Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Credit: Justin Tallis / AFP / Getty
Is Downing Street preparing a ‘war on woke’? If you believe the reports, then just such a strategy is being urged upon Boris Johnson by some of his senior advisors — among them one of the authors of the 2019 manifesto and Head of the Number Ten Policy Unit, Munira Mirza who is routinely portrayed as a polarising, Right-wing culture-warrior.
Such an approach would actually make sense — and not just because it’s all of a piece with the hegemonic war of manoeuvre recommended by Michael Gove’s newest best friend, Antonio Gramsci. According to research published today, it is underlying socio and cultural (as opposed to economic) values that keep the Conservative Party and its electoral coalition together and give it the best chance of connecting with the voters it will need to win again in 2024.
Political scientists often make use of two sets of questions to measure people’s economic and social values. They’re designed to tap into underlying, stable, long-term ideological attitudes rather than ephemeral, short-term policy preferences.
The first set covers economic values: the distribution of wealth and income, big business, fairness, etc. The second covers socio-cultural values and includes question on things like law and order, the purpose of education, respect for traditional values, and censorship.
Essentially, this is a recognition that politics can’t just be understood as a contest between Left and Right – between state and market. We also have to take into account whether people are socially liberal or social conservative.
Most of the time, those questions are only asked of voters – for instance by the gold standard British Election Study. But in this new study they were also asked of MPs and grassroots party members from both the Conservative and the Labour parties.
Their responses give us a sense, not just of how united or divided the parties are, but of how out of touch they are with voters – and not just voters in general but even those voters who supported them at last year’s general election.
Covid-19 is going to do some serious damage to the economy. And one only has to look back to events like Black Wednesday in 1992 and the financial crash of 2008 to see how easily that sort of setback can swiftly shred a party’s hard-won reputation for economic competence. If (some would even say when) that happens to the Tories in the months and years to come, then, the research suggests, they’re going to have to rely heavily on social and cultural conservativism to see them safely through the next election.
That’s because, when it comes to economic values, the Conservatives a) are less likely to see eye-to-eye with one another than their Labour counterparts and b) are further away, if not from the average voter, then from the voters that helped them win so comfortably in 2019. Indeed, those voters’ underlying values on the economy mean they have more in common with the Labour Party at all levels than they do with Conservative members, activists and MPs.
True, on social and cultural values, the Tories are not altogether united either. But they are much closer to voters – especially the ones they really need to keep hold of if they are to repeat their 2019 win in four years’ time.
Let’s look, first, at economic values. Figure 1 shows that on every question used to tap into those values apart from the first one on redistribution, the differences between what the Conservative Party’s MPs, grassroots members and voters are much bigger than they are between Labour’s people.
Figure 1
It also shows, incidentally, that, if Labour can overcome the economic competence deficit that has cost it so dear since 2010, and then get voters to realise just how differently Tory MPs think about the economy than they themselves do, then the Government could find itself in serious trouble.
Figure 2 hammers home that warning. On every economic values question, the average voter who made the journey from Labour in 2017 to Conservative in 2019 (represented by the black dot) is more Left-wing than the average member of the public, as well as noticeably to the Left of the average individual who voted Conservative in 2019.
Figure 2
Moreover, these 2019 Labour-to-Conservative switchers are far, far closer to Labour when it comes to underlying economic values than they are to the Conservatives. For instance, a full 81% of those switchers think that big business takes advantage of ordinary people – very much in line with 83% of Labour MPs and 92% of Labour members, but very much out of line with Tory members and Tory MPs, only 34% and 18% of whom, respectively, think the same way. And on whether “there is one law for the rich and one law for the poor” the 84% of Labour-to-Conservative switchers who agree are far closer to the 92% of Labour members and the 71% of Labour MPs who say the same than they are to the 22% of Tory members and 5% of Tory MPs who think so too.
Keir Starmer might have sacked Rebecca Long Bailey last week but he’s no neoliberal, and nor is his Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds. They will be perfectly comfortable putting forward an economic recovery plan that reflects those switchers’ values. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak? Not so much. Any conversion to socialism brought on by the current emergency will, one suspects, be short-lived, leaving the party — on the economy at least — stranded way to the right of many of the voters they need to hold onto.
But when it comes to social and cultural values, it’s a whole different story – and a story with what could well be a happier ending for the Conservatives.
Figure 3
For one thing, as Figure 3 shows, generally speaking (the exception being the death penalty), the Conservative Party’s MPs, members and voters are more united than their Labour counterparts and, as a whole, tend to be a little closer to the average British voter.
For another, when we look at different groups of voters, as we do in Figure 4, we can see that — in what is essentially a mirror image of the picture on economic values — 2019 Labour-to-Conservative switchers (again represented by the black dot) are much, much closer to the Conservatives when it comes to underlying social/cultural values than they are to Labour. In fact, those switchers even sit to the right of Conservative members and Conservative MPs.
Figure 4
Ultimately, though, it is the yawning gap between the 2019 switchers and the Labour Party they abandoned that is most striking. Just 17% of Labour members and 9% of Labour MPs think that “young people don’t have enough respect for traditional British values” — a view held by 88% of Labour-to-Conservative switchers. The idea that schools should teach children to obey authority is supported by 81% of those swing voters, against just 29% of members and 41% of Labour MPs. Stiffer sentences are supported by 85% of switchers — again way more than is the case for Labour members (25%) and Labour MPs (24%).
It is also striking, again from Figure 4, but this time looking solely at parliamentarians (who are, after all, the most visible representatives of their respective parties as far as voters are concerned), that Tory MPs are far closer not just to their voters but to all voters, than are Labour MPs. That’s because, much as it pains liberals to admit it and even if things may gradually be shifting their way through generational change, Brits remain a pretty authoritarian bunch.
Given all this, some kind of culture war, however damaging and polarising some fear it would be, is arguably a perfectly rational strategic choice for the Conservatives in the years to come. It would build on — but, just as crucially now that Brexit is nearly done, allow them to build out of — the Leave-Remain identities established, to their obvious recent advantage, since 2016.
Pushing back against supposed attempts by the liberal elite to make Brits ashamed of their history and downplaying structural and institutional racism are only the more obvious aspects of such a strategy. Clamping down on illegal immigration — especially now that Nigel Farage is back punching that particular bruise — will also loom large. Even apparently trivial interventions, such as Gavin Williamson’s call for schools to insist pupils face the front and pay attention to the teacher rather than each other play a part.
There are, however, just a couple of crucial caveats.
First, it takes two to tango: while there may be plenty of socially liberal Labour MPs who might easily be tempted to fall into a Tory trap on this score, for example by allowing it to look like they were lecturing Home Secretary, Priti Patel, on racism. Keir Starmer and most of his Shadow Cabinet, whatever their true feelings, seem far less likely to take the bait.
Second, but no less important, the figures above suggest that Conservative MPs are not only more socially liberal than Conservative grassroots members and Conservative voters but more liberal than most voters – and on some issues are even more liberal than Labour voters. To win a culture war, like any other war, a general not only needs all his troops behind him but they all have to be up for the fight.
So if Boris Johnson is genuinely serious about ‘levelling up’ — and indeed about ‘fucking business’ — then this new research strongly suggests that he risks a good deal of unhappiness on the benches behind him from those overwhelmingly Thatcherite backbenchers who joined the Conservative Party to promote, not mitigate the free market.
It also suggests that, on social and cultural values, those MPs have rather more in common with the old Boris, the live-and-let-live liberal mayor of London, than with the ersatz Trump some of his advisors seem to want him to become. The electoral logic, however, points strongly to him listening to those advisors rather than worrying too much about the misgivings of his parliamentary colleagues.
Tim Bale is Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London and Director of the Mile End Institute.
ProfTimBale 
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeSo now they’re coming for Pinker, who is about as ‘progressive’ as you can get.
Progressive,yes. Woke, emphatically not.
Not really coming for Pinker, but sending a message to more junior, less established, less secure academics.
Pinker has a rather charitable interpretation of (or excuse for) the tactics of woke’ism, identity politics and political correctness, and so forth. These are pure bigotry — ruthless application of stereotypes to individuals regardless of any inappropriateness or gross inaccuracy/inapplicability, requiring either malign intent or absolute ignorance or brainwashing (by professors or the press or activists) with a false narrative combined with an overriding tendency and ability to engage in confirmation bias (to continue to support the narrative in one’s imagination).
I consider the culture-war activist and campus nonsense to be pure fraud by self-interested parties who are some combination of Leninist/Marxist and fascist, more or less. I believe that the leaders of these loosely defined and organized “movements” know exactly what they are pushing, and have no utopian notions whatsoever, but well understand that they can utilize the ignorance of many to lure with utopian appeal.
There appears to be a tremendous instinctive appeal of the utopian promise of socialism/communism/fascism (all variants of the same basic theme) that is built into human nature. It requires some historical knowledge to disabuse one of the idea that the utopia is even remotely possible, and to recognize that certain types of people will always be attracted to the kind of authoritarian or totalitarian power necessitated by real-life attempts to implement these ideologies. These would be Stalin-like characters at best — nothing about them is good for societies, especially relatively free and prosperous ones.
There has been a frightening additional growth of (self) entitlement, infantilization and expectation of a paternalistic environment that has increased in prevalence with each successive generation since the end of WWII in Euro/American societies (at least). Appeal to this has enhanced the ability of the malcontent ideology to convince, false and phony as it is.
IMO these jerks should be ridiculed and ignored. But the press is almost totally part of the “movement”, and so there is a sort of Catch-22 problem. Too many lazy intellects will listen to a narrative or look at a “painting” and buy in, rather than developing and implementing a skepticism with the skills needed to gather valid info and separate this from all of the disinfo and misinfo — e.g. skeptical reading skills.
The pandemic has just been a microscopic example of the same social phenomena, aided by the near universality of social media now. Even most well-educated people, I find, have no idea how to draw accurate conclusions from the epidemiological data which is freely available to anyone everywhere now, at least in Euro-American countries.
Thank you Freddie for this fascinating interview with Steven Pinker. Although insightful in itself, within it are several references to the extremely important open letter published in Harper’s magazine calling for the end of cancel culture with 150+ signatories from across the political spectrum. Hopefully one of the excellent Unherd team is penning a commentary on this extremely important event in the free speech debate as we speak. I would hate to think that purely because many of the signatories are left-leaning and one line in the letter casts aspersions on President Trump that it is not deemed of sufficient interest to the Unherd readership to merit a slot within the big four daily stories on our site.
Some good discussion in here along with the meat of discussion about free speech (on which Pinker’s stand is genuinely inspiring).
1. Sayers challenges Pinker on whether the Enlightenment might be partly responsible for the Woke, gesturing at their shared attitude that the world can be re-engineered if given enough effort. Pinker responds that he views the Woke as one form of counter-Enlightenment, which I think is fair enough and true, but also it seems like he missed Sayers’ point a little, and didn’t address the similarity.
I think there is a grain of truth when you contrast this element against its (almost definitional) absence in conservative thinking, but ultimately Wokism is not special for drawing on this Enlightenment idea and using it for other purposes, and many of the radical ideological failures of the 20th century — on the left and the right — could lay equal claim to such inspiration.
2. Sayers wonders whether the Enlightenment’s relative lack of focus on subjective value and ‘nourishing the soul’ fosters populist backlash. Pinker doesn’t really seem convinced that the current moment in Anglosphere politics demonstrates that. I think I would agree with Pinker’s doubt that it clearly points to a trend of decreasing happiness. The idea is worth considering, but it also seems like it could be the function of some other element of society compatible with Enlightenment values to nourish the soul.
No Pinker was on the money with that I think.
Wokism came out of the Enlightenment only in as far as it came out of movements long after and would therefore logically have some tenuous roots in it. But even that is stretching it.
The woke are actively, explicitly and vocally rejecting the Enlightenment across the board, because for them it is seen as the root cause of most prejudice and is too white and western for their liking.
Yes, what a splendidly
acerbic, spiteful, debate that was, and the Woke “never forgive and never forget”.
However I don’t have much sympathy for Pinker, he has always “run with the hare and hunted with the hounds”.
“ªPinker states that the right populists are a bigger threat than the left ‘because they are in power’ extraordinary !! So after 4 years of Trump what has actually happened that threatens our freedom?? Meanwhile the woke establishment has been enacting and fermenting profound and deeply corrosive societal change while being kept OUT of office -that is surely a great deal more threatening ?
Things that threaten our freedom under trump:
A deeply corrupt, vindictive DOJ.
A new Postmaster General who directs local facilities to “slow down” delivery of first-class mail, meaning many people near the end of routes don’t receive any mail, or not on a regular basis. To connect the dots, this threatens our free and fair elections.
A terribly mismanaged pandemic that has made it risky to leave our homes, or to walk around unencumbered with a face mask; and has closed nearly the entire world to a US passport.
A threat to “postpone” the election, which he clarified the same day he made it was NOT meant as a joke.
I could go on.
He also strangely makes no reference to woke social media enterprises and their unaccountable control and manipulation of the public square which is beyond the reach of the democratically elected ‘populist’ politicians
I think perhaps the “I’m all right” is actually a healthy contempt.
It bothers you that a free press is able to publish freely, and you would prefer they be within the reach of your preferred politicians? That violates the first amendment.
Nothing strange about it. Nationalist/Populist movements invariably devolve into authoritarian dictatorships. A few modern places one can see this process as it happens: the Philippines, Turkey, Hungary, Russia, and Brazil. Everybody wants a strong Daddy to keep them safe and make sure everyone else behaves. Some of us are more conscious of it and able to remove it from our politics than others.
I’m assuming by “woke rebellion,” you refer to people having a modern view of older institutions and mores.
“Woke” refers to things like people taking a critical look at accepted truisms, such as “Christianity is a force for good in the world,” or “Black people have as much chance as anybody else of making it in America,” or “If Black people would only obey the (always courteous and lawful) police, no one would get beaten or killed.” In evaluating current events, “woke” refers to a preference for secular humanism and compassion, a sort of “do no harm” ethos, along with a focus on reform of unfair practices. “Understanding that terms like ‘Kung flu’ and ‘China virus’ drive bigoted behavior towards Asians, we resolve not to use them” is one current example.
We seem to be between the devil and the deep blue sea – between an arid materialistic scientism and a ‘popular’ movement that seeks to impose the primacy of raw unreflected emotion on all discourse and every aspect of society.
I guess, if by “Left orthodoxy” you mean findings derived from careful studies of child development, including the powerful “twins separated at birth” studies that amuse us by pointing out, “They both like blue-checked shirts!” and “They’re both in church choirs!” and “Look how similar their bedspreads are!” I’m a developmental psychologist who’s naturally given a lot of thought and study to the question of nature/nurture. I, like my colleagues in that field — not linguistics — have certainly not concluded that only nature is formative.
I don’t believe developmental psychologists have an interest in “cancelling” Pinker. We accept that he’s talking through his hat and ignore him, similar to how we don’t take our dirty car to a shoe shine to be cleaned.
I continue to marvel that things as apolitical on their surface as cloth face masks, to what traits are heritable and which more refined by peers and parenting, have become “left” and “right,” with “left” ideas being based on swell-designed, replicated studies, and “right” meaning “I don’t like leftists and I don’t like this idea, therefore this idea is ‘left’.”
But who the hell are these “people”
They don’t represent the majority….does democratic majority no longer have credence?
I am stunned to constantly hear that “everyone is outraged” when in fact very few give a toss and the “outraged” are dangerous minority nut jobs!
Free speech runs both ways!
You seem kind of upset. Outraged, even.
How far we can go or how deep we can search in the deepest realm of our minds depends on how much we dare release ourselves and embrace new assumptions that might lead us into a better human condition. I must say that Socrates might have been wrong but by getting him to have the hemlock he became a victim of injustice. Let’s remember that truth is not necessesarily a democratic experience.
First they came for Katie Hopkins…
He makes a good point that if certain ideas are not allowed to be scrutinised then they run the risk of gaining currency. That is something everyone on all sides of an issue would do well to ponder. Cancel ideas and the very argument you so despise is allowed to live on!
The canaille have always been there and social media is simply another street corner. What has changed is the integrity of people who have entered contracts with targets of the mob. I believe it should be possible for anyone who loses any job as a result of such mob screeching to sue the nuts off the person firing them and get exemplary damages.
Let’s play this one out. Suppose an employee is caught on tape screaming, “America is a cesspool and I hope someone bombs US back to the Dark Ages!!” It gets posted online and everyone has an opinion about this guy, many of them negative.
The online mob does their “research.” They find out who the loudmouth is. They find their employer, and deluge them with video and strong opinions. Freaked out, the employer decides he doesn’t want his business associated with this kind of speech. They’re pretty sure keeping them on will cause some customers to forsake him, and their profits will drop. This has turned into an existential threat to their business.
Is it not the employer’s right to hire and fire whomever they please?
Die Gedachten sind Frei. But open speech is not free, and it’s getting more and more costly as the Jacobins look for that handy guillotine.
Off with their heads!
My own alma mater shelters one Noam Chomsky, who also happens to be an academic linguist like Pinker. I doubt very many have read even one work by Chomsky in the field of linguistics, but of course he spouts off incessantly and ridiculously about topics he knows absolutely nothing of. The fact that a clown like Chomsky can do so as successfully as he has is also a good reflection of the susceptibility and ignorance of the society at large.