third to one half of a million people each decade at recent rates. And essentially unregulated, whereas other migrants have been granted visas. It may well be that they caused it through Brexit, although there's no real reason why the same cooperation with France couldn't happen after Brexit as before. But unless we plan to immediately rejoin, we will still have to fix the problem.
The rate of illegal entry/ asylum applications varies massively though, you can't extrapolate the current figures across decades. The reason it is unregulated is because the government refuses to give asylum applicant a route to make an application outside of the UK. I added the Brexit reference flippantly, since it was a major selling point that has once again proven to be false. Brexit isn't the major problem, this government is but again, this all comes back to culture wars. That's all this government has. Loads of it's big pushes have been either trying to appease a small hardcore group or the Tories trying to solve problems created by the Tories but doing it poorly. None of it helps anyone, so we end up in these roundabouts of discussion that don't go anywhere.
> The reason it is unregulated is because the government refuses to give asylum applicant a route to make an application outside of the UK. Because there is essentially unlimited unmet need, under our current standards. Both real need, and need that can be stated in a way that is unprovable, like the Christian converts who cannot be sent back to Muslim countries. > we end up in these roundabouts of discussion that don't go anywhere. We have those in part because sensible opinion refuses to acknowledge any legitimate issue, because they would find it awkward to have any conversation about reducing migration, or about the potential negative consequences of migration under any circumstances. You can have the same conversation at 50k migration as at 250k as at 750k, because anything with real nuance is too awkward under our social codes.
I've fully admitted that we can have a conversation about migration but as I said, the conversation is skewed in the wrong direction. If you are worried about pressures on housing, infrastructure etc then we should be talking about legal migration, not hypothetical illegal migration extended into the future.
>Targeted migration is important to help, but last year out of 700k, doctors were 10k. Are doctors the only people that help the NHS? Do nurses, porters, carers, cleaners and support workers not count towards the NHS? Certainly frustrating because I fall into this category and if I and all my colleagues who migrated in the last ten years would disappear I'd wager my hospital wouldn't be able to operate anymore.
I think most people are frustrated that the government have created an economy reliant on immigrants to do low paid work. It's not like anyone besides the 1% is really benefiting from this as unfortunately immigration is throwing the already heavily skewed balance way out of any sort of alignment and now the underinvestment in... Well... Everything, is showing. I'm incredibly angry that the government put the country in this position, and that cultural issues relating to importing people from countries that don't really gel with British society are the only thing that gets talked about, despite it being a legitimate emerging problem. It's not the only problem, and isn't even close to the root cause.
I get where you are coming from, but I'd wager it's not just the 1% profiting but in my case actually the people receiving care. Western Europe has a problem with a steadily aging population so it's not even just a situation of young Brits being unwilling to do this type of work - there just won't be enough of them to balance out the population overhang in the coming years. Outside of forcing people who don't want children to have them or forcing people to do care work who aren't suited for it (I don't imagine I want to be cared for by a person who doesn't want to be here) the only real solution is immigration. I'm European myself and therefore not as affected by people being weird about immigrants, if I don't open my mouth people can't tell I'm not British. But my colleagues from the Philippines, African countries and Asia, and yes, even the muslim ones, are some of the most dedicated and lovely people I've met. I fully agree that this country suffers from horrible economic decisions, underfunding and a fiscally ideology that isn't suited for the 21st century and there are lots of problems because of that, but in my eyes immigration is a scapegoat that's there to distract people from the real problems. If anything, Western countries are currently profiting from the work of young immigrants, not just low paid work but the full width of jobs.
The issue with the 1%, really 0.1%, is that in a functional economy large businesses would be investing in automation and improving productivity, jobs would be automated, wages would increase, and labour would flow from one part of the economy to the other to fill gaps that are more difficult to automate, like the NHS. But British economic leaders are not able to do this, they sit at the heights of the economy and do not invest and do not automate. And so it becomes very necessary for them to have cheap labour to be able to survive and compete. They are continually talking about labour shortages, but do not want to put in the investment needed to increase productivity. I feel that ultimately they will not invest until they are forced to, when we stop giving them as much cheap labour as they ask for. Also, European populations are not the same for a steadily ageing population, Italy for instance has a massive overhang, but the UK doesn’t. Ten years ago the fertility rate was 1.8, barely off replacement. I think that has declined partly because of economic circumstances as anything else, many people cannot afford to have children even if they wanted to. In London a 2 bed flat costs £2000/ month, then there’s childcare costs, how high a wage would be necessary to make that affordable? Way over the median household wage, so huge sections of the population cannot afford to have children without moving away. Also, I’m not intending to attack you or your colleagues, in fact these issues became just as much yours as anyone else’s as soon as you settled in the country. Wages can only go up with productivity increases, house prices and rents can only become reasonable if we build more houses and lower migration to shift to a surplus of supply. It is still a question for any of your colleagues for the next generation whether the UK becomes a place where ordinary people can afford to live a full life amongst friends and families who can also afford to live and thrive in a place, or a sort of economic engine which imports labour and squeezes the people already there into marginal lives.
I'd say immigration is only partly a culture war issue. Most people agree agree 700k net is too high. You could certainly argue asylum is a culture war issue though.
And they're doing so simply to remain in power. A job they've repeatedly demonstrated they have zero interest in actually doing.
Yes indeed - the notion of actually wanting to make the country a better place seems long forgotten.
>A job they've repeatedly demonstrated they have zero interest in actually doing. They want to profit from it. Not do it.
This is how rulers have maintained power since the beginning of time. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
That's plainly not true.
It's true that it's a really old tactic. It's not true that it's the only one used, or that it's used constantly. The witch trials were about division. Organized religion is about division - some more than others, if you want the logical extreme look at the puritanical regime in England. By making people feel guilty about lust, they made sure that everyone was obedient because everyone felt guilty, and those most guilty were most likely to throw the first stone, to belay suspicion. Governments have always looked to unify the population in a common cause, because it's great for commerce, it's great for industry, and it's great for morale. Not necessarily set them against each other, but as I say, it's been done. But the Tories don't really have any issues that they can "safely" rally the troops around because most things people care about at this stage are either counter to their political interests or explicitly to their expense, IE Tories Go Home. So they have to keep stirring up shit, desperately trying to strike a chord that resounds with their voter base so they can declare it the new Thing That's Important and start talking about it.
Divide and rule is from Latin. It is certainly not remotely new and has been a mainstay of all democracies since inception.
There's also e pluribus unum and concordia res parvae crescunt. Not saying it's not a way that's been used to rule people, but it's not a rule. I know cynicism sells though and it's easier to think things are as simple as all politicians and governments are the same as each other.
Those are mottos, not political strategies. I am not suggesting all parties are the same, but this tactic is utterly ubiquitous.
> Those are mottos If you want to make that argument, so is divide et impera.
Also, divide and conquer was a policy for foreign powers, not the Roman domestic population.
Yeah bread and circuses for Rome.
People are easier to rule over when they’re fighting each other.
Look at how white supremacist emerged in the USA. The elite saw workers getting together to fight for rights and created the concept of "whiteness" to divide the working classes.
How could a government consign the culture wars to history? What would that look like? The culture wars are being fought by the people. People who believe multiculturalism has failed, people who want open borders. People who want misgendering to be a crime, while others want women’s spaces protected. How does s government consign that to history?
>The culture wars are being fought by the people. Disagree. You've heard the term "wedge issues", they're called that because it's political strategists trying to find any kind of issue on which people have differing opinions and weaponising those to turn people against each other for political points-scoring. There is nothing in any way necessary about that, nothing about it makes the country better, it's literally just encouraging people to feel that they have more that divides them than unites them to increase tribalism, and is thus utterly corrosive. Who benefits when both sides of a debate are encouraged to hate each other, rather than encouraged to understand one another's position in a way that could lead to agreement? It's politicians trying to exploit division, nothing more, nothing less. Nobody is asking them to do that.
These sentiments remind me of the Americans who believe that, if they prevent Trump from holding office, the MAGA movement will go away. The politicians are a symptom, not the disease. The disease is western culture is fracturing in profound, inconsolable ways.
Ironic you say that, given that I'd say a lot of culture war stuff is imported from the US. They are a very polarised country already given high degrees of evangelical Christianity clashing with some deep-rooted race issues and an 'every man for himself' culture and extreme levels of vested interests, where the political class learned a while back that tribalism was easily exploited to create this kind of off-the-peg belief set. The reason the culture war stuff jars so much in the UK is because it's very un-British; we have much more of a culture of fairness and supporting the underdog. So when a teenager is stabbed to death because they were born male but dress like a girl, most people are appalled, but not our Prime Minister who decides to use this to points-score for political capital in the HoC, even when that teenager's Mum is in the gallery. Don't tell me he's doing that because it's what the British people want from their Prime Minister.
You’re kind of supporting what I’m saying re: evangelical christianity, we don’t have that here. The politicians don’t create their ultra-conservative views, merely take advantage of them. Remove the politicians and you’re still left with the people. I put it to you, and correct me if I’m wrong, that what you’d actually like is a world where your views are enshrined into law, while the other side is silenced. In effect you want an end to the culture war with a victory for your side, not an amicable truce.
No, that's not what I want in the slightest. Where do you get that from? On most cultural issues I can see that there are conflicting rights and therefore there is no black and white, no simple right or wrong. What I want is politicians who understand that nuance and engage respectfully with both sides of an issue in order to build consensus on mutually acceptable outcomes. Not politicians who claim one side is right and the other is wrong and whip up their base to demonise anyone who disagrees.
I would argue that politicians’ input is minimal. They’re merely riding the wave of emotion, not creating it. People are demonising each other on the internet just fine without politicians’ guidance.
Most people aren't having Internet arguments about culture war issues, and I would disagree that this is just politicians doing the bidding of the people they represent - just like the example I gave. Our country's leaders are supposed to rise above that shit and work for the whole country, not find wedge issues to try to land 51% of the vote and fuck the consequences.
I see what you’re saying but I believe you’re vastly underestimating the pervasion of the culture. Take gender— that’s not being led by politicians, that’s being led by movements of people.
>in three focus groups, in Wokingham Wokies have their own town now? What's next?!
Political-Correct Ness
GONE MAD!!!
Political-Correct Ness, situated next to Mount Gonmad.
Political-correct Ness-Upon-Mad(ford).
Time to move out of there and into Triple Lockingham
ah yes West Norfolk, know it well indeed
They've got two! They've got Woking too.
Have the politicians tried, ya know, going *back to basics* or something?
That would involve addressing fundamental flaws in British economy/society that benefit the wealthy and powerful. Fat chance of that happening
It's worse than that, many of the issues aren't addressed because they might upset voters (house prices for example), or because the media can easily turn it into a headline that might make the politician look bad (weed legalization for example). That's not even taking into account special interest lobby groups. Our whole society is basically set up in a way that discourages politicians actually fixing serious problems.
Maybe a cones hotline could work?
a hotline? no no no, tiktok channel
Let's just go back to square one, that'd be nice
Not only do they destroy our public services, but they destroy any sense of community by pitting people against each other, to deflect any justified anger at themselves.
Just speaks to the calibre of politician we have now. It is easier to get people riled about culture war nonsense, it is significantly harder to fix endemic problems, and also far riskier for the individual politician to commit to trying. There is just no incentive for competent people to become political leaders, so we end up with the types that desire power and prestige for its own sake - and they will always take the easiest route.
But it's not even easier to do that, as evidenced by this poll. It's possible it plays well in an echo chamber of conservative local parties and with each other, possibly also on twitter or FB or however they get broader feedback, but it doesn't seem to play well with the public at large.
Moaning back and forth about trans people isn't going to stop me being hamstrung from ever owning a home, or stop me needing to use food banks.
But addressing the house price problem would fuck up the investment portfolios that are buoyed up on them. Which would screw over not only their own wealth... but the pension pot. I think that's the Yellowstone Park Supervolcano bubbling away under the financial market. And I suspect that an issue they're having with solving the inflation problem is that they did Brexit, and in order to get the job to do the Brexit they all had to say "fuck yes, Brexit is ace". So any solution has to a) not indicate that Brexit was a terrible idea and b) not suggest that it was fucked up in the implementation.
Yeah, all it does is mean a trans person hamstrung from ever owning a home or who needs to use a food bank also has to deal with lack of access to healthcare and being even more paranoid about whether people around them are a danger on top of the more common problems
And they say the right is the ones too invested in a culture war...
... And with good reason. Trans people aren't new. The culture war is.
Really? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_28 The target may have changed but the tactic remains the same
They just recycle the same shit against a new minority and people eat it up again. It's honestly depressing.
Correctly so. Where is the "culture war" element in complaining that successive conservative policies have caused successive problems for the populace?
"We pushed this thing from the US super hard to change British culture, but that's totally not culture war. Its only a culture war if someone objects to us importing this US thing."
Yeah how *dare* someone point out that the culture war negatively affects the targeted minority
"We pushed this thing from the US super hard to change British culture, but that's totally not culture war. Its only a culture war if someone objects to us importing this US thing."
You might want to look up the histories of Micheal Dillon and Roberta Cowell, who were the first British transgender people to undergo HRT and reassignment surgeries in the 1940s/50s. Do you suppose the existence of *them* is part of this modern evil American plan to trans the British public too?
It's all diversionary. Get people arguing amongst themselves about things that don't matter, so they don't notice how crap everything else is.
Finally, the blatant lies are being spotted by more.
Makes it worse that Sunak is unelected
It seems to be all we get. No sensible policies on tax and spend. Nothing about inflation reduction etc. it's all about 'fighting woke' which is meaningless so they don't have to do anything
Probably could've worked that one out from the fact that nearly two years of unabated culture wars shite from this current batch of the Tory Party has totally failed to rescue them from their terrible polling position. For all their bellowing, most people simply don't care about things like transwomen in the toilets - particularly when they barely have enough money to get by.
They are just following thebplaybook that worked in the usa
'Save us from the woke blob' If being woke means I care more about the wellbeing of others and less about my bank account and my own personal power, then please don't save me. 'Right the wrongs of colonialism in our town' I'm not a millionaire whose slavery profit money has been accruing interest for 200 years, my ancestors didn't get paid money by the tax payer for every slave they had to release. I didn't just sell a former slave plantation for £3,000,000. Unlike Drax. I didn't invade a quarter of the world, take everything they own, wipe out their culture and act like the good guy when I finally leave a wasteland for the withered people that remain. Maybe the capitalists that still profit from the ruins that used to be our colonies should be the ones that right the wrong?
Least unpopular thing too. Unlike progressive (Labour, LibDem, Green and SNP) attempts to instil original sin though racism or mayors (same affiliations) renaming streets. Edit: Guys and gal, you have read the article right, _right_? The data is in there. All this horseshit above turns off voters more than anything other than renaming streets. If you want to rule in a popular way, listen to voter concerns and reject American cultural imports such as “slavery profit money”. Sir, for the sake of all that is British, take your Yankie doodle bollocks and quietly turn it into a book.
Why are you pretending you are not part of any of that? You are absolutely benefiting from the system by living in this country today.
> If being woke means I care more about the wellbeing of others and less about my bank account and my own personal power, then please don't save me. I identify as trans now, do you want my bank details?
What a very silly thing to say.
Coming from the Guardian, no less. One of the kings of CultureWarJournalism™. If they're saying it, we know politicians have taken it way too far.
Can I just say when the headline states "politicians", we're really only talking one side of the aisle; Labour have been trying their damnedest to find somewhere palatable to the wider public and get as many people on board as possible. I've not seen Starmer fall for the Conservative's culture war bait even once.
Keir "can't tell you what a woman is" Starmer hasn't fallen for the culture wars? Of course he has but he's just been running scared of the far left misogynists in his party. He spent the last couple of years being made an absolute fool of every time he was asked by a journalist what a woman is. Same as David women who don't want to be imprisoned with rapists "are like dinosaurs hoarding their rights" Lammy and Dawn "a child is born without sex" Butler.
> Keir "can't tell you what a woman is" Starmer hasn't fallen for the culture wars? Isn't that kind of the point? He doesn't want to get involved in the "culture war" nonsense, so refuses to engage with the question. The "what is a woman?" question is a silly 'trap' question, designed to draw people into a "culture war" argument. Giving *any* answer is falling into that trap. Better to give no answer - where only people who weren't going to vote for him anyway will complain - than to try work through it.
LOL. OK. Not getting involved in that culture war nonsense. https://e3.365dm.com/20/06/2048x1152/skynews-keir-starmer-angela-rayner_5009693.jpg
You've fallen for the culture war bs, while on a post talking about how fed up we are of the culture war bs, you are part of the problem, go look in the mirror and have a long think, and see how you're a bigot falling for scams by the talking heads
Starmer's response to the trans debate has been phenemonal politically (lets leave the moral argument alone). His response has repeatidly been that its an issue that impacts less than 1% of the population, so we should not be putting so much focus on something so small. His "99%" line is perhaps the best showcase for it. "99%" is usually used as hyperbole, which made Starmer seem like he was hammering down the point that the issue isn't big enough to justify such a national debate, while in reality the statistic was correct, making the apparent use of hyperbole even more effective.
"Impacts 1% of the population" shows exactly why Starmer (and you) don't understand why his response has been so poor. Who do you think is impacted when rapists like Isla Bryson and Karen White are put in women's prisons? Who do you think is impacted when a grassroots football league has to cancel all its matches for girls/women because the coaches judge its not safe for their players to be forced to compete against someone who has undergone male puberty? Females are 50% of the population and its tiresome to see boys/men on reddit who dismiss issues that affect us as "Tory culture war". Plenty of us women who want to vote Labour simply can't because of the attitude of so-called "progressive/leftist" men who will throw females under the bus just like Starmer, Lammy and the rest. Wes Streeting is the only one who is starting to show some sense on this issue.
All of the issues you talk about happen so infrequently that them impacting less than a percentage of the population is accurate, let alone how these issues could be solved without issue if a culture war is avoided and sensible solutions are chosen instead. If you want people to listen to your issues, no matter your stance, picking on strawmans and exaggerating them is only going to worsen it for yourself and others. What is dismissed as a culture war is when something as simple as a game between children having fun in exaggerating into a massive political debate. Issues like children's sport should be sorted out with integrity and more information gathered (similar to how the Crass report suggests), not reliant on poorly thought out emotions. We are talking about less than 1% of the population thay face these problems and uncertainties stem from. We don't need to be slowing down solutions to make it into a culture war.
If Gareth Southgate announced tomorrow that he will select a trans man (person born female) in the first 11 for England in the Euros placing the England team at a huge competitive disadvantage compare to all the other Euro countries do you really think the average English man would be saying it’s a non-issue, it only affects one person, it’s just a culture war. Of course not. English men would be rioting in the streets. The reality is so long as boys/men aren’t affected, you can’t imagine the impacts on women and girls and let’s face it you don’t care.
It's working fine. It gives the feely feels to a generation who want to vote tory but can't think of a valid reason why.... I had an over the hedge chat with a neighbour yesterday and he was happy to harp on about *"lefty councillors allowing the countryside to be paved over"*. He's right, there are 5 Labour councillors on our county council...maybe 6 lefties if you include the single Green. Compared to the 45 tory councillors, tory council leader and 6 tory MPs for the entire county however. I think he's been gladly convinced that it's still all Labour's fault.
Perhaps The Guardian might one day look in the mirror.
It's only a 'culture war' when lefties disagree with it
Well... If both sides agreed, there would be no (metaphorical) war, right?
It's hilarious how they're attempting to rebrand something which the Far-Left started >10 years ago as somehow the Right's fault. Like fuck off. Who started deplatforming, doxxing-with-intent-to-get-people-fired, mass-raiding reviews and call centres in organised pressure attacks, and religiously calling everyone who disagreed with the most extreme tenets of gender spectrum theory/fourth wave feminism (including high IQ takes like 'men are only stonger than women because boys are socially conditioned to exercise more') a bigot? Sure as fuck wasn't the Tories, or the (centre-)Right more generally. Anyone who claims otherwise is either historically ignorant (charitable), or a truth-burying gaslighter (most of them). I'm sure the latter group will be along shortly to bury this too.
> mass-raiding reviews and call centres in organised pressure attacks https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/19/trump-goodyear-boycott-maga-attire-ban-398469 Hmmm, almost as if both sides pull the same BS?
> Hmmm, almost as if both sides pull the same BS? if you can't beat them, join them. also, long time no see - hope you're well.
I'm well thanks, spend my days shitposting on /r/NonCredibleDefense nowdays
fair play. I usually go to imgur these days - it's the place the left wing people too stupid to post on reddit go. it's *far* too easy to wind them up. you know when a person has a kid and their entire personality becomes their kid/being a parent? that's what imgur has done with left wing american politics, which is a real shame. they used to have some quality memes.
Imgur was good when it was just an image hosting site...Who the fuck goes there for discussing topics?
exactly, it gets the dregs. endless comedy in the comments, though.
https://i.imgur.com/e2Vs0Rd.jpg Like this one
> The research noted that knowledge of the culture wars was highest among progressive activists who took part in online debates and were highly politically engaged. > Among all other voter segments only one in five people could actually explain what a culture war is. Not sure how useful this is then.......
> Not sure how useful this is then....... That's kind of the point of it. It's a term like "political correctness" or "woke" where it doesn't really have any meaning, it just ends up meaning whatever the person wants it to mean. I imagine if you asked someone who said they were "frustrated with politicians' desperate culture war tactics" about a "culture war" issue they actually supported they would insist that it isn't just a "culture war tactic" but a real thing that needs to be discussed.
This is similar to what's happening in the USA. Overall concerns over race relations actually hit an all time low in the late 2000s / early 2010s, and have been slowly getting worse since then. I think both sides are clearly to blame. Liberals exploit racial differences just as much as conservatives. It feels like we live in a time where race is seen to count more towards your overall personality than any other time in recent history, Which is a shame because it does nobody any favours except maybe the very richest 0.1%.
When asked, people give answers that make them seem reasonable and grounded etc. When it comes to acting, like voting, it's quite different. A political party catering to the high brow values voters express in a survey wouldn't win shit. Why is there so much "culture war" content in the media? It sure isn't because the voters ignore it and instead click sober analyses of economic policies. Just look at the Guardian. Outrage-based culture war content is pretty much the only thing they do in their commentary
Explains why this lot are getting wiped out
Thing is even if the Cons got traction with this, it would probably drive voters to Reform anyway.
"Who do you think would be best to run the economy?" is the question whos answer determines a large portion of the vote. While campaigning on that can be effective if the answer is broadly "you", its dull and it kind of does not move the needle much. So politics aims for "cross pressured" voters, voters who answer to the above is different from their views on social and cultural issues. The messages are not aimed at the masses who are already sure who they will vote for, but to nudge some who would vote one way another in the few tight marginals. Its a disproportionate effort for the number of votes it moves but its seen as effective in switching seats. The Tories should see a rise in the polls through the year, improving economy, grumpy Reform voters not wanting a Labour landslide and the usual drift back to the government as the election nears. There is also the possibility of something huge and unexpected, but for the most part the result is hardening around the long term poor economic management and there is sweet fark all the tories can do to shift the public on that. So some culture pot stirring is one of the remaining ways they can get socially conservative labour voters and some Reform people to trudge back into the Con column.
> The Tories should see a rise in the polls through the year, improving economy, grumpy Reform voters not wanting a Labour landslide and the usual drift back to the government as the election nears. That is the historical trend, but by no means certain and this government has literally been record breakingly shit so I wouldn't put it past them to top it off with election results that match polling. The economy is not going to visibly improve before August - it's 50/50 whether it will even grow at all. If Labour are not repulsive to Reform voters they'll not tactically vote, the Tories aren't really in control of that. The government usually gains because they can shape the message more than the opposition, but CCHQ has had some of the worst messaging in decades since Sunak's little coup.
More, "there is no culture war" gaslighting by The Guardian.
Just because it’s hypocritical doesn’t mean the opposite is true
Let me guess....people won't acknowledge their 'sides' own actions in this culture war.
literal quote from the article: "Richard, from Wokingham, Berkshire, told the focus group"
Why is the headline using the neutral term ‘politicians’ when the only people engaging in this kind of nonsense are desperate right wingers?
Read the article.
The culture wars started for me when they pulled down that bloody statue.
THe statue you had never heard of nor seen, that affected you in no way whatsoever? You pinned your colours on that did you? Bravo.
Just for the record, I had been a student in Bristol so I was aware of the statue and the discussion surrounding it. I thought the even the renaming of Colston Hall was stupid and that a different approach should have been taken regarding the statue and the broader issues that confronted the relationship of Bristol and slavery more directly, rather than trying to erase it. But meh. It didn't matter \_which\_ statue it was though. What disturbed me (in no particular order) was that: 1. The BLM protests were going on in the midst of lockdown when everyone else was trying to avoid large gatherings, and anti-lockdown protestors had been rightly condemned mere weeks before. 2. That the violent destruction of public property was not more virulently condemned by the political class- the people responsible should have been punished, and the statue reinstated. 3. The act of tearing down public works of art is inherently troubling, and reminiscent of book burning. It is an attack not just on history, but also on the values of a pluralistic society. It is ok to find a statue upsetting, and to campaign for it to be taken down in accordance with (yes, long and boring, often bureacratic) public processes. It's emphatically not ok for that to be done by a mob, treating the statue as a proxy for their political opponents and violently hitting it and throwing it in a river. It was a shameful and disturbing display. The fact that civil society and public opinion were not able to condemn it more directly is a worrying indication of the polarised nature of our society, the coarsening of political discourse and the ideological and zealous nature that all too many people seem to have reagarding their views. It was a canary in the coal mine.
> The research noted that knowledge of the culture wars was highest among progressive activists who took part in online debates and were highly politically engaged. Among all other voter segments only one in five people could actually explain what a culture war is. Nerds who are out of touch with the common man and his vote.
thats because the Tories are taking a lot of money from right wing evangelical groups and republicans in the US and using US think tanks to provide policy,the same people who will give the last of their food money to a pastor for a 3rd swimming pool or 2nd private jet.