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Culture Wars
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UK Politics Digest – October 2023
In this course, Professor Andrew Blick (King's College London) analyses the major events of UK politics between April and September 2023. In the the first module, we explore the issue of culture wars in UK politics. After this, we look at Scotland and the issue of Scottish Independence. Then, we explore the ongoing issue of Brexit. In the fourth module, we look at Northern Ireland and the political difficulties there. Then, we examine the issue of standards in public life. Finally, we look at electoral politics and the July 2023 by-elections.
Culture Wars
In this module, we explore the issue of culture wars in UK politics. In particular, we look at: (i) what we mean by the term culture wars in the context of UK politics; (ii) the issues that culture wars normally focus on, including UK opposition to net zero policies; (iii) Rishi Sunak's recent approach to net zero and how this can be seen as a culture wars issue; and (iv) the Conservative Party's pursuit of new, harsher asylum policies.
Hello. I'm Andrew Blake professor in politics and
00:00:05contemporary history at King's College London.
00:00:09And then we're talking now about a
00:00:13political phenomenon known as Culture Wars.
00:00:17We hear about them in different parts of the world,
00:00:20particularly the US but also to some extent they've been
00:00:23imported
00:00:29into the UK.
00:00:30And we've seen some, evidence in the last six months or so
00:00:32of Culture Wars as they're known taking hold to some
00:00:38extent in UK politics and even the the governing
00:00:41party, the conservative party, taking an interest in them.
00:00:46When we talk about culture wars, we mean the promotion
00:00:50of viewpoints and agendas on particularly divisive
00:00:56social issues over which there might be different groups
00:01:01taking very strong issues and often
00:01:06in a culture war as it's labeled,
00:01:10a group may take the same position on a number of those
00:01:13social issues and push them quite hard with a view to mobilizing
00:01:18supporters who share
00:01:24those views across that cluster of issues.
00:01:27That's the basic idea. They often take the form of a
00:01:30party which is perhaps quite anti liberal in its outlook
00:01:35deliberately taking positions that are hostile to what they
00:01:39see as being liberal positions, perhaps associated with
00:01:43metropolitan elites.
00:01:48With privileged groups as they might have it.
00:01:50This idea of culture wars can often link into
00:01:53broader concepts of political populism
00:01:57in which a
00:02:00supposedly privileged elite group,
00:02:05which is involved in manipulating political processes,
00:02:08is depicted as being at odds with the people, however defined,
00:02:11and in which there's a kind of clash set up between the people
00:02:15which the populist reports represent and the elite.
00:02:19That's that's the board framework. In the UK, in recent
00:02:23years, we've seen some of these ideas taking hold for instance,
00:02:26in relation to Brexit where the EU was depicted as a
00:02:30manipulative supranational elite,
00:02:34which wasn't representing what the people of the UK wanted,
00:02:37and the referendum results of twenty sixteen,
00:02:41in which it has a fifty two percent majority in favor of
00:02:44leaving the EU was presented as the will of the people
00:02:47expressed in the teeth of resistance from the elite.
00:02:50We've seen that kind of pattern replicates itself, particularly
00:02:54among politicians
00:03:00who supported leaving the EU or at least were brought to power
00:03:02in the circumstances generated by Brexit.
00:03:06In in the recent period, we've seen some leading conservatives
00:03:09take up culture war type issues and push them quite
00:03:13hard. Again, with a view to perhaps mobilising supporters,
00:03:18perhaps dividing the main opposition to the conservative
00:03:22party, the Labour Party from its supporters,
00:03:26and also as a way of targeting certain kinds of voters in
00:03:29certain kinds of seats,
00:03:33including what are known as the red wall seats,
00:03:35which were seats previously held by the Labour Party,
00:03:37which voted to leave the EU in twenty sixteen and were subsequently
00:03:41won by the conservatives in electoral contests.
00:03:46So what are the kinds of issues that might be taken up in
00:03:50in these in these culture wars One might be hostility to
00:03:54the promotion of rights of trans people, another issue
00:03:59that might be taken up is hostility to
00:04:03what's seen as an excessive number of refugees arriving in
00:04:07the country, some of whom it's argued by people taking out
00:04:11this issue, shouldn't be coming here,
00:04:15should be seeking asylum elsewhere,
00:04:17or perhaps aren't genuine asylum seekers.
00:04:20So those are two issues another another idea that's often
00:04:22promoted in the context of Culture Wars in the UK is
00:04:25opposition to net zero policies designed contributing to
00:04:29the aversion of the climate crisis
00:04:36often opponents of net zero don't argue that net zero is
00:04:40necessarily wholly wrong,
00:04:43but they argue that the particular measures being taken
00:04:45in pursuit of it.
00:04:47Are are harming the economy in particular harming the poorest
00:04:49people in society.
00:04:53Those are the kind of issues also people pursuing cultures
00:04:54may take up strong.
00:04:58What they see as a strong line in law and order arguing the
00:05:00police perhaps should have more powers perhaps they might also
00:05:03be opposed to what they see as the,
00:05:06the distortion of human rights in a way which doesn't serve
00:05:10the interests of the public.
00:05:14Those are the kind of issues that that might be taken up
00:05:15when we've certainly seen the conservative party and the
00:05:17conservative government following quite hard on issues
00:05:19like asylum, making a big issue out of the perceived need to
00:05:23stop people arriving in small vessels in the UK in claiming asylum.
00:05:27Also we've seen recently,
00:05:32the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, revised
00:05:34the the approach of his government to net zero and say,
00:05:37we're actually pushing too hard on certain things.
00:05:40We've got to loosen up the, the,
00:05:43the measures in certain areas so that poor as people don't suffer.
00:05:45So those are examples of culture or type policies that
00:05:48might might be followed. We also saw early in the year the
00:05:51UK government used powers to to veto legislation
00:05:55proposed that they're introduced by the Scottish
00:06:00government, the Scottish Parliament that would promote,
00:06:03right trans rights. So another example, perhaps of a of a
00:06:07culture wall type position being taken up We're seeing a lot of this.
00:06:11I suspect we're going to see more of it as the next general
00:06:15election approaches,
00:06:18which I'll be talking about in another lecture.
00:06:19And I suppose an interesting factor in all this is that the
00:06:22conservatives see it as a way of potentially mobilizing
00:06:26support and also potentially trapping the Labour Party into
00:06:28appearing to be too liberal and out of touch of of the
00:06:32views of the people, including some people who might otherwise
00:06:37vote labor who might have voted labor before,
00:06:41who might have stopped voting labor in the wake of of of Brexit.
00:06:43And this puts the labor party in a tricky position and we've
00:06:47seen in recent months it not always quite know how to
00:06:51respond over issues like,
00:06:55net zero policy, over issues like asylum policy where
00:06:58it will disagree with the government,
00:07:03it will criticize what the government's doing,
00:07:06but sometimes it soft pedals a bit on some of the more
00:07:08liberal aspects of the kind of opposition it might offer and
00:07:12offers a more kind of,
00:07:15technocratic response saying you're not dealing with this
00:07:18issue properly rather than you're actually attacking the wrong people.
00:07:21You're actually attacking vulnerable groups.
00:07:24So it's a tricky issue for labor knowing how to respond
00:07:26and we're gonna see more of it and we're gonna see it continue.
00:07:29
Cite this Lecture
APA style
Blick, A. (2023, October 23). UK Politics Digest – October 2023 - Culture Wars [Video]. MASSOLIT. https://massolit.io/courses/uk-politics-digest-october-2023
MLA style
Blick, A. "UK Politics Digest – October 2023 – Culture Wars." MASSOLIT, uploaded by MASSOLIT, 23 Oct 2023, https://massolit.io/courses/uk-politics-digest-october-2023