One of the curious characteristics of the Great British Culture War is that we cannot even seem to agree on whether the Culture War itself is a real thing or not. People on the progressive side hold two conflicting positions on this: the Culture War is real, and they are winning it, while it is also not real, and the other side is just imagining it. Welcome to Schrödinger’s Culture War. 

On the one hand, progressives insist that there is no such thing as “wokery”. It is all just a figment of the febrile imagination of mad right-wingers. Chill out, Gammon! Nobody is attacking your values, your lifestyle, or your history. It’s all in your head. You’re just watching too much GB News, getting yourself riled up over nothing. You’re being played like a fiddle by the capitalist class, who are conjuring up a phony Culture War in order to distract you from the economic mess they are creating. 

But at the same time, they will triumphantly crow about how their side is winning the Culture War, and how there is nothing their opponents can do about it. It’s over, Gammon! You’re on the wrong side of history! Your outdated views are becoming increasingly irrelevant in modern Britain, which is getting more progressive by the day. You are a dying breed. The equivalent of the last Roman Pagans.

A good example of the “woke-denialism” genre is the Guardian article “The struggle for equality is real. The ‘woke police’ are a myth” by Afua Hirsch, who argues that “the “anti-woke” […] define themselves in opposition to an identity that doesn’t actually exist. They are anti-woke, even though there is no “woke”.”

A good example of the “woke triumphalism” genre is Nesrine Malik’s latest Guardian column, in which she argues:

Survey after survey bring us the news that […] the British public is becoming more progressive […]

The National Centre for Social Research’s British social attitudes survey shows a country that has become […] less “proud” or “very proud” of British history. […] [T]here were also declines in pride in Britain’s democracy, its political influence and its economic achievements.

She interprets this decline in national pride as a victory for her side in the Culture war, and a victory which did not just happen on its own:

[I]t is difficult to imagine that […] the raising of questions about empire, history, enslavement and the legacies of colonialism by an entire cohort of writers, academics, media organisations, cultural institutions and researchers has not played a part in many divesting from history as a source of national pride. […] The new Britain that is emerging […] is also one that has been dragged there.

That is, indeed, plausible. But while I am sure Malik’s readers would roll their eyes if they heard somebody talk about “the woke blob” (So cringe! So GB News! So low-status!), “the woke blob” is simply a more loaded, less polite way of saying “an entire cohort of writers, academics, media organisations, cultural institutions and researchers”. And if these people have the power to change a country’s cultural values in a way that is visible in surveys like the BSA — how are they not a cultural elite?

Note, so far, I haven’t said a word about whether this is good or bad. You can take the view that Britain was a reactionary hellhole before the Great Awokening, and that the country needed a progressive moral vanguard to reeducate and “de-Gammonise” the population. If that’s your view — fair enough. But then, you should stand by it, rather than do this tedious thing of pretending that the Culture War is not real.

I’m an old-school liberal, not a conservative, and certainly not a communitarian, so I don’t see it as my job to comment on what cultural values other people should or should not adopt. Choose whatever values you see fit, woke, anti-woke, or something else. It’s none of my business. 

But if I had to express a view on the BSA results, it would be this:

There are some positives in it. Britain is moving away from an understanding of Britishness that is tied to immutable characteristics such as ancestry or birthplace, and towards a more individualistic one in which people can choose to become British. It is also encouraging that more jingoistic, tribalistic versions of national pride have fallen out of fashion. These versions are counterproductive, because they blind people to the flaws of their own “team”, and decrease their willingness to learn from others. 

Why is it a problem if people take a certain pride in the fact that Britain is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and of modern parliamentary democracy?

But as so often, the difference between a liberal and a progressive is that the liberal knows when to stop. I would have stopped after ditching the jingoism and ethno-nationalism. You can do that without adopting either a Corbynite view of British history, in which Britain is always the aggressor and the oppressor, or a Centrist Dad view, in which “Britishness” is something terribly cringeworthy to be sneered at. Why is it a problem if people take a certain pride in the fact that Britain is the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, and of modern parliamentary democracy? What exactly is being gained by shaming people out of that?

A shared, positive national story, even if it is slightly idealised and not fully up to the standards of a peer-reviewed history journal, has its benefits. It can improve social cohesion, contributing to a sense of togetherness. A society which is at ease with itself, and which celebrates itself, is probably also better at integrating newcomers than a society which celebrates performative collective self-loathing. 

The Left should know this better than anyone. One major reason why the Left has become so culturally dominant over the course of the 2010s is that they are so self-confident, while most of the competition has been defensive and insecure. Of course undecided people will naturally feel drawn to the confident side. If this is true of political movements, why should it not apply to national identities as well?