Culture War Glossary

The culture war works because it sells you a set of comforting stories about how the world works, and then swaps them out whenever they stop fitting the facts. It’s not a coherent worldview. It’s a rotating display of grievances, designed to keep you angry while nothing improves, and demagogues thrive on it.

The big one is always “free speech”.

They shout about “free speech”, then demand bans, sackings, deplatforming and police action the moment someone says something they don’t like. It’s always “I should be allowed to say anything” paired with “you should be silenced for saying that”. If you only defend speech that flatters your tribe, you’re not defending a principle. You’re defending your own right to heckle without being heckled back.

Then there’s the permanent fantasy budget.

They want a “small state” and low taxes, but also want more police, tougher sentencing, more prisons, mass deportations, bigger borders, more surveillance, and courts that run like clockwork. You can’t have a lean state and an expensive enforcement machine at the same time. Law and order costs money. If you don’t want to pay for it, you don’t really want law and order. You just want the theatre of it.

The same trick is played with public services.

They insist “Britain is full” and migration must be cut, then demand an NHS that works, social care that exists, and care homes that aren’t staffed by ghosts. If you want Scandinavian outcomes, you need workforce planning and funding at scale. Either you train and retain, or you recruit internationally. What you can’t do is strangle both and then blame the people doing the actual work for being “woke”.

Housing is the same con in a different suit.

They say we can’t house “our own”, then oppose the planning reform, public investment and housebuilding that would actually increase supply. Instead they blame migrants, which is politically convenient because it requires no competence, no delivery, and no admission that the last fourteen years hollowed out local government and turned housing into a speculative asset class. It’s the political equivalent of setting fire to your kitchen and then blaming the cat for the lack of cupboards.

Then you get the “protect women and girls” routine.

Suddenly they’re all feminist, usually the same people who’ve spent decades voting for parties that cut refuges, legal aid, youth services, and court capacity, and who presided over prosecution and conviction rates that have been nowhere near good enough for serious sexual offences. Women only exist in their politics when they’re useful as a battering ram in an argument about trans people. That’s not safeguarding. It’s opportunism with a ribbon on it.

And when they say “protect the children”, it’s the same move.

They’ll scream about drag queens and rainbow lanyards while opposing the boring, real world things that actually protect children: properly funded schools, mental health services, social workers, youth provision, safeguarding capacity, and poverty reduction. They fight imaginary threats because it’s emotionally satisfying, while tolerating real harm as “personal responsibility”.

On climate and energy, the contradictions are almost elegant.

They claim to love British farmers and British countryside, then deny or minimise the climate driven flooding, heat stress and crop disruption that will hammer agriculture and infrastructure. They oppose renewables on the grounds of “protecting land”, while ignoring that climate change is what actually destroys productive land. And the numbers make the land argument look even sillier: solar takes roughly 0.4% of UK land, and even a major build out of onshore wind plus solar could come in at under 3% of England. Meanwhile, around 13% of England’s agricultural land is in flood risk areas, and about 59% of the highest grade farmland is at risk from river or coastal flooding. Renewables use a sliver of land. Climate change threatens vastly more of the good stuff.

Then there’s the “support our farmers” flag waving paired with the obsession with US trade deals.

They demand loyalty to British producers, then cheer the deregulated trade agenda that undercuts them. You don’t get thriving domestic farming while importing cheaper food produced under different standards and different cost bases. That’s not patriotism. That’s a bumper sticker.

Sovereignty is another one they can’t keep straight.

They shout about “taking back control”, then swoon over foreign strongmen and imported culture wars, usually from the US. You don’t defend British sovereignty by treating Trump as a prophet and Brussels as a demon. That’s not independence. It’s outsourcing your personality.

And the “anti elite” pose is almost comedy.

They rage about “the establishment”, then follow billionaire backed politicians, billionaire owned media, and think tanks funded by wealthy donors. It’s not a revolt against elites. It’s a hostile takeover by different elites, with better marketing and worse morals. They don't realise they're being fleeced - again.

They also claim to be pro meritocracy while yearning for hierarchy.

They talk about hard work and fairness, but their version of “traditional Britain” is deference, inherited advantage, and knowing your place. They want meritocracy for themselves and a pecking order for everyone else. That’s why “common sense” always seems to mean “stop questioning people like me”.

Another core contradiction is personal responsibility versus conspiracy addiction.

They preach self reliance, then explain every failure as sabotage by migrants, judges, lawyers, the BBC, universities, civil servants, “globalists”, or “woke”. It’s a perfect closed loop. If you’re always the victim of a plot, you never have to admit you were wrong, or that your side made bad choices.

That brings us to “woke has gone mad”, the all purpose fog machine.

“Woke” means anything from “I saw a black person in an advert” to “someone asked me not to be a knob”. It’s not an argument, it’s a vibe. People use it when they want to sound serious while avoiding anything serious. It’s a way of declaring victory without having to prove anything.

Then there’s the “British culture” routine, which is always paired with contempt for British institutions.

They wrap themselves in patriotism while attacking the courts, the BBC, the civil service, universities, regulators, and the idea that public standards matter. They love Britain as a costume, but hate the mechanisms that make Britain function. It’s nationalism as branding, not nationhood as responsibility.

And here’s where the “Christian country” performance belongs, because it’s the same costume cupboard.

They bang on about Christianity as though it’s a tribal ID card, then cheer figures like Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley - Lennon) as culture war saints while they do the opposite of what Christianity actually asks of people. Humility, charity, truthfulness, restraint, love of neighbour, care for the poor, judgement reserved for God rather than Facebook. All swapped out for rage, scapegoats, and a permanently clenched jaw under a St Georges Cross. It’s not faith. It’s vibes, with a bit of stained glass branding to make the nastiness feel respectable.

Immigration is where the whole thing goes from incoherent to poisonous.

They claim it’s about culture and “concern”, but it always ends up as collective blame. It’s never “this specific policy failed”, it’s “those people are the problem”. That’s a direct rejection of the most basic British legal principle: individual guilt, not group guilt. When you start treating whole communities as guilty, you stop doing politics and start doing something uglier.

And the final contradiction is the one that makes the whole culture war look like an avoidance strategy.

They claim to want national unity, then keep half the country designated as enemies: Remainers, teachers, students, London, “woke”, Muslims, trans people, anyone who reads a book, anyone who asks for evidence. Unity is impossible when your politics depends on a permanent internal enemy.

That’s the point of it all. Culture war politics is what you do when you can’t fix housing, can’t fix wages, can’t fix the NHS, can’t fix productivity, and can’t admit Brexit shrank the room you’re trying to renovate. So you keep the audience angry, point at a scapegoat, and call it “common sense”.

It isn’t common sense. It’s common distraction. And a lot of people fall for it because their critical faculties have been hijacked by conmen who want to fleece them.