Will America’s woke wars be Britain’s too?

“I had to get out of America. It has gotten so ugly, so dark and my pessimism had grown so high that I needed to do something different.” That’s how pollster Frank Luntz, currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Policy Studies, explained his decision to spend a summer in Britain studying the political landscape.
Brexit aside, Britain may seem like America’s calmer, cooler cousin. But peel back the veneer of civility and there is anger seething under the surface, Luntz’s polling indicates. There is also disappointment and mistrust — both toward politicians and business leaders. At best, these currents could shift political winds and decide elections. At worst, Luntz worries they could undermine democracy itself.
His survey of British voters serves as a warning to Britain’s political leaders. Britons aren’t as divided as Americans when it comes to what they value, but they are certainly as polarised on policies and priorities, and that has consequences. Choose divisive political language — in other words, continue to stoke the culture wars — and there’s no telling what will happen.
The finding that should worry politicians most is that only 27% of respondents felt their country was invested in them. And the big divide here wasn’t north-south or left-right but the yawning gap between urbanites and those in suburbs and towns. When asked if they are invested in Britain’s future, 53% of urban residents said they were, compared with only 38% of those living in towns or farms.
“I think the inflection point is coming in a matter of months,” Luntz tells me. Lockdowns, school closures and other changes have exacerbated many long-festering inequalities in Britain.
Culture warring, for lack of a better term, is the ultimate renewable energy source in politics: It comes cheap and can be harnessed and deployed as needed, as long as there is inequality and grievance. Appealing to certain core values (eg, support for the National Health Service, fairness) and stoking fears (immigration) helped drive the Brexit vote, bring Boris Johnson to power and win him re-election in 2019.
Now both Johnson and the opposition Labour Party are trying to frame the debate over inequality in cultural terms. One recent bit of fodder was a Parliamentary Education Committee report last month that focused on “the forgotten” — White working-class pupils who consistently underachieve in education. Its main line was that terms like “White privilege” aren’t reflective of this reality and only alienate those living it (a great many of whom happen to be recent converts to the Conservative electoral cause). The problems are real enough. The study notes that the proportion of White pupils on free school meals who go on to higher education was the lowest of any ethnic group except Irish travelers and Gypsy or Roma minorities. And while 67% of Chinese pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) meet the expected standard of development, only 53% of FSM-eligible White pupils do. Indian, Black Caribbean and Black African pupils all do better as well.
The picture on racial disparities, however, is complex. Ethnic minorities suffered disproportionately during the Covid crisis because they were more likely to be key workers on the front lines, live in crowded accommodation or be medically vulnerable. Discrimination in the policing and criminal justice system is well documented.
A separate report, published last month by the Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that the second-generation children of minority immigrants outperform in education, but tend not to do as well in the workforce. Much of the gap disappears when your account for education and social class, but the findings suggest discrimination remains. So far, Britain’s culture wars don’t look as destructive as America’s.

—Bloomberg