The question isn’t whether Conservatives should fight culture wars or not. It’s how.

Jun 24, 2023 by Jill

by Paul Goodman, Conservative Home:

Children identifying as animals, civil servants using Black Lives Matter hashtags, the campaign against Kathleen Stock, men in women’s prisons, the push for reparations: to Conservative activists and many others, all are manifestations of culture war. Are they right?

[…] Above all, they shouldn’t become preoccupied with Woke to the exclusion of everything else. This is the trap that many Labour backbenchers and much of the Left is falling into (to the frustration of what remains of the old-fashioned Marxists, with their belief in Hegelian dialectics and class struggle).

It will cause Keir Starmer no end of trouble if he becomes Prime Minister. In the view of voters, the most important issues facing the country remain the economy, the NHS and immigration. Woke is joined to the last especially by small boats, and its belief hat national borders are illegitimate.

But if the Conservatives fix their gaze on it to the exclusion of all else, they will be turning their backs on the voters. Meanwhile, there are three courses that Ministers should take – since Woke is especially vulnerable when it compromises women’s safety, what’s taught to children, and fairness more broadly (for example, when biological men compete in women’s sports).

First, speak. Government is a bully pulpit, and what Ministers say matters. So Gillian Keegan must be quick on the draw, for example, about self-ID in schools. Second, they must act. The recent Freedom of Speech Bill was a start. “In terms of academic freedom, it is a game-changer,” Eric Kaufmann wrote recently on this site.

Now, Kemi Badenoch has urged Ofsted to send inspectors into Rye College in East Sussex – the school in which a teacher allegedly told Year 8 pupils they were ‘despicable’ for stating there are only two sexes. But third and ultimately, the Government must think strategically.

On this site recently, Kate Coleman and Maya Forstater described the confusion about sex and gender in the Equality Act. This cats cradle needs to be untangled, and the Conservatives have had 13 years to do it. But it remains a mass of twisted threads. Why?

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