I have noticed that you label your graphs as liberal verses authoritarian, when comparing views between Labour and Conservatives. I find that it is the Socialists, who are always wish to tell people what to do are the authoritarians. The Conservatives, who are less inclined to tell people what is best for them are the liberals.
I agree, Nick. That struck me too. The Tories might well attract a few more hangers and flogger than Labour but if we look at the record, judging people by what they do rather than what they say, it seems our lives have been restricted more by Labour governments than Tory administrations. That said, there has been creeping authoritarianism for at least the last thirty years: it just creeps faster and harder under red than blue.
Yes, this was my reaction too. Some of this research is blighted by the exact questions asked and by the labels “liberal”/”authoritarian”. I fail to see in what sense respecting traditional British values is in and of itself authoritarian, for instance. If anything I would suggest that British values are traditionally much more liberal than authoritarian.
The experts in, cough, universities KNOW what “authoritarian” (etc.) means to themselves. Just as they have KNOWN for decades that “race is only a social construct”. What you or I think is irrelevant.
Yes for some but not for censorship to uphold moral standards. That was a surprise to me and pretty clearly authoritarian (who decides the moral standards: the authorities). Perhaps I’m biased by heavy exposure to US culture, but to me, free speech is a core conservative value. Apparently not in the UK though.
Welcome to politics / “political science”. The whole field is blighted by shallow assumptions and unsound generalisations such as to make most of it very limited in value. Those most prominent are those with the least objectivity about things.
No wonder PPE graduates are so completely useless for anything other than getting a taxpayer-funded salary. (Mind you, there are a minority of people in political science who are competent.)
Recent events lead me to conclude that Boris is far too ‘agreeable’ to take the tough stance now needed. The Tories complete disinterest in addressing illegal immigration and large scale legal immigration shows that their general inability to get tough when necessary is nothing new. The Conservative Party have in effect, morphed into New Labour and a genuine party of the right is now required. I for one have no more faith in them.
Boris J. is a huge fan of immigration…..until very recently he was loudly demanding an amnesty for illegal immigrants….he’s letting the Patel run a cross-Channel taxi service, delivering illegals right to the shores of the UK.
Ian nclfuzzy
3 years ago
Superb article, with a depth of analysis you will never see in the Guardian and frankly, now almost absent from the increasingly woke FT.
My instinct is that Boris needs to do this, but if his heart’s not in it, and it’s left to Gove, Cummings and Mirza to do the heavy lifting, it could end badly.
The entire British establishment is against him – to paraphrase, the current woke backlash is the Brexit Wars by other means.
Michael Joseph
3 years ago
Good piece, except the author seems to have missed the rather vital fact that the culture war has already started and it wasn’t conservatives who fired the first shots. For conservatives (and Conservatives) it’s all about fighting back, not starting anything. And to say that Starmer and friends won’t ‘take the bait’ ignores the fact that they already have taken the bait – we all saw the image of Keir ‘taking the knee’…
Rubbish…back in the day conservative fought tooth and nail to deny poor men and women the vote….back in the day conservatives could see nothing wrong with slavery…
…back in the day conservatives said that men must go to jail for having consenting sex with another man…
…and Boris was quick enough to fold when BLM scum rioted….
William Gladstone
3 years ago
I don’t think those questions really relate to a war on woke apart from maybe traditional values if they mean the values of a liberal democracy i.e. free speech, equality before the law, democracy etc.
Also some of the questions are very vague.
What does censorship mean? The woke left want to censor gone with the wind but I imagine most people answer this thinking about hard violence or porn.
The people who break the law question. Do they men stiffer sentences for everything from shoplifting? I would say probably not but they probably don’t want people getting away with burglary.
Schools should teach children to obey authority. Well yes but within reason. I would also say the tories should teach critical thinking skills and ditch critical theory.
A war on woke is really a war on identity politics and that war is mainly to do with the diversity and the equality act. Get rid of all that divisive stuff. replace it with a focus on merit, objectivity and democracy.
In fact if the tories want people to work hard and recover the economy for them then they pretty much have to do this and as a by product if companies start treating people fairly then voters will probably move closer to the natural tory position economically.
And this is the case with any survey. Issues are too complex for simple questions. However, taken across all categories, there is sufficient to make a clear distinction between the parties and draw appropriate conclusions. An interesting question would be to ask MPs how they think voters would score and then compare it to the real numbers. I suspect that may be the biggest gap.
“Schools should teach children to obey authority. Well yes but within reason.”
And which loons in HMG….Blue or Red…define what ‘within reason’ means.
HMG – all colours – is still panting to police the internet.
Hugh R
3 years ago
This whole article reminds me of the two guys in the jungle who spot a tiger and one says: ‘I’m off, …I’m going to run for it ” You’ll never outrun a tiger” ” I don’t need to, I just need to be faster than you” The working class have turned away in disgust from the stench of a bloated, rotten Labour Party corpse. 4 in a row, and their remedy is, “More of the same we know best”
Speaking as a scion of the working class, and one who is aware how privations cascade down through generations, I say ” NOT IN MY NAME” If you want to pretend to be a Socialist, then I’ll just have to pretend to be a Tory. Do the maths.
robertbutterwick
3 years ago
In Michael Goves speech at the weekend he highlighted the kind of Wokeness within the Civil Service that needs to change:- “The more that fluent, intelligent, kind and sensitive people explain that the Emperor’s New Clothes are a thoughtful co-creation blending public and private sector expertise from the textile and non-textile communities and these have been, benchmarked against international norms and sensitive to both body positivity feedback and non-judgemental protocols concerning the tone-policing of issues around personal space, the less likely someone is to say the guy is naked.” Hoo bloody ray!
Richard Marriott
3 years ago
Interesting article and the issue is shown into stark relief when looking at attitudes towards illegal immigration and foreign aid. The majority of people (regardless of their views on the economy) want illegal immigration completely stopped, they want the asylum system removed or reformed and they want to end the GDP 0.7% mandated level of foreign aid.
Yet, we hear that some Conservative MPs are “unhappy” about aspects of the new immigration bill, particularly when it comes to unaccompanied minors in other European countries who demand to come to the UK. They need to get with the flow, since illegal and undocumented migrants are simply not welcome (as opposed to those we invite to come here with valid visas to work in our services and economy).
Geoffrey Simon Hicking
3 years ago
It’s sad that things have become so polarised. It may be that there is no room for nuance in this coming culture war.
I used to take pride in those bits of British history that had some journalist or parliamentarian standing up against another part of the British establishment that had become over-mighty. Vice-Admiral Lawrence keeping his principles intact in the face of Cromwellian tyranny, London newspapers in the 1840s laying out the faults of the EIC, Leavers standing up against against the remainer establishment (hopefully I did my bit there), or those anonymous unthanked officials that helped keep Botswana out of the hands of Cecil Rhodes and helped lay in the first steps towards it becoming one of the breadbaskets of Africa… ironically succeeding Rhodesia in that position after it fell to Mogabe.
I was proud of lots of more conventional parts of our history of course- the navy fighting off the French, our Christian heritage, the abolition of slavery, and the great development of a well run state from the Saxons to now.
That said, I fear that alot of our history will be forgotten, because to even admit that it exists is to admit certain flaws in the British Empire. Never mind that those flaws allowed Brits to show their reforming zeal and humanity, the brutal reality is that the left are determined to exploit any flaw and thus such admissions may be fatal in the culture war. I am worried the only way to defeat them will be hammering the unambiguously good bits of empire into the heads of the elite (or schools, or whoever need to be targeted), and the more nuanced bits will be forgotten. Victims of the culture war.
I don’t want to criticise the right on this mind, I’m just having a “wet” moment fretting about the coming casualties. Apologies if this comment is a little rambling.
Yes, you are a little wet on Africa- Rhodesia under Ian Smith and others exported grain to many countries- maize, sorghum, wheat etc. Botswana has little hope of competing with what Rhodesia achieved and becoming a ‘bread basket’.
Botswana agriculture is largely based on cattle. And feeding them and its human population takes most of Botswana’s cereal crops. It is, after all, largely desert (only 7% of the land is suitable for arable farming) and does not have the same number of commercial farmers that Rhodesia had. Farming is on small farms ( a hectare or two) and is largely subsistence farming.
The diaspora of Rhodesians has benefitted many countries- to the detriment of the peoples of Zimbabwe – especially under Mugabe (not Mogabe- it’s a Shona name) and of course many Matabele (and Shona) with some enterprise have left Zimbabwe due to the chaos and violence created by Mugabe and co.
Rhodes had no chance of incorporating Botswana into Rhodesia- as after the disgrace of the Jameson Raid he had little political power- the largest danger for Botswana was from Germans in the then German South West Africa, and the British who dithered over the forming of a protectorate – and if they had known of the diamonds being mined there now they would have taken it all.
Kimberley’s diamond mines were filched by the British by moving the boundary from the OFS thus moving Kimberley into the Cape. The commissions to decide the boundary ignored both the Boers of the OFS and the Griquas who both had a case…
A digression- BUT few have much knowledge of the history of southern Africa- or twist the narrative to suit their agenda.
.
Trefor Jones
3 years ago
Interesting article, however whatever its logic. The reason Labour were trounced is because no one outside the champagne socialists of Islington wanted Jeremy Corbyn anywhere near power. Starmer is playing the long game, after all there will be no election until 2024.If he taps into the same anti woke sentiment of his traditional base, then Johnson will not be in power.
The traditional Labour support came from the hard work of heavy industry and a belief in standards and cooperation. It owes more to religious nonconformity than it does to Engels.
I have lived most of my life in the nominally socialist valleys of Wales. The common outlook is not at all liberal, in fact it is the opposite. Corbyn was thought of as being a loon, but then so is Boris Johnson.
« If he taps into the same anti woke sentiment of his traditional base, then Johnson will not be in power.«
But if he does he risks alienating the new base of guardian readers and the young upper middle class. The problem is that the traditional base has shrunk, and the new base has grown.
Also much of the party is closer in its ideology to the new base than the old.
I think the solution he’ll go for is to be neutral towards wokeness and concentrate on issues like job security and the housing crisis. There’s definitely a gap for someone socially central but economically left of centre.
Tim Rowe
3 years ago
An interesting article. My own view is that the U.K. has demonstrated over the years, and most recently at the Brexit referendum, the EU election and the last General Election that there is a ground swell of silent (majority) people in the Country who respect law and order, who behave in a civilised manner and are, generally, good neighbours. These people also go out and vote. They (we) see it as our civic duty and responsibility to do so. Therefore this view is successful at the ballet box.
It is clear that single issue electoral parties have generally performed poorly in the U.K. the exception here is the SNP. However, as I argued with an English friend who was furious with the (as he saw it) closeness of the Scottish Independence vote. I explained to him that at least the Scots had a choice whereas in England we were effectively given the choice between Cameron, Caleb and Miliband. In terms of personality, education and visual image, effectively one and the same. We had no choice, but the Scots did. It is I believe, almost inevitable that the SNP will lose ground, perhaps rather quicker than we might imagine. Especially with the U.K. having left the EU the SNP will have to answer many questions they did not have to last time around; which currency, what type of border between England and Scotland should they rejoin the EU, how are you Independent if you have a paymaster even further from your shores than Westminster And who does not speak your language? These questions, and a host of others need to be answered prior to another Indo ref in Scotland and did not need to be answered when we were all part of the EU.
So will Boris win in 2024. I think will if Delivers a true Brexit, continues to commit to the North of England and give a push to Scotland and Wales he will. BLM will disappear as the Marxist irrelevance that they are. Stability will return.
Boris should win in ’24 because the Red Mob are a shower of s67t…..
…Brexit is now a dead issue…the talks will drag on for years but purely about trade…from time to time…both sides will shout at each other….
…as to the currency Scotland would use…it could use any it wanted or set up its own… 🙂
Guy Haynes
3 years ago
This is a very interesting article, but the data provided here does not provide enough clarity on the economic questions.
There is in these figures a clear antipathy to the dominance of big business, and a clear belief that those at the top of big business have far too large a slice of the pie. This is not surprising in my view, but there are two very opposite solutions to this – on the one hand, the mighty hand of the government can be used to crush big business and restrict those at the top’s earning potential – definitely a left wing economic viewpoint.
Or there is the classically liberal solution, where regulations are lifted and barriers to smaller businesses competing with big business are removed – a very Thatcherite policy which sold the dream of anyone being able to set up a business and become rich. Whether or not this is people’s preference I don’t know, but this is compatible with most of the responses on the economic side, but could hardly be classified as “to the left” economically.
There is also a combination of the two, Trumponomics if you like, where a low tax, low regulation economy is combined with government tariffs that will specifically impact big multinationals who have the wherewithal to use cheap foreign labour to be more competitive.
I think that better questions are required on the economic side of things before we can arrive at any firm conclusion.
Big businesses will always out-compete small in an unregulated free market. Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter, presided over the destruction of the grocery by the supermarket. On an economic level, I would suggest there ought to be a natural coalition between the small businessmen and the public sector workers, both of whom have an interest in a state that will intervene to undermine the interests of the corporate multi-nationals. The gulf in social values between these two sectors has kept them apart, of course.
That makes little sense. It is the over-regulation of markets that keeps small businesses tied up in red tape, red tape which big business easily affords. Not only does over-regulation stymie competition from up and coming small businesses but it also leads to a lack of innovation as everyone has to follow the same turgid rule-book. I’d suggest Guy Haynes is a lot closer to the truth than you are.
Basil Chamberlain
3 years ago
It may be a cynical thought, but I think Boris Johnson has a vested interest in Wokeness not going away. After all, Wokeness is a self-defeating, self-marginalising strategy for the left, that has shorn it of much of its traditional working-class support. When left-wing governments get into power, they do so via a coalition of working-class voters with liberal intellectuals, feminists and minorities. Wokeness is a wedge issue which severs the working class from the other elements of the coalition. It is therefore in the electoral interests of the Conservative Party for Woke issues to remain at the forefront of political debate. They would lose the next election instantly if people started voting according to their increasingly interventionist economic preferences.
Robin Lambert
3 years ago
As An Independent Candidate a Last Three General Elections and Ukip candidate in 2005,&2010 I have noticed the Sad ‘Importing’ of American divisive policies, It used to be Common to see Opponents chatting at the Count,ie ”Tellers” etc..Now there appears to be ‘Real hate or dislike’ You notice the divisions, If you talk about The idea ‘Science is not Settled’ & meaningless Con of High Taxes and ‘Climate change’ is a myth..If you dare Say volcanoes, Or Solar Winds drive ‘Our Earth’s climate see how subsidised interests Pounce,even though they are breaking the 2007 10 October,Mr Justice Burton,ruled Al gore’s climate film had at least 9 errors.A Mr Dimmock who brought the Action,saying ‘Unless Guidance, ”That it was only one opinion” it shouldn’t be Shown. Mr Dimmock was awarded £200,000 of his £300,000 costs.But does ANY media outlet,or School follow the Guidance?…NOooooooooooooo.
Peter Mott
3 years ago
Culture wars (Woke wars) means to me conflicts over Brexit, climate, gender and race. But none of these issues occur in the social attitudes question of Tim Bale’s research (modesty forbids him saying he is one of the authors).
Is the idea that attitudes to hanging and censorship predict views on Brexit, climate change, transgender rights and statue removal? Seems a bit tenuous to me.
Be that as it may, I don’t see much mileage for Johnson in ramping up a Woke war – he has won there already. It is economics and above all austerity that can end his regime. He should remember Harold Macmillan’s 1957 “you have never had it so good”, and that austerity killed Atlee’s government despite the NHS.
Chinese Bear
3 years ago
The term ‘traditional values’ is used liberally (if you excuse the choice of words) throughout the article, but it is not clearly defined. A definition of ‘traditional values’ might include politeness, kindness, compassion and empathy, thinking about people and things other than yourself, honesty, caring for your family and the wider community. However these qualities and the cultural values underpinning them are more prevalent IMHO among African and Asian Britons (and East Europeans) than the ‘white working class’, which has (for example) extremely high levels of family breakdown. If my partner (who has long term health problems) needed home care, I would prefer to employ somebody from a non-English background. That is a hard truth but if we are really to reject ‘wokeness’ we must surely accept that there are aspects of working class ‘white’ culture that are extremely unattractive.
You are completely wrong there, Allan. It is nothing to do with money and everything to do with having someone who shows compassion and empathy, speaks with a good accent and does not use swear words, does not use drugs or get drunk, respects older people and is physically clean. What a terrible indictment it is of our educational system, family structures and cultural values that it is so often necessary to look elsewhere to find these basic qualities of caring.
Again quite wrong. I would be prepared to pay more for better service. I don’t think you have actually read my comment in full but jumped to conclusions about it – which I assure you are misplaced.
Paul Theato
3 years ago
Personally, I don’t think this liberal/left, culturally Marxist, Tory in name only government and its leader realises or cares about the danger it and the country are in. It’s not just that normal, sane, small ‘c’ conservative people have had enough of what is now termed wokeness; people worth their salt can finally see it for what it is: Marxism, and they know with deep despair that the complicit/infiltrated government along with the opposition, most of whom are Marxist, are only promoting it and encouraging it and not doing anything about it. A sell-out doesn’t begin to describe it.
David Morley
3 years ago
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.
I would suggest that Boris started work on this immediately after the election. All that talk about borrowed votes was not so much for the benefit of northern voters as to soften up his own party for compromise.
The strategy that makes sense would be to satisfice on economic issues so as not to alienate either side, while putting the stress on the social side and the “war on woke”.
Can people stop referring to him as “Boris”. His name is Johnson, and he is no friend or mate of ours or of just about anyone for that matter, rather he is an almighty s…..b.g understandably told to get lost by two former wives.
tomscott444
3 years ago
A good place to start would be with the police. A government that required the police to police without favour or preference would win a lot of support. No special treatment for certain groups, whoever they are and a focus on solving and preventing real crime. Michael Howards assertion that “Prison Works” was popular. We all know that a small percentage of people, mayb 1 or 2% spoil life for everyone else, especially those in the poorest areas. We would all be happy to pay to see them locked away.
Johnny Norfolk
3 years ago
They are all wets. They have had an easy life. They are not needed as much as they think they are and feel guilty about the life they live. They are soft left. any real people in the party are not in the cabinet
Mark Bishop
3 years ago
Interesting, though I think the assertion that the populace wants left-wing economic policies is misplaced: with the exception of the first one (redistribution, on which even Labour voters are further right than that party’s politicians), the test questions on economics are all ones that right populists would strongly endorse.
I’d therefore argue that the British public is against identity politics and other left-liberal obsessions, and against corporatism (the political ideology shared by Blairites and corporatist-wing Tories, the Remainers flushed out and marginalised by Boris last year). Which is bad news for ‘forensic’ Keir Starmer, who is nothing more or less than Blair with added wokeness.
Richard Slack
3 years ago
That piece ended rather quickly just when I thought there might be some idea of what an “anti woke” policy might look like which would help me in understanding which this word “woke”, bandied around rather a lot on here, actually means. But there seems to be nothing here other than the usual stuff that gets the Tory party conference’s pulses racing:- more prisons, “traditional” methods in schools, punitive Trade Union legislation, crack-down on “scroungers” and “getting tough” with immigrants. We have been listening to these for 50 years now, and they have they common denominator of not working. The quicker we build prisons we fill them up with longer sentences, “traditional methods” in schools make the disadvantaged more disadvantaged, Universal Credit has lead to a growth industry in food banks and tougher immigration controls have little effect on those entering the country but make those here much more vulnerable. I am coming to the conclusion that saying things like this probably defines me as “woke”. I just think is is being honest
Nah….just cynical….look at Mickey Gove as SoS Ed….panting for traditional education….didn’t give a f78k about those for whom top notch, fully funded, fully staffed vocational education might have been the better route..
…and Gove was only one in a long line of SoS Eds determined at all costs to never come to close to implementing anything like the fully funded provision of education as thought of in the ’44 Act…
…the irony being of course….that the much vaunted German education system….is the ’44 Act writ large so to speak….set up as it was by UK officials determined to totally reset the German education system post-45 (for obvious reasons).
Jonathan da Silva
3 years ago
It’s an interesting moral hazard unless you believe a more draconian society than even now where we are all spied on, have a relatively large prison population, deports people for very little and increasingly an economy is dominated by finance and monopolies is somehow too liberal. Lock people like the trans up to win elections…
I guess like with May [as Home Sec] on immigration ramp up the rhetoric to 11 bung a few minorities on planes but in reality change little and create bureaucracy and queues is more likely? TBF most of us in the UK would support more police and spending there.
i.e. I would suspect that merely upsetting the liberally minded would work without having to do anything. Pass some nonsense about making people serve whole sentences yada.
People are not deported for ‘very little’. It is almost impossible to deport people even for very serious crimes committed by repeat offenders, most of whom should not have been here anyway.
If you dislike deportation, then you probably want open borders. Have you tried explaining the benefits of exponential population increase + static housing supply to a homeless person?
No, because those who are Woke think of it as just the good and true. They do commonly use self-labels such as antifa, anti-racist (even though they are the mega-racists themselves), human /lgbt rights defenders, equality campaigners…. In fact the whole business of political labels is a pile of muddle, because the people most involved in politics are those with the least dispassionate objective views of it. Hence this “left v right” drivel continues like a zombie.
I have noticed that you label your graphs as liberal verses authoritarian, when comparing views between Labour and Conservatives.
I find that it is the Socialists, who are always wish to tell people what to do are the authoritarians. The Conservatives, who are less inclined to tell people what is best for them are the liberals.
I agree, Nick. That struck me too. The Tories might well attract a few more hangers and flogger than Labour but if we look at the record, judging people by what they do rather than what they say, it seems our lives have been restricted more by Labour governments than Tory administrations. That said, there has been creeping authoritarianism for at least the last thirty years: it just creeps faster and harder under red than blue.
I don’t think there’s much of a difference.
Yes, this was my reaction too. Some of this research is blighted by the exact questions asked and by the labels “liberal”/”authoritarian”. I fail to see in what sense respecting traditional British values is in and of itself authoritarian, for instance. If anything I would suggest that British values are traditionally much more liberal than authoritarian.
The experts in, cough, universities KNOW what “authoritarian” (etc.) means to themselves. Just as they have KNOWN for decades that “race is only a social construct”. What you or I think is irrelevant.
Yes for some but not for censorship to uphold moral standards. That was a surprise to me and pretty clearly authoritarian (who decides the moral standards: the authorities). Perhaps I’m biased by heavy exposure to US culture, but to me, free speech is a core conservative value. Apparently not in the UK though.
Welcome to politics / “political science”. The whole field is blighted by shallow assumptions and unsound generalisations such as to make most of it very limited in value. Those most prominent are those with the least objectivity about things.
No wonder PPE graduates are so completely useless for anything other than getting a taxpayer-funded salary. (Mind you, there are a minority of people in political science who are competent.)
PPE is like, umm, Arts and Crafts for rich f78kwitz.
“The Conservatives, who are less inclined to tell people what is best for them are the liberals.”
That is one of the best pieces of satire I’ve read in ages…
…it’s not liberals shouting that homosexuals cause floods…and liberals tend not to rant about how the Bible always proves them right…
https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/areasontosmile/2011/11/dear-dr-laura-why-cant-i-own-a-canadian.htmlRecent events lead me to conclude that Boris is far too ‘agreeable’ to take the tough stance now needed. The Tories complete disinterest in addressing illegal immigration and large scale legal immigration shows that their general inability to get tough when necessary is nothing new. The Conservative Party have in effect, morphed into New Labour and a genuine party of the right is now required. I for one have no more faith in them.
Boris J. is a huge fan of immigration…..until very recently he was loudly demanding an amnesty for illegal immigrants….he’s letting the Patel run a cross-Channel taxi service, delivering illegals right to the shores of the UK.
Superb article, with a depth of analysis you will never see in the Guardian and frankly, now almost absent from the increasingly woke FT.
My instinct is that Boris needs to do this, but if his heart’s not in it, and it’s left to Gove, Cummings and Mirza to do the heavy lifting, it could end badly.
The entire British establishment is against him – to paraphrase, the current woke backlash is the Brexit Wars by other means.
Good piece, except the author seems to have missed the rather vital fact that the culture war has already started and it wasn’t conservatives who fired the first shots. For conservatives (and Conservatives) it’s all about fighting back, not starting anything. And to say that Starmer and friends won’t ‘take the bait’ ignores the fact that they already have taken the bait – we all saw the image of Keir ‘taking the knee’…
Rubbish…back in the day conservative fought tooth and nail to deny poor men and women the vote….back in the day conservatives could see nothing wrong with slavery…
…back in the day conservatives said that men must go to jail for having consenting sex with another man…
…and Boris was quick enough to fold when BLM scum rioted….
I don’t think those questions really relate to a war on woke apart from maybe traditional values if they mean the values of a liberal democracy i.e. free speech, equality before the law, democracy etc.
Also some of the questions are very vague.
What does censorship mean? The woke left want to censor gone with the wind but I imagine most people answer this thinking about hard violence or porn.
The people who break the law question. Do they men stiffer sentences for everything from shoplifting? I would say probably not but they probably don’t want people getting away with burglary.
Schools should teach children to obey authority. Well yes but within reason. I would also say the tories should teach critical thinking skills and ditch critical theory.
A war on woke is really a war on identity politics and that war is mainly to do with the diversity and the equality act. Get rid of all that divisive stuff. replace it with a focus on merit, objectivity and democracy.
In fact if the tories want people to work hard and recover the economy for them then they pretty much have to do this and as a by product if companies start treating people fairly then voters will probably move closer to the natural tory position economically.
And this is the case with any survey. Issues are too complex for simple questions. However, taken across all categories, there is sufficient to make a clear distinction between the parties and draw appropriate conclusions. An interesting question would be to ask MPs how they think voters would score and then compare it to the real numbers. I suspect that may be the biggest gap.
“Schools should teach children to obey authority. Well yes but within reason.”
And which loons in HMG….Blue or Red…define what ‘within reason’ means.
HMG – all colours – is still panting to police the internet.
This whole article reminds me of the two guys in the jungle who spot a tiger and one says: ‘I’m off, …I’m going to run for it
” You’ll never outrun a tiger”
” I don’t need to, I just need to be faster than you”
The working class have turned away in disgust from the stench of a bloated, rotten Labour Party corpse.
4 in a row, and their remedy is, “More of the same we know best”
Speaking as a scion of the working class, and one who is aware how privations cascade down through generations, I say
” NOT IN MY NAME”
If you want to pretend to be a Socialist, then I’ll just have to pretend to be a Tory.
Do the maths.
In Michael Goves speech at the weekend he highlighted the kind of Wokeness within the Civil Service that needs to change:-
“The more that fluent, intelligent, kind and sensitive people
explain that the Emperor’s New Clothes are a thoughtful
co-creation blending public and private sector expertise from
the textile and non-textile communities and these have been,
benchmarked against international norms and sensitive to
both body positivity feedback and non-judgemental protocols
concerning the tone-policing of issues around personal
space, the less likely someone is to say the guy is naked.”
Hoo bloody ray!
Interesting article and the issue is shown into stark relief when looking at attitudes towards illegal immigration and foreign aid. The majority of people (regardless of their views on the economy) want illegal immigration completely stopped, they want the asylum system removed or reformed and they want to end the GDP 0.7% mandated level of foreign aid.
Yet, we hear that some Conservative MPs are “unhappy” about aspects of the new immigration bill, particularly when it comes to unaccompanied minors in other European countries who demand to come to the UK. They need to get with the flow, since illegal and undocumented migrants are simply not welcome (as opposed to those we invite to come here with valid visas to work in our services and economy).
It’s sad that things have become so polarised. It may be that there is no room for nuance in this coming culture war.
I used to take pride in those bits of British history that had some journalist or parliamentarian standing up against another part of the British establishment that had become over-mighty. Vice-Admiral Lawrence keeping his principles intact in the face of Cromwellian tyranny, London newspapers in the 1840s laying out the faults of the EIC, Leavers standing up against against the remainer establishment (hopefully I did my bit there), or those anonymous unthanked officials that helped keep Botswana out of the hands of Cecil Rhodes and helped lay in the first steps towards it becoming one of the breadbaskets of Africa… ironically succeeding Rhodesia in that position after it fell to Mogabe.
I was proud of lots of more conventional parts of our history of course- the navy fighting off the French, our Christian heritage, the abolition of slavery, and the great development of a well run state from the Saxons to now.
That said, I fear that alot of our history will be forgotten, because to even admit that it exists is to admit certain flaws in the British Empire. Never mind that those flaws allowed Brits to show their reforming zeal and humanity, the brutal reality is that the left are determined to exploit any flaw and thus such admissions may be fatal in the culture war. I am worried the only way to defeat them will be hammering the unambiguously good bits of empire into the heads of the elite (or schools, or whoever need to be targeted), and the more nuanced bits will be forgotten. Victims of the culture war.
I don’t want to criticise the right on this mind, I’m just having a “wet” moment fretting about the coming casualties. Apologies if this comment is a little rambling.
https://littleconservative….
https://littleconservative….
Yes, you are a little wet on Africa- Rhodesia under Ian Smith and others exported grain to many countries- maize, sorghum, wheat etc. Botswana has little hope of competing with what Rhodesia achieved and becoming a ‘bread basket’.
Botswana agriculture is largely based on cattle. And feeding them and its human population takes most of Botswana’s cereal crops. It is, after all, largely desert (only 7% of the land is suitable for arable farming) and does not have the same number of commercial farmers that Rhodesia had. Farming is on small farms ( a hectare or two) and is largely subsistence farming.
The diaspora of Rhodesians has benefitted many countries- to the detriment of the peoples of Zimbabwe – especially under Mugabe (not Mogabe- it’s a Shona name) and of course many Matabele (and Shona) with some enterprise have left Zimbabwe due to the chaos and violence created by Mugabe and co.
Rhodes had no chance of incorporating Botswana into Rhodesia- as after the disgrace of the Jameson Raid he had little political power- the largest danger for Botswana was from Germans in the then German South West Africa, and the British who dithered over the forming of a protectorate – and if they had known of the diamonds being mined there now they would have taken it all.
Kimberley’s diamond mines were filched by the British by moving the boundary from the OFS thus moving Kimberley into the Cape. The commissions to decide the boundary ignored both the Boers of the OFS and the Griquas who both had a case…
A digression- BUT few have much knowledge of the history of southern Africa- or twist the narrative to suit their agenda.
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Interesting article, however whatever its logic. The reason Labour were trounced is because no one outside the champagne socialists of Islington wanted Jeremy Corbyn anywhere near power. Starmer is playing the long game, after all there will be no election until 2024.If he taps into the same anti woke sentiment of his traditional base, then Johnson will not be in power.
The traditional Labour support came from the hard work of heavy industry and a belief in standards and cooperation. It owes more to religious nonconformity than it does to Engels.
I have lived most of my life in the nominally socialist valleys of Wales. The common outlook is not at all liberal, in fact it is the opposite. Corbyn was thought of as being a loon, but then so is Boris Johnson.
« If he taps into the same anti woke sentiment of his traditional base, then Johnson will not be in power.«
But if he does he risks alienating the new base of guardian readers and the young upper middle class. The problem is that the traditional base has shrunk, and the new base has grown.
Also much of the party is closer in its ideology to the new base than the old.
He’s in a tight corner.
I think the solution he’ll go for is to be neutral towards wokeness and concentrate on issues like job security and the housing crisis. There’s definitely a gap for someone socially central but economically left of centre.
An interesting article. My own view is that the U.K. has demonstrated over the years, and most recently at the Brexit referendum, the EU election and the last General Election that there is a ground swell of silent (majority) people in the Country who respect law and order, who behave in a civilised manner and are, generally, good neighbours. These people also go out and vote. They (we) see it as our civic duty and responsibility to do so. Therefore this view is successful at the ballet box.
It is clear that single issue electoral parties have generally performed poorly in the U.K. the exception here is the SNP. However, as I argued with an English friend who was furious with the (as he saw it) closeness of the Scottish Independence vote. I explained to him that at least the Scots had a choice whereas in England we were effectively given the choice between Cameron, Caleb and Miliband. In terms of personality, education and visual image, effectively one and the same. We had no choice, but the Scots did. It is I believe, almost inevitable that the SNP will lose ground, perhaps rather quicker than we might imagine. Especially with the U.K. having left the EU the SNP will have to answer many questions they did not have to last time around; which currency, what type of border between England and Scotland should they rejoin the EU, how are you Independent if you have a paymaster even further from your shores than Westminster And who does not speak your language? These questions, and a host of others need to be answered prior to another Indo ref in Scotland and did not need to be answered when we were all part of the EU.
So will Boris win in 2024. I think will if Delivers a true Brexit, continues to commit to the North of England and give a push to Scotland and Wales he will. BLM will disappear as the Marxist irrelevance that they are. Stability will return.
Boris should win in ’24 because the Red Mob are a shower of s67t…..
…Brexit is now a dead issue…the talks will drag on for years but purely about trade…from time to time…both sides will shout at each other….
…as to the currency Scotland would use…it could use any it wanted or set up its own… 🙂
This is a very interesting article, but the data provided here does not provide enough clarity on the economic questions.
There is in these figures a clear antipathy to the dominance of big business, and a clear belief that those at the top of big business have far too large a slice of the pie. This is not surprising in my view, but there are two very opposite solutions to this – on the one hand, the mighty hand of the government can be used to crush big business and restrict those at the top’s earning potential – definitely a left wing economic viewpoint.
Or there is the classically liberal solution, where regulations are lifted and barriers to smaller businesses competing with big business are removed – a very Thatcherite policy which sold the dream of anyone being able to set up a business and become rich. Whether or not this is people’s preference I don’t know, but this is compatible with most of the responses on the economic side, but could hardly be classified as “to the left” economically.
There is also a combination of the two, Trumponomics if you like, where a low tax, low regulation economy is combined with government tariffs that will specifically impact big multinationals who have the wherewithal to use cheap foreign labour to be more competitive.
I think that better questions are required on the economic side of things before we can arrive at any firm conclusion.
Big businesses will always out-compete small in an unregulated free market. Thatcher, the grocer’s daughter, presided over the destruction of the grocery by the supermarket. On an economic level, I would suggest there ought to be a natural coalition between the small businessmen and the public sector workers, both of whom have an interest in a state that will intervene to undermine the interests of the corporate multi-nationals. The gulf in social values between these two sectors has kept them apart, of course.
That makes little sense. It is the over-regulation of markets that keeps small businesses tied up in red tape, red tape which big business easily affords.
Not only does over-regulation stymie competition from up and coming small businesses but it also leads to a lack of innovation as everyone has to follow the same turgid rule-book.
I’d suggest Guy Haynes is a lot closer to the truth than you are.
It may be a cynical thought, but I think Boris Johnson has a vested interest in Wokeness not going away. After all, Wokeness is a self-defeating, self-marginalising strategy for the left, that has shorn it of much of its traditional working-class support. When left-wing governments get into power, they do so via a coalition of working-class voters with liberal intellectuals, feminists and minorities. Wokeness is a wedge issue which severs the working class from the other elements of the coalition. It is therefore in the electoral interests of the Conservative Party for Woke issues to remain at the forefront of political debate. They would lose the next election instantly if people started voting according to their increasingly interventionist economic preferences.
As An Independent Candidate a Last Three General Elections and Ukip candidate in 2005,&2010 I have noticed the Sad ‘Importing’ of American divisive policies, It used to be Common to see Opponents chatting at the Count,ie ”Tellers” etc..Now there appears to be ‘Real hate or dislike’ You notice the divisions, If you talk about The idea ‘Science is not Settled’ & meaningless Con of High Taxes and ‘Climate change’ is a myth..If you dare Say volcanoes, Or Solar Winds drive ‘Our Earth’s climate see how subsidised interests Pounce,even though they are breaking the 2007 10 October,Mr Justice Burton,ruled Al gore’s climate film had at least 9 errors.A Mr Dimmock who brought the Action,saying ‘Unless Guidance, ”That it was only one opinion” it shouldn’t be Shown. Mr Dimmock was awarded £200,000 of his £300,000 costs.But does ANY media outlet,or School follow the Guidance?…NOooooooooooooo.
Culture wars (Woke wars) means to me conflicts over Brexit, climate, gender and race. But none of these issues occur in the social attitudes question of Tim Bale’s research (modesty forbids him saying he is one of the authors).
Is the idea that attitudes to hanging and censorship predict views on Brexit, climate change, transgender rights and statue removal? Seems a bit tenuous to me.
Be that as it may, I don’t see much mileage for Johnson in ramping up a Woke war – he has won there already. It is economics and above all austerity that can end his regime. He should remember Harold Macmillan’s 1957 “you have never had it so good”, and that austerity killed Atlee’s government despite the NHS.
The term ‘traditional values’ is used liberally (if you excuse the choice of words) throughout the article, but it is not clearly defined. A definition of ‘traditional values’ might include politeness, kindness, compassion and empathy, thinking about people and things other than yourself, honesty, caring for your family and the wider community. However these qualities and the cultural values underpinning them are more prevalent IMHO among African and Asian Britons (and East Europeans) than the ‘white working class’, which has (for example) extremely high levels of family breakdown. If my partner (who has long term health problems) needed home care, I would prefer to employ somebody from a non-English background.
That is a hard truth but if we are really to reject ‘wokeness’ we must surely accept that there are aspects of working class ‘white’ culture that are extremely unattractive.
” I would prefer to employ somebody from a non-English background.”
Presumably because a native will expect a decent wage…a foreigner much less so.
You are completely wrong there, Allan. It is nothing to do with money and everything to do with having someone who shows compassion and empathy, speaks with a good accent and does not use swear words, does not use drugs or get drunk, respects older people and is physically clean. What a terrible indictment it is of our educational system, family structures and cultural values that it is so often necessary to look elsewhere to find these basic qualities of caring.
“It is nothing to do with money…”
If you say so….strange how Remainac Sir Stuart Rose stated that if immigration stops, wages will have to rise…
Again quite wrong. I would be prepared to pay more for better service. I don’t think you have actually read my comment in full but jumped to conclusions about it – which I assure you are misplaced.
Personally, I don’t think this liberal/left, culturally Marxist, Tory in name only government and its leader realises or cares about the danger it and the country are in. It’s not just that normal, sane, small ‘c’ conservative people have had enough of what is now termed wokeness; people worth their salt can finally see it for what it is: Marxism, and they know with deep despair that the complicit/infiltrated government along with the opposition, most of whom are Marxist, are only promoting it and encouraging it and not doing anything about it. A sell-out doesn’t begin to describe it.
I would suggest that Boris started work on this immediately after the election. All that talk about borrowed votes was not so much for the benefit of northern voters as to soften up his own party for compromise.
The strategy that makes sense would be to satisfice on economic issues so as not to alienate either side, while putting the stress on the social side and the “war on woke”.
Can people stop referring to him as “Boris”. His name is Johnson, and he is no friend or mate of ours or of just about anyone for that matter, rather he is an almighty s…..b.g understandably told to get lost by two former wives.
A good place to start would be with the police. A government that required the police to police without favour or preference would win a lot of support. No special treatment for certain groups, whoever they are and a focus on solving and preventing real crime. Michael Howards assertion that “Prison Works” was popular. We all know that a small percentage of people, mayb 1 or 2% spoil life for everyone else, especially those in the poorest areas. We would all be happy to pay to see them locked away.
They are all wets. They have had an easy life. They are not needed as much as they think they are and feel guilty about the life they live. They are soft left. any real people in the party are not in the cabinet
Interesting, though I think the assertion that the populace wants left-wing economic policies is misplaced: with the exception of the first one (redistribution, on which even Labour voters are further right than that party’s politicians), the test questions on economics are all ones that right populists would strongly endorse.
I’d therefore argue that the British public is against identity politics and other left-liberal obsessions, and against corporatism (the political ideology shared by Blairites and corporatist-wing Tories, the Remainers flushed out and marginalised by Boris last year). Which is bad news for ‘forensic’ Keir Starmer, who is nothing more or less than Blair with added wokeness.
That piece ended rather quickly just when I thought there might be some idea of what an “anti woke” policy might look like which would help me in understanding which this word “woke”, bandied around rather a lot on here, actually means. But there seems to be nothing here other than the usual stuff that gets the Tory party conference’s pulses racing:- more prisons, “traditional” methods in schools, punitive Trade Union legislation, crack-down on “scroungers” and “getting tough” with immigrants. We have been listening to these for 50 years now, and they have they common denominator of not working. The quicker we build prisons we fill them up with longer sentences, “traditional methods” in schools make the disadvantaged more disadvantaged, Universal Credit has lead to a growth industry in food banks and tougher immigration controls have little effect on those entering the country but make those here much more vulnerable. I am coming to the conclusion that saying things like this probably defines me as “woke”. I just think is is being honest
Nah….just cynical….look at Mickey Gove as SoS Ed….panting for traditional education….didn’t give a f78k about those for whom top notch, fully funded, fully staffed vocational education might have been the better route..
…and Gove was only one in a long line of SoS Eds determined at all costs to never come to close to implementing anything like the fully funded provision of education as thought of in the ’44 Act…
…the irony being of course….that the much vaunted German education system….is the ’44 Act writ large so to speak….set up as it was by UK officials determined to totally reset the German education system post-45 (for obvious reasons).
It’s an interesting moral hazard unless you believe a more draconian society than even now where we are all spied on, have a relatively large prison population, deports people for very little and increasingly an economy is dominated by finance and monopolies is somehow too liberal. Lock people like the trans up to win elections…
I guess like with May [as Home Sec] on immigration ramp up the rhetoric to 11 bung a few minorities on planes but in reality change little and create bureaucracy and queues is more likely? TBF most of us in the UK would support more police and spending there.
i.e. I would suspect that merely upsetting the liberally minded would work without having to do anything. Pass some nonsense about making people serve whole sentences yada.
BTW does anyone actually self identify as Woke?
People are not deported for ‘very little’. It is almost impossible to deport people even for very serious crimes committed by repeat offenders, most of whom should not have been here anyway.
If you dislike deportation, then you probably want open borders. Have you tried explaining the benefits of exponential population increase + static housing supply to a homeless person?
No, because those who are Woke think of it as just the good and true. They do commonly use self-labels such as antifa, anti-racist (even though they are the mega-racists themselves), human /lgbt rights defenders, equality campaigners….
In fact the whole business of political labels is a pile of muddle, because the people most involved in politics are those with the least dispassionate objective views of it. Hence this “left v right” drivel continues like a zombie.