Emily Thornberry may be the first politician to quit over a single tweeted photograph that was not physically intimate, but she is not the first to get into trouble over flags and vans.
In 2003 the US presidential hopeful Howard Dean said, “I still want to be the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks” — adding that Democrats like him could not hope to win the White House if they did not appeal to poorer, southern voters as well as those in affluent, liberal cities and suburbs.
His Democratic rivals turned on him, furious that he had embraced “the most racially divisive symbol in America”. The row passed, Dean lost, and he is now best remembered for the bizarre roar he let out on the night of a key defeat: the Dean scream.
Of course, the two episodes are very different. The English flag may carry a residual association with the far-right, but it bears nothing like the stain of slavery attached to the badge of the Confederacy. More importantly, Dean was trying to woo those blue-collar voters his party had lost. Even Labour MP Thornberry’s defenders do not pretend she was trying to recruit white van drivers who fly the English flag from their homes. At best, she appeared to express the fascination of a visiting anthropologist for the natives of Rochester and Strood with their curious cultural customs. At worst, she was dissing them, her tweet tacitly asking: “Can you believe these people?” Chalk that up as another first for Thornberry, felled for posting an offensively implicit photograph.
In the US moments like this happen every day of the week. They are often what politics there is all about. They come under the heading of “ culture wars ” and usually relate to matters of identity, race or sexual equality, with politicians or institutions faulted for words or conduct that have, one way or another, given offence. Here such moments used to strike rarely. But no longer. Britain is now waging a culture war of its own.
To see how far we’ve come, consider the year 1992. As it happens, that was the year I covered both my first UK general election and first US presidential contest. The contrast was striking. In Britain the battle was all about tax and public services, with accusations of a “Labour tax bombshell” and an NHS unsafe in Tory hands. In the US former president Bill Clinton’s aides may have insisted “It’s the economy, stupid”, but day-to-day combat frequently focused elsewhere: On Hillary Clinton’s apparent swipe at stay-at-home mums who “bake cookies”, on Bill’s evasion of military service in Vietnam, on the maverick candidate Ross Perot’s addressing a black audience as “you people ”.
And that difference held good for many years. While one British election after another was dominated by tax rates and the like, US elections routinely raised questions that went to the heart of the nation’s identity. Witness President Barack Obama’s unguarded remark in 2008, suggesting that poorer voters “cling” to their guns or religion when times are hard
Snobbish disdain
Obama was slammed at the time for showing precisely the sort of snobbish disdain towards his party’s core voters attributed to Thornberry. Which illustrates the extent to which what was once a feature of US political life has made it here (minus the guns and religion). But this goes far beyond an apparent jibe at the habits of the English working class. For these kinds of cultural arguments are regularly taking the place of what used to be the bread-and-butter fare of UK political dispute: Namely, clashing economic interests and competing visions of the size of the state. Today’s Britain is less fixated on “How to spend it?” than on “Who do we think we are?”.
Just look at the two surging movements in UK politics, the Scottish National and UK Independence parties, the latter now buoyed by winning its second MP in Rochester. The SNP insists that it represents a kinder, gentler, more civic nationalism than Ukip. But both mine national solidarity and the rising sense that a hated and distant capital — Westminster in one case, Brussels in the other — is thwarting the people’s true destiny. The context of each is different, to be sure, but the nagging question is the same. As the Washington Post’s Fareed Zakaria wrote recently, observing this same trend around the world, including America’s own Tea Party, the question posed is “‘Who are we?’ and, more ominously, ‘Who are we not?’”
What explains this shift, pushing the British public argument away from the old disputes over pounds, shillings and pence into the more searching terrain of identity? A glib answer would point the finger at social media, citing Twitter’s role as Thornberry’s executioner. It certainly acts as an accelerant, turning what would once have been a stumble into a collapse.
But the answers lie deeper. Tonight Labour’s Douglas Alexander is due to argue in a speech in Stirling that, “The character of 21st century politics is… already defined by contests about both identity and insecurity, rather than simply economic interests.” In a previous generation, people formed their identities in part out of those economic interests, through a trade union or on the factory floor. Now those organised class allegiances have faded. In much of the country, church membership has plummeted too.
Others used to identify with one of the main parties, making Labour or the Tories their tribe. But the powerlessness of national governments in the face of the great crash of 2008, to say nothing of the myriad scandals that have since discredited the political class, has shaken that faith. It means, says Alexander, that “people can look for other places to invest their hopes and dreams”. Right now, for many of those drawn to Ukip or the SNP, or voting for Catalan independence or backing nationalist parties across Europe, that other place is the most ancient repository of allegiance: The nation.
Globalisation is the crucial factor here. In a world where 2 billion more people have entered the workforce since 1989, the insecurity of those suddenly forced to compete that much harder was always bound to grow. If you’re one of the beneficiaries of this massive upheaval, you’re fine. But for the millions who fear they are losing out, and who see their town or country changing around them, including through immigration, it’s natural to hold on tight to, and fiercely defend, an identity that feels safe and familiar.
Perhaps all this does not fully explain the sight that so struck Thornberry, one house with three flags dangling from its roof. The assertion of Englishness has its own dynamics, including the sense that it is a defiant identity, one disapproved of by snooty metropolitans. But it gives a clue as to why such an apparently small observation could have had such a big impact. For this is what our politics is about now. As the experience of the US shows, it can get poisonous and divisive but it also touches what matters to people most. We’d better get used to it.
—Guardian News & Media Ltd
