You can’t end the culture war

In 1999, Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that ‘the class war is over’. Beyond a desire for Scandinavian social harmony, Blair’s words had a deeper meaning. Socialism, hitherto written into Clause IV of the Labour Party’s constitution, was now unfeasible and wrong-headed. At the time, such discourse was hegemonic. The Economist newspaper specialized in it, presenting free-market economics as common-sensical.

As the ideology scholar Michael Freeden shows, such decontestation is a feature of all ideologies. All political statements are ideological, yet every ideology attempts to present certain ideas as outside reasonable contest. Sometimes, high degrees of consensus make this practicable – today, all mainstream ideologies decontest bans on child labour – yet at other times, contradictions become evident. In the case of free-market economics, the follies of light financial market regulation and deep austerity measures became apparent. All along, these measures were deeply ideological and should have been contested.

When another Labour Government tells us that the ‘era of culture wars is over’ – recently, culture minister Lisa Nandy said this explicitly, whilst the motto underpins policy towards universities – our ears should prick up. Is this another bogus decontestation? Certainly, some liberals would like to decontest the culture war, regarding it as a waste of time. When conservatives complain about decolonization or sex education, many wince. There is an academic version of this argument, the culture war thesis arguing that these issues are characterized by high degrees of conflict between rival activists and deflect attention from more serious issues, such as economic inequality or the climate crisis.

Of course, noise is no guarantee of seriousness. Most would write-off QAnon theories or Russian media coverage of the war in Ukraine, regarding such coverage as false or diverting attention from more salient issues.

Yet the liberal decontestation of the culture war resembles few other decontestations. In contrast to activists on both sides, proponents of the culture war thesis seldom address specific topics. For example, many liberals are very reluctant to discuss the transgender issue directly. To the greatest degree possibly, Keir Starmer avoids it and, on social media, otherwise outspoken liberals have little to say about it. When pressed, many fall back on liberal positions, asserting, for instance, that transgender people face discrimination and are worthy of support on that basis, rather than addressing the more salient and difficult question of gender self-identification.

This is suspicious. Though eclectic, culture war issues can be reduced to a series of concrete questions which divide supporters of liberalism and social justice ideology. Indeed, my colleagues at Cardiff University have developed a scale which measures different attitudes, published in the top Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin journal. Beyond the transgender issue, there are specific questions of freedom of speech (should a controversial speaker be no-platformed or tolerated?), cultural appropriation (is the wearing of native dress harmful?) and direct action (may a crowd remove an offensive monument without official permission?). In other decontestations, proponents are not slow to share their opinion. Critics will highlight and mock QAnon and Russian propaganda. Very specifically, Blair would explain why he regarded socialism as outdated.

This is grating. Many liberals loudly dismiss culture war topics and, if they wish to do this, should address specific issues as openly as Blair rejected socialism. Arguably, reluctance reflects the structure of existing ingroups. Primarily, politics and society continue to be structured around liberal-conservative divisions, yet new debates about culture cut across this division and can divide liberals, often on generational lines. To be a dissenting liberal is to quarrel with one’s ingroup. Often, liberals are desperate to avoid this and attempt to work such issues into the old liberal-conservative frame, even if it does not fit.

Policy implications are interesting. Though some conservatives assert that Labour’s rejection of culture war hands victory to social justice activists, this is not quite the case. For example, the ban on puberty blockers has enraged this group. But in other cases, Friday’s decision to delay the Higher Education Freedom of Speech Act being a key example, the culture war approach entails victory for such activists.

But if policy is to be effective, such muddled thinking will not do. What are culture war issues and are they all distractions? If they are, why ban puberty blockers? If this particular issue is serious, how do we know that it is not a culture war issue and why do certain liberals continue to dismiss opposition to the proposed ‘conversion therapy’ ban, a very similar issue, as the waging of culture war? These concerns are distinct from the question of salience – I agree that issues such as the cost-of-living crisis and European security are more important than most of the aforementioned issues – and are mere pleas for clarity.   

If Labour wish to be the adults in the room, they must have adult explanations.

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