No. 202 – May 6th: Is Britain Changing Beyond Recognition?

Dear James,

We are all cultural animals. Much of what we call ‘thinking’ is not thinking at all. It is a series of reflexive reactions rooted in a culture’s linguistic short cuts. We are all born into nations, into groups within the nations and we are brought up within the values and rituals of such groups. This is deep culture. Deep culture is formed within historical contexts where we find comfort, security, and certainties of response to language, to accent, to styles, to values and to history itself. In the mining cultures of the north or the old colonel’s culture of southern England the same processes are at work. In most cases, deep culture is virtually unchangeable. Only certain things can change it. Trauma, death, education and rare personalities can force change. The trauma of the second world war and people like Aneurin Bevan created our welfare state.  But over generations those forming contexts disappear and so too their cultures, leaving behind just the vague nostalgia for past comforts and values. Today there are no more mines, there is no longer an empire but the old flags and ideas persist and that is where up to 50% of Britain finds itself today, yearning for the certainty of past significance rather than rising to new challenges.  

Two hundred and fifty years ago, the Enlightenment produced a new revolutionary form of culture – the culture of self-critical application of a process – the process of checking assumptions and axioms for objective truth before coming to contingent conclusions. Implicit in this  new form of culture was doubt. Doubt is rare in deep cultures. In fact, doubt is seen as weakness. Deep cultures are either right or wrong. Corbyn was right or wrong, Boris is right or wrong depending on your point of view or rather your own deep culture. Of course, some of us think that both are wrong! Life is too complex for such simplistic attitudes. 

Brexit was an expression of a resentful deep culture erupting into a complacency based upon the key Enlightenment value of ‘evidence'. It is five years since that seismic event and we are now in a different phase. The May 6th elections seemed to be a minor triumph for Boris and something approaching a disaster for Labour. In fact, the results herald problems for both parties down the line. Whether they were due to a  ‘Vaccine Bounce’, or to the ghost of Jeremy Corbyn haunting the memories of once fervent Labour voters, both parties have no reason to feel confident. The world is changing and no one knows what exactly that change may be.

One variable that can influence deep culture is generation change. In 2016 up to 75% of people under 25 are reasonably thought to have voted to remain. They were betrayed by Brexit.  In another twenty years however, they will be middle aged at which time the ‘Brexit’ generation will be pushing up the daisies. So Britain is changing James but not necessarily to your advantage. 

The May 6th vote represented continued confusion rather than conviction. Hartlepool has the highest rate of unemployment in the country and Tyne Tees has been terribly neglected by successive governments for decades. Elsewhere however, your party James, lost control of councils such as Cambridgeshire, Oxfordshire and the Isle of Wight. You also lost seats in counties such as Hertfordshire, Surrey and Kent, as well as in Trafford in Greater Manchester. London fell easily to Labour’s Sadiq Khan and the Lib Dems, Greens and Labour all made gains at your expense. Some poll watchers are now even considering the possibility of a “blue wall”, located around London and the South East.  

But Boris blusters on about ‘Levelling Up’. Like ‘Global Britain’ It is just another of his endless, ‘slogans without purpose’. Simplistic, illogical and misleading, levelling up is merely an element of deep culture designed to make people feel good. It is the latest version of the ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’ syndrome. The problem is that the rising tide is posited upon Brexit which is most unlikely to deliver such a surge. ‘Levelling up’ is nothing more than the UK version of that scourge of the US political system, ‘pork belly politics’ where every politician fights for preference for his or her state. Aren’t governments supposed to rule for the many and not just the few? 

Britain is changing James. New generations are coming up who do not share your ‘deep culture’ ideas of English nationalism. They know that our nation needs an overarching view of the future but it is a view based upon a realistic analysis of its present. Your government is so far away from that that one wants to cry out!  Well, in a decade or two that cry may eventually become part of a deep culture which at last represents a balanced and realistic view of our place in the real world. Isn’t it time to start thinking outside that ‘Tory box’ James?  After all, that younger generation may eventually come to live and vote in your constituency. 

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent.