We can see the contours of the remainder of this Tory government and the run-in to the next general election (scheduled for May 2024). The Johnson administration will continue to govern with incompetence, but its large parliamentary majority of 80 seats means that it will be insulated from external criticism. Those with the stature to criticise from within have already been eliminated from the ruling party.
So what will the governing agenda look like? The first two items on the agenda are obvious: the continuing Brexit shambles and coronavirus. The latter provides excellent cover for the former. Brexit means that the UK economy will take a massive self-inflicted hit. But much of this can be masked by the coronavirus recession. The promised ‘ sunny uplands’ of post-Brexit Britain will not be delivered in a material sense. But there will be a political boon for the Johnson government in the shape of near continuous sniping against Brussels: ‘Intransigent EU’, ‘Eurocrats snub Boris’, ‘French fishermen steal British cod’, … the headlines write themselves. As for coronavirus, we are going to have to get used to it being a fixture. The government will continue its strategy of avoiding any responsibility for its initial failures. The economy will be prioritised over health and if people get sick, then that is their own fault. The government line will be that it did the right thing at the right time. Any inquiry will be less than independent and have the same impact as all those other inquiries that sit on shelves.
The third agenda item is an insidious one but it will dominate: culture war. It is prominent now (Churchill’s statue, re-runs of Fawlty Towers) but has been bubbling away for years. Tory strategists will have seen how well it works in the United States and will be working hard to further foment it. In the absence of any policies or strategy, it is a cheap way of mobilising the base and winning votes. So be prepared to see almost constant rows about statues, head-scarves, and ‘classic’ TV comedies. There will be faux outrage a-plenty as loyal newspapers and columnists make hay. All they need is a single rent-a-quote mouthpiece to say they are offended and – bingo – there is a headline: ‘Outrage as loony left-wing council question Remembrance Sunday’, ‘Politically correct Uni bosses ban free speech’, ‘Now they’re after our food’. The language games will be insidious (‘they’, ‘our’ etc.) and stoke a binary. Trades unions, protestors, BLM, non-right-wing politicians, and Guardian readers will all be lumped together. If they can be associated with a violent fringe then so much the better.
We have seen this all before. It worked well with demonising Jeremy Corbyn, Ed Miliband, Diane Abbot and many others. But this time it is part of an on-going electoral strategy in which permanent campaigning acts as a substitute for debate, policy and genuine engagement with any opposition. To be clear: the general election campaign is now on. A culture war is a difficult place for opposition politicians to be. Any equivocation is quickly branded as unpatriotic.
These are the elements that make a culture war a winning electoral strategy:
– It operates via proxies or actors who are loyal but one step removed from government. Thus if a story become too hot, the government can distance themselves from it. So, the main agitators in the culture war by proxy will be the press (now overwhelmingly right wing in terms of newspaper editorial stance) and the multiple right-wing columnists, websites and retweeters. These constituencies are already highly sophisticated and have been emboldened by their Brexit victory. Many taboos of offending people have been broken. How many times has there been a 48 hour outrage against racist comments by newspaper columnists … who are still in their jobs?
– It costs next to nothing to run a culture war. This does not require billion pound initiatives. Instead, it relies on word of mouth and retweets. Certainly there are multiple shady political operations out there – especially online, but a culture war relies primarily on stoking pre-existing prejudices.
– It taps into the cultural knowledge and vocabulary of white England. The culture war is not about some abstract or far-away notion (quantitative easing, even Brexit). Instead, it is relatable if it stick to British comedy TV programmes and the basics of history (Churchill statues and Dunkirk. Anything about WWII really. Anything history beyond that is unknown);
– A culture war is about fear – fear of losing something (privilege, identity) and of something being taken away. So it feels immediate and threatening and thus strikes a chord;
– Finally, there will be a lot of equivalence. This tactic is straight out of the Trump playbook but it works. Thus White Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter are painted as the same: each deserving of attention, each with a legitimate point of view. If things get too hot, government ministers can appear to be even-handed. They appear as neutral arbitrators who are above the fray.
If you want to see what a culture war looks like, read the Fox News website on a daily basis. It rarely reports news. Instead, it is permanent spin that politicises stories along racial and partisan lines as a default option. The future isn’t pretty.
rogermacginty 
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