Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu argue that Britain cannot ignore the Conservative Kulturkampf, and that one way to combat the mythologising of politics is to expose the politics of the myths
Humans are narrative-hungry animals and though, to survive, we need an acute appreciation of reality (when to sow crops, where to create a shelter, what predators and parasites to watch out for), we also need overarching stories to give us purpose and meaning. In a time of crisis or alarm, when our purposes and place in the world are unsettled or obscure, these narratives can turn into consoling fantasies that cannot compensate for reality.
That’s where Britain finds itself as the ‘War on Woke’ is launched.
The Uncivil War first unleashed by Vote Leave now has all of the apparatus of the state behind it
With a hard Brexit combined with a deadly pandemic, Britain is seen by many, especially overseas, as suffering a convulsion of grandiosity and insecurity – a delayed reaction to our post-war identity crisis. Having lost our imperial role 75 years ago, the UK has spent most of the last half century trying to put ourselves at the heart of Europe – only to suddenly and resentfully wrench ourselves away. Added to that strategic break is Britain’s poor handling of COVID-19, which adds recession and lockdown to dislocation.
In normal times, this combination would be deadly for a Government. But these are not normal times. Since the ruling political party cannot win on its record or its promises for the future, it is resigned to campaigning over the past and misrepresenting reality.
If you can’t fight on truth, you have to fight on myth.
Fair is Foul, Foul is Fair
Rather than facing reality, the British Government and most its institutions have gone through a looking glass world in which “fair is foul and foul is fair”.
Though Britain has suffered one of the highest per capita COVID-19 death rates in the world with 120,000 people lost, and one of the biggest economic recessions, we are told – and seem to believe – that this was under the aegis of a government which “truly” did everything it could.
Though the UK, in search of some kind of indissoluble sovereignty, has actually created a border within itself in the Irish Sea and seen business after business bear the impact of a hard Brexit as a result of which exports to our main market in Europe have shrunk by 60%, this has been done to ‘take back control’ – in the same way a man controls the gun which shoots him in the foot.
Meanwhile, as Britain’s idea of the past is dominated by a generation only old enough to remember Airfix models, Eagle comics, and the mythologisation of World War Two, we elevate the heroism of a 100-year-old soldier who walked laps of his garden to raise money for the National Health Service (in one of the richest countries in the world), forgetting all his comrades who voted in the Labour Government of 1945 to create a health service that didn’t rely on charity.
We will likely not reach the sunlit uplands of a post-Brexit Global Britain. We cannot recreate the conditions for a British Empire 2.0. So what do we do?
Our collective story is in crisis. But, just at the moment that history is needed more than ever, the study of it is under question, with the Government insisting that it should shape and control what historians write about our national past and the creation of a freedom of speech tsar patrolling our re-examination of ourselves.
British history was always prone to legends and fairy tales. But what is new is the state sanctioning of confabulation; of an army of think-tank commissars and commissioning editors ready to enforce it. From the ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ fairy tales and legends of our past, we are moving into the area of religion and myth – an absolutist version of a collective narrative that requires unconditional assent.
Legends and Fairy Tales of the Fall
From King Alfred’s defence of Britain against the Danes, to the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and a quarter of the world ruled over by the Empire, the legendary status of our collective past has always shaped the way Britain sees itself.
The Brexit years, in particular, have seen a revival of the exceptionalism at the heart of Britain’s colonial exploits and wartime successes. That we stood alone – a plucky, great nation which saved Europe from fascism – and have always punched above our weight, need nothing or no one apart from our own superior abilities, drove the Vote Leave campaign’s ‘take back control’ mantra.
Forgotten in this love-in with our past are inconvenient truths – that Churchill effectively sacrificed a subjugated Empire in order to defeat Hitler’s quest for his own, for instance, or that Britain relied on thousands of soldiers from its colonies in Asia and Africa to win both wars.
Alongside these historic legends, Britain has long been trapped in a fairy tale image of itself – one beloved by Americans who lap up the quaintness of Downton Abbey and The Crown, Kate and Wills, and the “People’s Princess” – Tony Blair’s populist embellishment of the late Diana.
This image of Britain that fascinates the US is the stuff of make-believe, and therefore can be opted out of. Tea at Buckingham Palace, audiences with Etonian Prime Ministers and state carriage rides are magical because they are un-real. President Joe Biden hinted at this very thing after the storming of the US Capitol when he said “we’re a government of laws… they are the guard