Culture and Economy: Myths and the Truth

Al Murray, a comedian who played the Pub Landlord on ITV2, featured on The Times Red Box Podcast with Matt Chorley to discuss politics in comedy after a statement from new Director-General of the BBC Tim Davie stating his attention to make comedy shows more diverse. Not by, as you lefties may assume, addressing the real issue of all-white/male panels, but by having more right-wing comedians.

Murray rightly made the point that comedy has roots in anti-establishment subcultures, and we’re currently entering our second decade of a Tory government. Murray then repeated the commonly accepted truism that the left won the cultural argument and the right won the economic.

I wanted to look into this further as although it may have some relevance when discussing global history - the cold-war ended with the fall of the USSR - when discussing modern politics, I can’t help but view it as tired sophistry that has entered common usage through its seemingly simple explanation of events.

(For clarity, I’m a big fan of Al Murray and this is by no means an attack on him, I have been thinking about this particular saying since reading it in Angela Nagle’s Kill All Normies, which I enjoyed and would strongly recommend)

The Left’s Famous Stronghold on Culture

The myth of a total wipe-out for the right on culture stem from political correctness getting far more attention than in previous decades. It may seem like a win for the left, but tackling social ills – e.g. homophobia, transphobia, sexism and racism - has caused such a hideous backlash in the western world that it’s hard to view it as a total victory. While discriminatory behaviour is far more likely to be taken seriously in modern Europe and America, most on the left would argue that this is hard-earned progress towards equality, not a political victory for an ideological position.

In the second half of the 2010s, we saw the rise of the online alt-right, GamerGate and the election of Donald Trump. And was this Billionaire reality star and former-bankruptee elected for his economic competency? Not a chance! He promised to build a big wall to keep foreigners out. Nor was the Brexit referendum won off of the back its' - yet undisclosed - economic advantages. 2016 showed the right that the way to win the culture war is telling everyone the enemy already has.

Fast-forward to our current coronavirus world and anti-lockdown protests are being seen all over the world with signs brandishing ‘Q’ - the logo for right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon, their beliefs includes an idolisation of Trump as the lone crusader against an establishment of Satan-worshipping child-abusers.

The U.K. press has enjoyed rolling its eyes and invoking heavily biased U.S. broadcaster Fox News when discussing changes at the BBC, but you can turn on Talk Radio or LBC at almost any point during the day and you’ll hear angry, reactionary conservatives screaming at a token “leftie” or “Remainer” about cancel culture or some invisible conspiracy of ‘cultural Marxists’.

In a world where the left had truly won the argument, we would be unlikely to see Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees-Mogg playing Rule Britannia from the dispatch box, proudly repeating the lyrics “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves” before announcing “Let us hope the BBC will recognise the virtues of Britannia in this land of hope and glory." as the Tory benches nod approvingly.

The Right’s Economic Victory?

So not clear cut on culture, but what about economics? The British right has won the argument on the economy by winning every election since the 2008 global financial crisis, right? Again, not exactly.

At the time of the crash, Labour argued for increasing governmental spending, taking advantage of historic lows in interest rates to offset the negative effects of the recession. The Tories dismisses this as further proof of Labour’s determination to bankrupt Britain. David Cameron became Prime Minister in 2010 and introduced austerity measures that even their most ardent cheerleaders now admit profoundly changed Britain.

Nine years of caps on public sector wages, increases in food bank usage and cuts to hospital funding later and Boris Johnson stood in the 2019 general election on a platform of building hospitals and rehiring nurses. Former-Chancellor Sajid Javid argued that this is a sign that the books were rebalanced. Even taking that on face value - in a fantasy world where Britain no longer requires borrowing to operate - how does this square with the £14m per month Furlough scheme protecting British jobs?

If Thatcherite Conservatism has won the argument in British politics, why hasn’t the invisible hand of the market been left to intervene and save jobs?

The positive impacts of austerity on the economy, scarce though they may be, have now been completely offset by a pandemic, of no one’s making, which has affected the British economy worse than anywhere else in Europe. Does this mean Britain will face another decade of crippling austerity measure?

In a word, no. The government have so far ruled this out as ‘politically toxic’. In my view, this is the opposite of winning the argument.

This is obviously a short, completely unsourced and unacademic account of my personal views and there is likely to be hundreds of others who have made these points better and hundreds more who disagree. My intention here was not to discount this view by suggesting the inverse - that the left won the economic argument and lost the cultural - but to challenge it by suggesting that it’s not clear cut, nor, in the case of either economics or culture, is the argument over.