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The Conservative Party and the “Culture Wars”: When Instability Creates Stability

Le Parti conservateur et les « guerres culturelles » : quand l’instabilité crée de la stabilité
Raphaële Espiet-Kilty

Abstracts

The 2024 political landscape was marked by two pivotal events for the Conservative Party: the 4 July general election and the November leadership election. The July election followed a period of instability and contentious debates over Britain’s post-Brexit trajectory. In the November election, four candidates – Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – competed to define the party’s future direction. This was the fifth leadership election within the space of eight years. In both events, culture war issues emerged as important, reflecting a broader populist strategy to frame the party as the defender of traditional and, accordingly, common sense values against the perceived liberal overreach of the Labour Party. Drawing on theories of cultural hegemony, populism and political communication to analyse key speeches by former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and new Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, this article investigates the reasons behind the choice of such strategies, their impact on electoral outcomes and their broader implications for political discourse.

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Introduction

1In a lengthy tweet published on Elon Musk’s platform “X” on Saturday 4 January 2025, Robert Jenrick, the Conservative Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor commented on the infamous “Grooming Scandal” that multicultural Britain and liberal-minded politicians whom he derogatorily called “liberals” were responsible for having created an environment where “the most appalling crimes from predominantly British Pakistani men were legalised and actively covered up to prevent disorder […] destroying the lives of thousands of vulnerable white working-class girls in the process”.1 He further added that “the scandal started with the onset of mass migration” which consisted in “importing hundreds of thousands of people from alien cultures, who possess medieval attitudes towards women” and concludes that “this disastrous experiment” has resulted in the creation of “entrenched sectarian voting blocs that make it electoral suicide for some MPs to confront this”.2 When publicly condemned for his incendiary rhetoric, Jenrick was defended by the leader of the Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, who wrote:

  • 3 Peter Walker, “Badenoch defends Jenrick’s remarks about ‘people from alien cultures’”, The Guardian(...)

“This nonsense of attacking anyone with a different viewpoint as ‘divisive’ has to stop. We MUST be free to have tough conversations, no matter how difficult that may be to hear. We need moral courage, not silencing of debate through personal attacks. This is a classic example of why politicians stop being honest with the public, and the problems have stacked up over decades. The Conservative Party is under new leadership and that means confronting difficult truths”.3

2In many respects, this episode illustrates what the so-called “culture wars” are about. Jenrick’s rhetoric is here used not only to condemn the perpetrators, who abused vulnerable young girls over decades, in terms that are hugely provocative and grossly generalising, it is also a populist trope to criticise the irresponsible elites who have allowed such a thing to happen and appeal to the people who need to resist being victimised by socially liberal policies. It is a device to frame political opponents as detached from reality, if not downright nonsensical and a plea for the Conservatives to show moral courage to decry “political correctness”. Both Jenrick and Badenoch denounce the perceived cowardice of their opponents who are shying away from difficult truths. Last but not least, in the context of Britain’s liberal democracy, it is also an appeal to the inalienable right to freedom of speech against all those who would cancel anyone holding a viewpoint that is different from theirs.

  • 4 Tim Bale, The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation (Polity Press, 2023); R. (...)
  • 5 B. Duffy, K. Hewlett, K., Murkin, G., Benson, R., Hesketh, R., Page, B., Skinner, G. & Gottfried, G (...)
  • 6 See Raphaële Kilty, « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars: An introduction” in Alma- (...)
  • 7 James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars. The Struggle to Define America. Making sense of the battles ove (...)
  • 8 Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty, Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”. Populi (...)

3Immigration and race, identity (both gender and national) and cultural heritage, net zero, free speech and social values in general have indeed become key battlegrounds in the so-called “culture wars”. This article argues that the “culture wars” (defined infra) are a very real phenomenon now largely identified not only by scholars4 but also the general public,5 which justifies dropping the scare quotes hereafter.6 They have transformed the United Kingdom’s political landscape first relatively slowly, starting in the 1980s, then more rapidly in the 2010s, with Brexit acting as a watershed moment of crystallisation when two “worldviews”, to cite James Davison Hunter in 19917, opposed one another.8 These debates have been stoking divisions amongst the political elite and British public ever since. Arguably, elections are an ideal vehicle for the use of culture war narratives to galvanise voter bases, frame political opponents and influence policy debates.

4The 2024 political landscape was marked by two pivotal events for the Conservative Party: the 4 July general election and the November leadership election. The July election followed a period of instability and contentious debates not only over Britain’s post-Brexit trajectory but also over the scandals surrounding Boris Johnson’s Covid lock-down parties and the disastrous Budget of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng. In the November election, four candidates – Kemi Badenoch, Robert Jenrick, James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat – competed to define the party’s future direction. This was the fifth leadership election within the space of eight years. In both events, culture war issues emerged as important, reflecting a broader populist strategy to frame the party as the defender of traditional and, accordingly, common sense values against the perceived liberal overreach of the Labour Party repurposed as either the liberals (aforementioned) or the Left, if not “Loony Left”. This article examines the Conservative Party’s use of culture war issues from the moment the general election was called, on 22 May 2024, until January 2025.

  • 9 Kilty (2024), « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars”, op. cit., p. 10.
  • 10 Peter, Mair, “Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy”, in Mény, Y. and Surel, Y. (eds.), Democracies (...)
  • 11 Ibid.
  • 12 Maria Sobolewska & George Ford, Brexitland. Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of Politics (Camb (...)
  • 13 Kilty (2024), op. cit., p. 2.
  • 14 Daniel Diermeier and Christopher Li, « Dynamics of Polarization: Affective Partisanship and Policy (...)

5Furthermore, it contends that rapid social and economic change, by creating an unstable environment, has left sections of the public feeling economically and socially insecure. Although differing worldviews and values are an inevitable fact of life, periods of rapid social flux fuel and widen these divisions. The turn of the twenty-first century is one such period. Peter Mair argues that in post-industrial Britain, political parties acknowledged the changing nature of the social fabric characterised by a dwindling of the traditional working class and the emergence of new classes which were no longer necessarily defined along socio-economic lines.9 To capture the votes of a new, younger, better educated, often urban and supposedly more progressive electorate, parties adapted their political narrative. This, Mair posits, resulted in “significant erosion of party democracy within contemporary democracies10 caused by a change in party identity along new lines to explain the shift to identity politics at the turn of the twenty-first century. He contends that parties, particularly right-wing ones, therefore including the Conservative Party, “chose to focus on cultural and social issues11 to mark their differences. Accordingly, he characterises this period of adjustment as a shift from party democracy to populist democracy. This alteration of the political narrative caused some turmoil and further polarised an already divided society. This polarisation found its most acute expression in the Brexit vote. In their seminal study of the 2016 referendum on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union (now widely referred to as the Brexit referendum) published in 2020, Maria Sobolewska and George Ford argued that “social change is slow […] until a watershed moment draws attention to it”.12 This moment was Brexit which also contributed to “forging new political identities, marking a realignment from the traditional dividing lines of class, income and political ideology”.13 Accordingly, Brexit ushered in a period of social instability characterised by a deep identity crisis of which the culture wars and, through them, the Conservative Party were catalysts. Right-wing populist leaders further aggravated this crisis for political gain. In this context, instability may be envisaged, at worst, as a means to an end, and at the very least as an illustration of how potent a political instrument electoral pragmatism is. Indeed, it may be safely assumed that political parties are “office-motivated” and will therefore “choose their policies to maximize their vote share”, this being the most pragmatic approach.14 For the Conservatives, the culture wars were one such choice.

6Indeed, this article also posits that the culture war debates are part of the Conservatives’ populist project to gain popular support by tapping into voters’ sense of neglect by a wide array of political agents including the Labour Party, the European Union, charities, the BBC, The Guardian, etc.,15 otherwise commonly characterised as the liberal political and cultural elites or the progressives now increasingly referred to as “woke”. Interestingly however, although the culture wars did contribute to deepening the feeling of instability created by a polarised social landscape, they were also a means for the Conservative Party to unite a segment of the population, namely the Leave voters, around shared, stable values. Paradoxically therefore, they provided the party with the congruent political discourse with which its leaders attempted to rebuild their image as the defenders of socially conservative and/or traditional values. In this context, the culture wars can be envisioned as a means to stabilise the Conservative Party around shared “true-blue” Conservative values after years of so-called “liberal” erring.

7Drawing on theories of cultural hegemony, populism and political communication, this article investigates the reasons behind the choice of such strategies, their impact on electoral outcomes and their broader implications for political discourse. To this end, this article will first present a series of definitions and key concepts. Through an analysis of key speeches by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and new Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch, it will then explore how culture war issues emerged as important themes, reflecting a broader populist strategy to frame the party as the defender of tradition, common sense Conservative values against both the Labour Party and Reform UK.

Theoretical framework

  • 16 Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks (Columbia University Press, 2011). Gramsci was imprisoned in (...)
  • 17 This has been an ongoing trend since the turn of the century. Boris Johnson, both as Mayor of Londo (...)
  • 18 Kemi Badenoch, “If we don’t defend our culture, who will?”, Speech to the International Democracy U (...)
  • 19 See John E. Richardson, "'Cultural-Marxism' and the British National Party: A transnational discour (...)

8Because the culture war debates are often framed by the Conservatives, particularly by Kemi Badenoch, in terms of a battle between right-wing and left-wing values, to draw on Antonio Gramsci’s Marxist concept of cultural hegemony is useful.16 Gramsci posits that dominant groups reproduce their power over a culturally diverse society by shaping societal norms and values. For Gramsci, the dominant group is the capitalist elite whose worldview becomes the cultural norm. Arguably, this works to their benefit as it facilitates the exploitation of labour who are given to believe and accept that there is no alternative to the social order in which they live on account of it being presented as the natural order of things. He then concludes on the need for the left-wing intelligentsia to educate the working-class for them to form an understanding of how the social order works and by whom it is constructed and, eventually, to reverse the trend. Turning Gramsci’s concept of cultural hegemony on its head, Kemi Badenoch, for example,17 now accuses left-wing liberals of being the repositories and main beneficiaries of Britain’s contemporary cultural hegemony which she calls “progressive authoritarianism” as the second part of this article will show.18 The appropriation of the concept of cultural hegemony by right-wing parties coincides with the polarising debates around Brexit. A similar, albeit more extreme, version of the same school of thought accusing their political adversaries of seeking to impose its cultural hegemony prefers the term cultural Marxism, essentially a conspiracy theory whose proponents are associated with the far right and antisemitism,19 although their views seem to be increasingly held by mainstream politicians, such as Suella Braverman. At an event on Brexit organised by the Bruges Group (a Eurosceptic think tank), she declared:

  • 20 Peter Walker, “Tory MP criticised for using antisemitic term ‘cultural Marxism’, The Guardian, 26 M (...)

“As Conservatives we are engaged in a battle against cultural Marxism, where banning things is becoming de rigueur; where freedom of speech is becoming a taboo; where our universities, quintessential institutions of liberalism, are being shrouded in censorship and a culture of no-platforming”.20

  • 21 Peter Dorey, “The Conservative Right’s War on Woke” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.) (...)

9The proponents hypothesise that the cultural Marxists’ progressive worldview is responsible for the advent of “political correctness”, the “cancel culture” (Braverman’s “culture of no-platforming” in British universities) and identity politics. This putative change of paradigm from a traditional cultural hegemony to a progressive one, could coincide with the election of New Labour in 1997 and the ensuing changes in the British social landscape with the 1998 Human Rights Act, the 1999 Immigration and Asylum Act, multiculturalism, the 2004 Enlargement of the European Union, the 2004 Civil Partnership Act, etc. In short, when a rapid succession of progressive pieces of legislation radically altered societal norms. Peter Dorey borrows the concept of “anomie” from Emile Durkheim to characterise the experience of a segment of the population that henceforth felt a “profound sense of cultural or moral anxiety or bewilderment due to rapid or extensive social change”.21 In this context, the Conservatives use the culture wars as one of their main instruments of counter hegemony to fight the socially liberal elite and regain the upper hand.

  • 22 Larry M. Bartels (2000); Jon Rogowski & Joseph Sutherland (2016); K Banda & J. Cluverius (2018).
  • 23 Diermeier et al. (2023), op. cit., p. 980.
  • 24 Ibid., p. 990.

10Basing his findings on the works of other American political scientists,22 Daniel Diermeier argues that “rising mass partisanship” is potentially caused by “elite polarization” as “candidates for political office may want to make the differences between the parties more salient to increase turnout”.23 Furthermore, Diermeier posits that “an electorate’s polarization on issues is irrelevant for elite polarization unless voters exhibit a sufficient level of dislike for members of the other party”.24 This infers that rhetorical strategies to highlight and aggravate divisions by candidates and/or the media outlets supporting them may positively affect political outcomes. In this light, the construction of “us vs. them” binaries to mobilise support and articulate collective grievances hold a particular significance, as will be illustrated in the second part of this article. This, in turn, showcases the potency of populism as a political means to an end.

  • 25 Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (Verso Books, 2005).
  • 26 Cas Mudde & Cristobal Kaltwasser, “Populism”, in M. Freeden, L. Sargent, L. & M. Stears, M. (eds.), (...)
  • 27  J. Bartle, D. Sanders & J. Twyman, “Authoritarian Populist Opinion in Europe” in I. Crew & D. Sand (...)
  • 28 Ibid., p. 587.
  • 29 Kilty (2024), « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars”, op. cit., p. 8.
  • 30 Ibid.
  • 31 J. Bartle et al., “Authoritarian Populist Opinion in Europe”, op. cit.; I. Crew, “Authoritarian Pop (...)
  • 32 Kilty (2024), op. cit., pp. 8-10 citing D. Marsh, ibid.
  • 33 David Featherstone, “Culture Wars and the making of authoritarian populism: articulations of spatia (...)
  • 34 M. Kettle (2020), “How Established Parties Respond”, in I. Crew & D. Sanders (eds), op. cit., p. 20 (...)
  • 35 R. Eatwell & M. Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (Pelican Books, 20 (...)

11In On Populist Reason (2005)25, Ernesto Laclau envisages populism as a strategy consisting in constructing a political frontier that divides society into two camps, ‘us’ and ‘them’. The existence of this binary construct at the heart of populism is probably the main point of convergence of academics writing on the issue as most will agree that “all forms of populism without exception involve some kind of exaltation and appeal to ‘the people’ and all are in one sense or another anti-elitist”.26 Who the “people” are, is rather vague, on purpose, as the notion needs to be adapted to geographical and political specificities. For example, Bartle et al. argue that, in Britain, “populist movements claim to represent a silent majority who are ignored by the cosmopolitan political ‘elites’, especially mainstream parties”.27 However, insistence on the notions of “sovereignty/authenticity and cultural traditions/popular values”,28usually attributed to the common people are two core components at the heart of the definition of this otherwise fluid concept”.29 The elite is defined by their self-serving attitude “rather than relative to their position in the socio-economic hierarchy”.30 Accordingly, populists align with a section of the population that they define as the true people, using such adjectives as common sense, truth-seeking, realistic, authentic, sovereign to characterise them. We have already seen how Jenrick used the exact same vocabulary in the citation studied in the introduction of this article (p. 1). Both Rishi Sunak and Kemi Badenoch are also familiar with such terminology as the second part of this article will argue. In spite of their putative authenticity and common sense, the common people are said to be despised and neglected or even cancelled (in the specific context of the culture wars) by the elite. In Britain, the elite is defined as cosmopolitan, globalist and comfortable with ethnic mix or pluralism, but it is detached from reality, self-serving and prone to brushing other people’s viewpoints aside.31 This is again made very clear in Jenrick’s citation. In the British context, David marsh argues that “the core cleavage […] is no longer a left/right one, but, rather, one between global cosmopolitanism, which is joined by the hip to neoliberalism, and ‘nativism’, which is at the core of populism”.32 In other words, populists “seek to shape a divided political terrain33 and align with a nativist worldview, defined by Martin Kettle as the belief that “long-established national, religious and racial identities34 should be favoured over other identities. This is in line with Roger Eatwell and Matthew Goodwin’s “national populism” which they define as a movement that prioritises “the culture and interests of the nation, and promises to give voice to a people who feel that they have been neglected, even held in contempt, by a distant and often corrupt elite”.35 They attribute the emergence of this movement to four “deep-rooted societal changes”, which they call the “Four Ds”. One of them in particular, dealignment in political identification and voting behaviour, already mentioned in other works (see supra), is relevant to the binding theme of the issue for which this article was written, i.e. stability/instability.

12Claude Ake (1975) argued that:

  • 36 Claude Ake, “A Definition of Political Stability” in Contemporary Politics (January 1975, Vol. 7, N (...)

“Political stability is the regularity of the flow of political exchanges. The more regular the flow of political exchanges, the more stability. Alternatively, we might say that there is political stability to the extent that members of society restrict themselves to the behaviour patterns that fall within the limits imposed by political role expectations. Any act that deviates from these limits is an instance of political instability”.36

  • 37 Ibid., p. 274.
  • 38 Claude Ake, “A Definition of Political Stability”, op. cit., p. 273.

13This means that instability can be created if the state, identified as the political elite, ceases to participate in the regular flow of political exchanges, for example if it leaves a group behind by, presumably, no longer interacting with them. Accordingly, instability is also created if some political actors, say the very group that was putatively left behind, perform acts that deviate from certain limits simply because they believe that these limits (in this case laws) impose upon them role expectations that they disagree with. Furthermore, Ake portends that law and custom exist as the “arbiters of role expectations” in that they constitute the system of sanctions and structure behaviour.37 If they change over a short time lapse, identifying with new roles may be challenging. The aim here is not to argue that rapid change in law and custom inevitably creates political instability but it can be envisaged as a contributing factor especially if it is aggravated by a discrepancy between the state’s expectations and a section of the population’s values as Ake notes that: “Such disagreement may occur on account of lack of information or differences in understanding or interpretation. It may also occur as a result of differences in values and ideological commitments”.38 There are, obviously, other approaches to the concept of political stability/instability, however, Ake’s definition is congruent with the emergence of culture war issues. In that case, a strategy which would consist in feeding on instability, fuelling divisions and insisting on rupture between the elite and the people to galvanise voter bases with the promise of a return to stability (see supra) may positively affect electoral outcomes.

  • 39 Hunter (1991), Culture Wars, op. cit., p.43.
  • 40 Ibid., p. 44.
  • 41 Kilty (2024), « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars”, op. cit., p. 3.
  • 42 Ibid.
  • 43 Ibid., p. 46.
  • 44 Ibid., p. 4.
  • 45 Ibid.
  • 46 King’s College London, The policy Institute, The Culture Wars in the UK, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/poli (...)

14Finally, the culture wars are originally defined by American sociologist James Davison Hunter as the outcome of two “differing worldviews” that are in competition as an “impulse” towards “cultural orthodoxy” stands in opposition to an impulse towards “cultural progressivism”.39 He describes orthodoxy as the “commitment on the part of adherents to an external, definable, and transcendent authority which tells us what is good, what is true, how we should live, and who we are”.40 This external and transcendent source of moral authority will often, but not exclusively, be religion and “it will define how adherents should order their lives and what they should believe, regardless of their personal circumstances and when or where they live”.41 Those who share this worldview will therefore tend to be “culturally and socially conservative or traditionalist and, by inference, politically conservative”.42 Conversely, proponents of cultural progressivism will tend to lean towards a liberal social agenda.43 The cultural conflicts, or culture wars, raging between conservatives/traditionalists and progressives/liberals, are therefore expressions of differing moral identities.44 Ultimately, the aim is to determine the character of the nation in which the cultural warriors live. Like Hunter, British political scientist, Alan Finlayson, defines the culture wars as not merely a struggle of ideas. He sees them as operating in a “more anthropological sense”, therefore directly involving who we think we are and what we think defines us: our identity.45 Although initially a purely academic niche term, its presence became increasingly conspicuous around the time of the debates over Brexit and afterwards. Accordingly, Tim Bale describes the culture wars as “the continuation of Brexit by other means” (Bale, 2023, p. 235). One of the most comprehensive studies of the phenomenon in Britain, was carried out by a team of researchers from King’s College London (The Policy Institute) in collaboration with Ipsos MORI.46 Building on Hunter’s definition, they define the culture wars as:

  • 47 Bobby Duffy & Kirstie Hewlett, How culture wars start, 24 May 2021, op. cit., p. 1 (introduction).

“being fought on one or more “fault lines”. This is often measured by the extent to which attitudes are polarised on issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage and gun control [about the US], which tend to have either a strong moral or values basis, or rub against changing norms. But what differentiates a culture war from mere disagreement is the extent to which attitudes coalesce into utterly opposed worldviews with competing visions for the future, and the perceived threat to what either side considers the right or acceptable way to live one’s life”.47 

  • 48 David Featherstone, “Culture Wars and the making of authoritarian populism”, op. cit. p. 23. For th (...)
  • 49 Ibid., p. 24.

15David Featherstone defines the culture wars as a “political technique for gathering a disparate group of people with conflicting, even contradictory, interests into your camp”,48 adding that this “resonates with theorist of populism Ernesto Laclau’s definition that populist politics seeks to shape a divided political terrain”,49 whose view on populism has already been presented in this article (see supra).

  • 50 The term was first used by African Americans at the time of the civil rights campaign to warn poten (...)
  • 51 Usually used to describe the decision by university boards to refuse to give a platform to certain (...)
  • 52 A. Finlayson, A. Kelly, R. Topinka. & B. Little, “Digital culture wars: understanding the far right (...)
  • 53 For an analysis of the data and statistical evidence showing the depth of the impact of the culture (...)

16The term culture wars, and others commonly associated with it such as “politically correct”, “woke”,50 the “cancel culture” or culture of “no platforming”51 have become an integral part of the journalistic vernacular, which has spread awareness of the term amongst the general public. The social media, as one of the newest forums for public debate, has also contributed to intensifying polarisation around the culture war issues, Finlayson arguing that “there’s something about those digital spaces that intensifies and facilitates that kind of politics”.52 So much so that British people now seem to be significantly aware of the very real impact of the phenomenon and of the cultural divisions in their country.53 Although the topics drawn into the culture war debates often mirror policy agendas and events, there seems to be a certain permanence in the focus of the issues. Most will centre on immigration, race, gender, climate change and net zero, Britain’s cultural and historical heritage and the ability to speak one’s mind freely without fear of being cancelled or judged negatively.

The Conservatives, elections and the “stable” culture war narrative

  • 54 See Peter Dorey, “The Conservative Right’s War on Woke” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (e (...)

17Ever since Brexit, the Conservative Party has been one of the most vocal contributors in the culture wars. From prominent members of the successive governments, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Suella Braverman, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch, Oliver Dowden, to Conservative members of Parliament, John Hayes, Gareth Bacon, Lee Anderson, Miriam Cates and Conservative factions such as the Common Sense Group, all have spoken against the so-called “woke” culture polluting society, schools and universities with dangerous feminist theories that disrupt labour relations and cost companies a fortune, unworkable net zero targets, concepts that slur Britain’s past, its history and historical figures (Critical Race Theory, White Privilege), theories that put women in danger (gender theories) and movements that disrupt law and order (Black Lives Matter, Extinction Rebellion).54 Leading media figures have not been the last to enter the fray. Piers Morgan, for example, along with right-wing media outlets such as GB News, The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Daily Express etc. actively participate in the “war on woke”.

18Given that context, it was safe to assume that the culture war debates would feature prominently in the campaign for the general election that was supposed to be held before the end of 2024. On 22 May, the Prime Minister announced that he had spoken to the King to request the dissolution of parliament for a general election to be held on 4 July 2024. Needless to say, this announcement caught everyone by surprise. Rishi Sunak was giving himself and his party a little more than two months to convince the voters to renew their trust in him and the Conservatives. As it happens, the Prime Minister chose to focus on two themes: the economy and illegal migration, making precious few references to other salient culture war issues. It does not mean to say that some usual Conservative campaign themes such as pride in British values, belief in traditional institutions, were not framed in culture war rhetoric and meant to emphasise the clash of values between the Conservative and Labour Parties. Note here that Nigel Farage’s announcement that he would stand for election as a candidate for Clacton and lead Reform UK on 4 June did not ostensibly affect Sunak’s discourse.

  • 55 Rishi Sunak, PM speech on security: 13 May 2024 (Prime Minister’s Office), https://www.gov.uk/gover (...)
  • 56 See Lexy Webster, “Academic freedom and transphobia in UK higher education” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet a (...)

19In a speech on the theme of security delivered at Policy Exchange, a leading Conservative think tank, on 13 May,55 admittedly a few days before the official campaign launch, the Prime Minister sounded the alarm, expressing his “profound sense of urgency” in the face of real dangers facing his country but also because of his conviction that “the next five years [would] be […] the most transformational” Britain had ever known. He follows on with a list of international problems, not the least of which is “illegal migration” which is “placing an intolerable strain” on Britain’s “security and sense of fairness”. Illegal migrants are thus framed as potentially dangerous terrorists and migration is described as unjust because it makes British people question their own moral values and, probably, feel guilty if their views are not “politically correct”. He then compares the many students who demonstrated against Israel’s military intervention in the Occupied Territories and Gaza with “extremists”, all the while not discriminating between those who simply demonstrated to defend their beliefs and the real extremists whose aim was to incite hatred. Notwithstanding the fact that Sunak is appealing to the “them vs. us” binaries in a clearly Manichean and divisive way, we are led to understand to this was made possible because “[p]eople are abusing” Britain’s “liberal democratic values” in a “divisive, ideological attempt to set Briton against Briton”. The responsibility for the fuelling of divisions that such issues inevitably create therefore uniquely befalls on the demonstrators, thereby absolving the government. The appeal to what is indeed one of the most fundamental principles of Britain’s liberal democracy, i.e. freedom of speech, is also indicative of the fact that the PM is framing the whole event in culture war rhetoric as the Conservatives have often had recourse to this argument to justify their own inflammatory rhetoric and condemn their opponents’ putative refusal to acknowledge other people’s values as anything other than nonsense.56 This is confirmed by the next few lines:

  • 57 Sunak (May 2024), op. cit.

“And from gender activists hijacking children’s sex education to cancel culture, vocal and aggressive fringe groups are trying to impose their views on the rest of us. They’re trying to make it morally unacceptable to believe something different and undermine people’s confidence and pride in our own history and identity”.57

20Everything in this short extract is borrowed from the culture wars, here typically war on “woke”, playbook: the choice of words, the framing in populist terms with the “them vs. us” binary construction and the attempt at identifying “them” as a “fringe” or minority trying to undermine the “people”, the reference to a sense of “pride” in being British as defined by a shared “history” and “identity” introduced by the adjective “own”. Sunak comes back on the very same issue later in the speech when he summarises his “vision” and addresses the possibility of leaving the European Court of Human Rights if they oppose the Rwanda Scheme:

  • 58 Sunak (May 2024), op. cit.

“And nor will I ever compromise on defending our values, our history, and our way of life, against those who seek to undermine them. I am unapologetically proud of who we are. And under my leadership, ours will be a country where people can disagree in good faith, but where they must do so with respect and decency for others”.58

21Sunak uses the same populist tropes (“them vs. us” binary, repetition of identical terms preceded by the possessive adjective “our” … values, history, way of life … pride) to oppose two visions clearly grounded in different value systems one of which is rejected as alien since it is not identified as “our”, meaning Britain’s.

  • 59 Rishi Sunak, “Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future”, Speech announcing the 4 July gen (...)

22There are fewer mentions of such issues in Sunak’s speech to announce the 4 July general election, although his pledge to “restore pride and confidence in our country59 epitomises them.

23The format of the pre-election debates between the Prime Minister and Keir Starmer, five minutes per candidate and no interruptions by the opponent, left the speakers with very little room for manoeuvre, especially as interruptions were, actually, constant. This meant that the candidates dedicated their short speaking time to the hammering of a few catchy slogans, most about the economy and illegal migration. Basically, these debates had little substance.

24The Panorama interview with Nick Robinson held on 10 June 2024 was a particularly difficult moment for Rishi Sunak who had to spend a lot of time apologising for his absence on the last day of the D-Day celebrations and then trying to answer Robinson’s taunting about Nigel Farage whom, he said, “many Conservatives think that he is more of a Conservative than you are”. The rest of the interview is a repetition of the two slogans of Sunak’s campaign “I have a plan” and “I’m prepared to take bold actions” in relation to the economy, taxes, pensions, the NHS and illegal migration.

  • 60 The Conservative and Unionist Party manifesto 2024, “Clear Plan. Bold action, Secure future”, https (...)
  • 61 Ibid., p.59.

25The Conservative Party manifesto, launched on 11 June 2024 elaborates more on sensitive issues that give rise to heated debates and are listed as culture wars issues. There is a particular focus on “the contested concept of gender identity”,60 with two pledges: that it will not be taught at school, and that women and girls will be protected thanks to the introduction of legislation to ensure that “an individual can only have one sex [understood as one’s biological sex] in the eyes of the law in the United Kingdom”.61 The concept of gender identity is here used to not only identify the position of the Conservative Party on such issues but also to attack the political opponents, in this particular instance, the SNP, and debunk them as immoral.

  • 62 H. J. Smith, “Britishness as racist nativism: a case of the unnamed ‘other’” in Journal of Educatio (...)
  • 63  A reference to the distinction between the “Somewheres” (those who have a strong local attachment (...)

26What is therefore noticeable regarding Sunak’s approach to the culture war debates is that it consists in crystallising Britishness into a discourse of values (or worldviews), 62and doing so, in using identity – or rather identities (to include issues over gender identity) – as variables to undermine his opponent’s suitability for the governance of Britain. Ultimately, the aim is to win the battle of ideas and, accordingly, the election, thereby achieving counter cultural hegemony and a reset of societal and social norms. His strategy is populist insofar as he pins the people – the British people (or sensible majority) – against others whom he does not really endow with any identity (the “Anywheres”)63.

  • 64 Peter Dorey, “The Conservative Right’s War on Woke” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.) (...)
  • 65 Kemi Badenoch, « If we don’t defend our culture, who will?”, speech to the International democracy (...)

27Kemi Badenoch’s approach is more elaborate and aggressive than Sunak’s but, ultimately, it aims to achieve the same thing. Even before entering the fray by proposing her candidacy for the leadership of the Conservative Party, Badenoch was a notorious culture warrior who had made several references to related issues (especially to Critical Race Theory and White Privilege).64 In December 2024, in Washington, she even confirmed that she “love[d] the title the left-wing media g[a]ve [her]”,65 thus embracing the label as though it were a badge of honour.

28Her first interview as candidate was with Planet Earth, The Telegraph’s podcast, on 2 August 2024. She spent the first half of the programme accusing The Guardian of unfairly attacking her, moving on to condemn them for creating this environment in which righteous “people are afraid to speak the truth”, especially if that truth does not agree with what she calls The Guardian’s “worldview whether it’s on race” or gender theory, thereafter defining herself as “a gender-critical woman”.66 One constant in the way Badenoch approaches culture war issues is to reduce them to a debate on freedom of speech arguing that everything was fine until “people [in fact The Guardian] started stoking identity politics” which she says she hates.67 To illustrate this point, she takes racism as an example, explaining that “[t]he incentive is given to call the country racist. Those who don’t agree are silenced”.68 In other words, Badenoch aligns with the traditionalists against the progressives whom she accuses of using tactics that range from slur campaigns to downright denial of freedom of speech.

  • 69 Kemi Badenoch, Q/A “Meet our leadership candidates”, interview at the Conservative Party Conference (...)

29In Birmingham, Badenoch’s Conservative Party Conference speech is imbued with the same ideas. She presents herself as one who always “says it at it is” and when asked about the culture wars, she explains that she sees them as a fabrication by left-wing parties and institutions who have a lot to gain from depicting themselves as “nice” and as “the ones to help69 minorities. She thereafter moves on to the issue of freedom of speech. There is not much that can be taken from Badenoch’s conference speech except, maybe, as will be confirmed later, that she frames the culture war issues as some kind of left-wing conspiracy to establish their cultural hegemony notably by appearing as politically correct and by silencing opponents who are deemed to hold morally questionable worldviews.

  • 70 Kemi Badenoch, « It’s time to tell the truth about immigration”, Centre for Policy Studies, 27 Nove (...)
  • 71 Badenoch (November 2024), CPC, op. cit.
  • 72 Ibid.

30Badenoch’s speech about immigration delivered at the Centre for Policy Studies on 27 November 202470 is an exercise in populist rhetoric. The notion that Britain has reached levels of immigration that she believes are not sustainable, is presented as a common-sense view, starting with the title “it’s time to tell the truth”, completed by such sentences as “we must be honest” or “we can no longer be naïve”. These unsustainable levels have been reached because the elites have rejected the truth: “failure of politics” and “judges”. They are responsible for creating a situation where it is impossible “to integrate those from radically different cultures” and “without a shared identity”, she argues, “our country will suffer”. In other words, the elites have failed the people and, to a certain extent, have been unpatriotic. She concludes that to reverse that trend is “not a question of money. It’s a question of fairness”, thus clearly positioning the issue at a moral rather than an economic level. Finally, immigration has to become an essential theme of the national conversation, one that can no longer be “glossed over” or made “a fringe issue” unlike what has been done for “the last thirty years”. This time-scale indicates that the Conservative party was complicit. In Birmingham, a few weeks earlier, Badenoch had mentioned that she thought that the Conservative Party was “talking Right and governing Left71, which is one of the reasons why some conservative voters chose to vote for Reform UK on 4 July. Accordingly, she concludes on the need to “squeeze them [Reform UK] out and push them away from the bit of the political spectrum that belongs to us”.72 Talking about a shared British identity through integration, introducing caps on immigration, etc. is a way for the Conservative Party to capture again the bit of turf that used to be theirs and that is now occupied by Nigel Farage.

  • 73 Kemi Badenoch, “If we don’t defend our culture” (Washington, Dec. 2024) op. cit.
  • 74 Probably what she believes Critical Race Theory to be.

31The conservative leader’s speech in Washington73 is the most elaborate thus far on the culture war issues, first because by embracing the label of “culture warrior”, Badenoch pauses as a true defender not only of “tradition” and “heritage” but also, as we shall see, as the hero of the people whose freedom is under attack by the deceitful and authoritarian progressives (“progressive authoritarianism”). This speech is therefore also a call to arms (“if we don’t defend our culture, who will?”) against the left, identified as either “communists”, “socialists” or “liberals”, that has “hacked liberalism” in order to become the dominant cultural force. The weapon to fight this war is “muscular liberalism”, a rallying cry appealing to a populist mobilisation to defend Britain’s “culture” and “freedom”. Given the location in which the speech was delivered and the undisguised appeal to Donald Trump and Elon Musk (“[t]his is why I am excited about DOGE and what President-Elect Trump and Elon Musk will do on government efficiency”) Badenoch also indulges in her own little conspiracy theory by describing “the enemy” (i.e. the left) as deceitful, having hidden their true nature. The enemy is metaphorically compared to the devil (“the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he did not exist”). They used that trick “to smuggle ideas and policies that are like liberalism”. Not only does this metaphor help amplify the perceived threat, it is also, thanks to the “them vs. us” binary, a populist trope to construct a stark dichotomy between the abusers, an all-too powerful, corrupt and deceitful elite, and their hapless victims, i.e. the people. Badenoch gives the example of a piece of liberal legislation which enabled a criminal, who “was found to have committed multiple sexual offences after arriving in the UK”, to carry out “a chemical attack in London on a mother and her two young children”. Badenoch then presents herself as the defender of the victims, namely the people (“something has to change”). She uses her persona, that of the engineer, to insist that she will “fix” these problems which she describes as “bugs”. Such a demeaning term, and many others later in the speech, contribute to delegitimising the ideas and policies they represent whether it is “anti-imperialism”, “anti-racism” or “social justice”. To the same effect, Badenoch uses gross generalisations, oversimplification and a deeply flawed deductive approach to poke fun at the so-called hackers, arguing, for example that they used the people’s love of freedom to justify teaching anti-British imperialism74 in schools or contending that “we are all against racism” led to “all white people are racist” … “because of their white privilege”. They are just bugs that need fixing. Furthermore, the fact that they were all “smuggled under the cloak […] into institutions”, not only implies subterfuge (the cloak of the magician) but also that the very ideas that were smuggled become some sort of Trojan horses for socialism to deceitfully take control of institutions and impose its cultural hegemony. The Conservative leader does not like “using the word “woke” to describe these issues”. She prefers the expression “progressive authoritarianism”, arguing that “the word woke masks just how deeply destructive these ideologies are”. These ideas are therefore framed as a moral and existential threat to freedom and Western civilisation. Badenoch, as leader of the conservatives, as defender of the people, of their traditions, of their heritage, of their history, of their culture, then needs to regain control of the national narrative, reclaim and remoralise Britain’s history and doing so, re-establish traditional conservative hegemony. She contends that the antidote is classical liberalism, although Badenoch’s version seems much closer to neoliberalism. There are indeed many indirect references to Friedrich’s von Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (1944). Ultimately, Badenoch’s Washington speech serves as both a critique of the left and a rallying call for a conservative counter-mobilisation, for a conservative culture war.

Conclusion

32The culture wars are not a recent phenomenon, nor is their weaponisation for political gain. To a certain extent, it may be argued that clashes of values and polarisation around questions of identity have always existed. However, there has been a noticeable increase in the use of the issues linked to the culture war debates in Britain, since Brexit. This article has shown that the increase is particularly noticeable in the Conservative Party’s political discourse. It has also highlighted the strategic use of language to frame the culture wars as a central political and ideological conflict. We have seen how dichotomies, the building of a sense of moral panic and delegitimisation of the opponent shaped the political narrative of Prime Minister and candidate Rishi Sunak just as it does Kemi Badenoch’s, on issues related to migration, transgender rights and freedom of speech.

  • 75 Ian Montagu & Natalie Maplethorpe, « Five years of unprecedented challenges. The impact of the 2019 (...)
  • 76 Ibid., p. 23.
  • 77 Ibid. figures for 2024.
  • 78 Ibid., p. 24.
  • 79 Ibid.

33Arguably, although this strategy did not help the Conservative Party win the July 2024 election, it has still had significant enough of an impact on a segment of the population for the party to stay the course and carry on stoking divisions. Indeed, the forty-first survey of the British public’s social attitudes published by the National Centre for Social Research in June 2024 reveals that opinions on issues associated with the culture war debates have significantly hardened in the last four years.75 Asked whether they viewed immigration as beneficial to Britain’s economy or the opposite, 51 per cent of the respondents answered that they had a positive view of immigration in 2022. Two years later, this figure was down by 12 percentage points (39 per cent).76 In the same vein, 51 per cent of the respondents agreed that migration “carried with it positive impacts for cultural life in Britain” in 2022. The latest study found that only 39 per cent of the respondents now believed that “Britain’s cultural life [was] enriched by migration”.77 The same downwards trend can be observed regarding the issue of gender self-identification. In 2019, 53 per cent of the respondents agreed that a person who is transgender should be able to “change the sex registered on their birth certificate if they wished to do so”.78 The latest BSA results point to a dramatic reversal with only 26 per cent of the respondents now agreeing with such a right.79 This, at once, illustrates the potency of the culture war debates as well as highlights the expectations of the more socially conservative voters.

34This article has shown that the intensity of the debates over such issues, their instrumentalisation and the rise of populist rhetoric have all contributed to increasing polarisation. In turn, this increasing polarisation may carry on shaping the Conservative Party’s future policy directions. The very fact that the last two contestants in the leadership battle, Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch, are firmly positioned on the right of the party, are both notorious culture warriors and are now collaborating in the Shadow Government seems to be indication enough. It may also be that the re-election of Donald Trump will complete the decomplexation of the Conservative party’s populist faction. Or, at the very least, it may result in a milder British version of Trump’s culture wars looking increasingly more mainstream.

  • 80 Especially that of Nigel Farage, if only because, based on the assumption that it is very unlikely (...)
  • 81 Claude Ake (1975), “A Definition of Political Stability” in Contemporary Politics op. cit., p. 273.
  • 82 Ibid.

35As to the issue of stability vs. instability, polarisation has, inevitably, had a destabilising effect on Britain, exemplified by Brexit, and on the Conservative governments since 2016. However, it is worth noting that the culture war issues have brought a certain consistency to the conservative narrative since Boris Johnson and, accordingly, can be construed as one element of stability in an otherwise unstable environment. To a certain extent, this justifies the title of this article: “The Conservative Party and the culture wars or when instability creates stability”. Furthermore, if indeed populism may be construed as a disruptive force,80 it is nonetheless interesting to recall Ake’s thesis that “political stability is the regularity of the flow of political exchanges. The more regular the flow of political exchanges, the more stability”.81 This means that instability would then be created by a break in the flow of exchanges law makers and a portion of the public possibly caused by “differences in values and ideological commitments”.82 The self-assigned objective of populist politicians which is, putatively, to reconnect with the people, insisting on the necessity to take the people’s so-called common-sense values into account, may be interpreted as an attempt to restore the stability of the social order that was supposedly destabilised by progressive worldviews and this is really what the culture wars are about. Ultimately, they are the perceived expressions of differing moral identities, a clash of values (sometimes depicted as a clash of civilisations) between two polar opposites competing to determine the character of the nation. Whoever wins the culture war may very well achieve a certain degree of cultural hegemony.

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Notes

1 Robert Jenrick, X, 4 January 2025, https://x.com/RobertJenrick/status/1875549435926581584 consulted 10 January 2025.

2 Ibid.

3 Peter Walker, “Badenoch defends Jenrick’s remarks about ‘people from alien cultures’”, The Guardian (5 January 2025), https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jan/05/badenoch-defends-jenricks-remarks-about-people-from-alien-cultures consulted 5 January 2024.

4 Tim Bale, The Conservative Party After Brexit: Turmoil and Transformation (Polity Press, 2023); R. Chapman (ed.), Culture Wars. An Encyclopaedia of Issues, Viewpoints, and Voices (M.E. Sharped, 2010); H. C. Davies & S.E. MacRae, S. E., “An anatomy of the British war on woke” in Race & Class, 65(2), 3-54, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1177/03063968231164905; Peter Dorey, “David Cameron’s catastrophic miscalculation: The EU Referendum, Brexit and the UK’s ‘culture war’” in Observatoire de la société britannique [Online] 27 | 2021, pp. 195-226. http://journals.openedition.org/osb/5444 & https://doi.org/10.4000/osb.5444; B. Duffy, K. Hewlett, K., Murkin, G., Benson, R., Hesketh, R., Page, B., Skinner, G. & Gottfried, G., Culture wars in the UK (The Policy Institute King’s College London and Ipsos Mori, June 2021), https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/culture-wars-in-the-uk; B. Duffy, & G. Skinner, G., Woke vs anti-woke? Culture war divisions and politics (The Policy Institute King’s College London with Ipsos MORI, October 2023), https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/culture-wars-in-the-uk; Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty, Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”. Populism, Social Fractures and political Communication (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, December 2024), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032627199.

5 B. Duffy, K. Hewlett, K., Murkin, G., Benson, R., Hesketh, R., Page, B., Skinner, G. & Gottfried, G., Culture wars in the UK: how the public understand the debate (The Policy Institute King’s College London and Ipsos Mori, May 2021), https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/culture-wars-in-the-uk.

6 See Raphaële Kilty, « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars: An introduction” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.), Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”. Populism, Social Fractures and political Communication (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, December 2024), p. 2, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032627199-1.

7 James Davison Hunter, Culture Wars. The Struggle to Define America. Making sense of the battles over the family, art, education, law and politics (BasicBooks, 1991).

8 Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty, Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”. Populism, Social Fractures and political Communication (Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, December 2024), https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032627199.

9 Kilty (2024), « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars”, op. cit., p. 10.

10 Peter, Mair, “Populist Democracy vs Party Democracy”, in Mény, Y. and Surel, Y. (eds.), Democracies and the Populist Challenge (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 85.

11 Ibid.

12 Maria Sobolewska & George Ford, Brexitland. Identity, Diversity and the Reshaping of Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2020), p.21.

13 Kilty (2024), op. cit., p. 2.

14 Daniel Diermeier and Christopher Li, « Dynamics of Polarization: Affective Partisanship and Policy Divergence” in British Journal of Political Science (2023), 53, 980-996, p. 980.

15 Kemi Badenoch, Planet Earth Podcast, The Telegraph, 2 August 2024, https://podtail.com/podcast/planet-normal/kemi-badenoch-on-her-conservative-party-leadership/ and Q/A “Meet our leadership candidates”, interview at the Conservative Party Conference, Birmingham, November 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKHMcfCPx0g.

16 Antonio Gramsci, The Prison Notebooks (Columbia University Press, 2011). Gramsci was imprisoned in 1926 because of his fierce critic of Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime. He was moved from prison to a closed health facility in 1933 where he died from complications in 1937. During his eleven-year internment, he wrote several dozen so-called Prison Notebooks from which the concept of cultural hegemony is taken.

17 This has been an ongoing trend since the turn of the century. Boris Johnson, both as Mayor of London and, later, Prime Minister was particularly vocal against the so-called “loony left” and their putative capture of the cultural debates (see, for example, Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.), Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”, op. cit., https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032627199).

18 Kemi Badenoch, “If we don’t defend our culture, who will?”, Speech to the International Democracy Union Forum in Washington (27 November 2024), https://www.kemibadenoch.org.uk/news/if-we-dont-defend-our-culture-who-will-kemi-badenoch-mps-speech-international-democracy-union consulted 5 January 2025.

19 See John E. Richardson, "'Cultural-Marxism' and the British National Party: A transnational discourse", in Copsey, Nigel, Richardson, John E. (eds.), Cultures of Post-War British Fascism (London, Routledge); R. Wodak, The Politics of Fear. The Shameless Normalization of Far-Right Discourse (Sage Publications Ltd., 2nd edition 2020).

20 Peter Walker, “Tory MP criticised for using antisemitic term ‘cultural Marxism’, The Guardian, 26 March 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/mar/26/tory-mp-criticised-for-using-antisemitic-term-cultural-marxism consulted 15 April 2024.

21 Peter Dorey, “The Conservative Right’s War on Woke” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.), Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”, op. cit., pp. 111.

22 Larry M. Bartels (2000); Jon Rogowski & Joseph Sutherland (2016); K Banda & J. Cluverius (2018).

23 Diermeier et al. (2023), op. cit., p. 980.

24 Ibid., p. 990.

25 Ernesto Laclau, On Populist Reason (Verso Books, 2005).

26 Cas Mudde & Cristobal Kaltwasser, “Populism”, in M. Freeden, L. Sargent, L. & M. Stears, M. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies (Oxford University Press, 2015) citing M. Canovan, Populism (Junction Books, 1981) [294], p. 584

27  J. Bartle, D. Sanders & J. Twyman, “Authoritarian Populist Opinion in Europe” in I. Crew & D. Sanders (eds), Authoritarian Populism and Liberal Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), p. 50.

28 Ibid., p. 587.

29 Kilty (2024), « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars”, op. cit., p. 8.

30 Ibid.

31 J. Bartle et al., “Authoritarian Populist Opinion in Europe”, op. cit.; I. Crew, “Authoritarian Populism and Brexit in the UK: Historical Perspective, op. cit.; D. Marsh, “Populism and Brexit”, op. cit.; R. Wodak, The Politics of Fear, op. cit.

32 Kilty (2024), op. cit., pp. 8-10 citing D. Marsh, ibid.

33 David Featherstone, “Culture Wars and the making of authoritarian populism: articulations of spatial division and popular consent”, in Soundings, Number 81 (Lawrence and Wishart, 2022), https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN:81.02.2022, p. 24.

34 M. Kettle (2020), “How Established Parties Respond”, in I. Crew & D. Sanders (eds), op. cit., p. 205.

35 R. Eatwell & M. Goodwin, National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (Pelican Books, 2018), p. ix).

36 Claude Ake, “A Definition of Political Stability” in Contemporary Politics (January 1975, Vol. 7, No 2), p. 273.

37 Ibid., p. 274.

38 Claude Ake, “A Definition of Political Stability”, op. cit., p. 273.

39 Hunter (1991), Culture Wars, op. cit., p.43.

40 Ibid., p. 44.

41 Kilty (2024), « Towards a very British version of the Culture Wars”, op. cit., p. 3.

42 Ibid.

43 Ibid., p. 46.

44 Ibid., p. 4.

45 Ibid.

46 King’s College London, The policy Institute, The Culture Wars in the UK, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/culture-wars-in-the-uk.

47 Bobby Duffy & Kirstie Hewlett, How culture wars start, 24 May 2021, op. cit., p. 1 (introduction).

48 David Featherstone, “Culture Wars and the making of authoritarian populism”, op. cit. p. 23. For this definition, Featherstone cites Daniel Trilling (The Guardian, “Attacking lifeboats may seem like a new low, but the right craves a ‘migrant crisis’”, 3 August 2021).

49 Ibid., p. 24.

50 The term was first used by African Americans at the time of the civil rights campaign to warn potential victims of racial violence by encouraging them to be “woke” (aware). It has since entered the anglophone sphere as a synonym for politically correct, the political correctness attributed to people harbouring liberal or progressive views on a set of social and societal issues: race, gender, identity in general, human rights, free speech, cultural and historical heritage, etc.

51 Usually used to describe the decision by university boards to refuse to give a platform to certain speakers on account of the very controversial nature of their views.

52 A. Finlayson, A. Kelly, R. Topinka. & B. Little, “Digital culture wars: understanding the far right’s online powerbase” in Sounding: A Journal of Politics and Culture Number 81 (Lawrence and Wishart, 2022), p. 48, https://doi.org/10.3898/SOUN:81.03.2022.

53 For an analysis of the data and statistical evidence showing the depth of the impact of the culture wars on Britain, see Kilty (2024), ibid., chapter 1. For the source material used for the analysis, see The Policy Institute Kings College London, https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/research-analysis/culture-wars-in-the-uk.

54 See Peter Dorey, “The Conservative Right’s War on Woke” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.), Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”, op. cit., pp. 98-117. All the names, groups, institutions and media outlets appearing in the list are cited in Peter Dorey’s chapter.

55 Rishi Sunak, PM speech on security: 13 May 2024 (Prime Minister’s Office), https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/pm-speech-on-security-13-may-2024 consulted 17 July 2024.

56 See Lexy Webster, “Academic freedom and transphobia in UK higher education” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.), Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”, op. cit., pp. 175-190. In her chapter, Lexy Webster discusses the intertwined issues of no-platforming and freedom of speech in higher education.

57 Sunak (May 2024), op. cit.

58 Sunak (May 2024), op. cit.

59 Rishi Sunak, “Now is the moment for Britain to choose its future”, Speech announcing the 4 July general election outside 10 Downing Street, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGgkQLaYiKA consulted 17 July 2024.

60 The Conservative and Unionist Party manifesto 2024, “Clear Plan. Bold action, Secure future”, https://public.conservatives.com/static/documents/GE2024/Conservative-Manifesto-GE2024.pdf consulted 17 July 2024, p. 27.

61 Ibid., p.59.

62 H. J. Smith, “Britishness as racist nativism: a case of the unnamed ‘other’” in Journal of Education for Teaching, (25 May 2016, 42-3), 298-313.

63  A reference to the distinction between the “Somewheres” (those who have a strong local attachment to their region and community) and the “Anywheres” (the globalist and cosmopolitan elites) made by David Goodheart in his book: D. Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (C. Hurst & Co. Publishers Ltd, 2017).

64 Peter Dorey, “The Conservative Right’s War on Woke” in Alma-Pierre Bonnet and Raphaële Kilty (eds.), Towards a very British Version of the “Culture Wars”, op. cit., p. 104.

65 Kemi Badenoch, « If we don’t defend our culture, who will?”, speech to the International democracy Union Forum in Washington DC, 7 December 2024, https://www.kemibadenoch.org.uk/news/if-we-dont-defend-our-culture-who-will-kemi-badenoch-mps-speech-international-democracy-union.

66 Kemi Badenoch, Planet Earth Podcast, The Telegraph, 2 August 2024, https://podtail.com/podcast/planet-normal/kemi-badenoch-on-her-conservative-party-leadership/.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid.

69 Kemi Badenoch, Q/A “Meet our leadership candidates”, interview at the Conservative Party Conference, Birmingham, November 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKHMcfCPx0g.

70 Kemi Badenoch, « It’s time to tell the truth about immigration”, Centre for Policy Studies, 27 November 2024, https://www.kemibadenoch.org.uk/news/kemi-badenochs-cps-speech-it-time-tell-truth-about-immgration consulted 15 December 2024.

71 Badenoch (November 2024), CPC, op. cit.

72 Ibid.

73 Kemi Badenoch, “If we don’t defend our culture” (Washington, Dec. 2024) op. cit.

74 Probably what she believes Critical Race Theory to be.

75 Ian Montagu & Natalie Maplethorpe, « Five years of unprecedented challenges. The impact of the 2019-2024 Parliament on public opinion”, British Social Attitudes (National Centre for Social Research, No 41 – 12 June 2024), https://natcen.ac.uk/publications/bsa-41-five-years-unprecedented-challenges.

76 Ibid., p. 23.

77 Ibid. figures for 2024.

78 Ibid., p. 24.

79 Ibid.

80 Especially that of Nigel Farage, if only because, based on the assumption that it is very unlikely – given the electoral system – he can become Prime Minister, the role which he has assigned himself is that of the disruptive element. His objective has consistently been to shift the focus on a set of specific issues in an attempt to influence the national conversation and gain popular support, therefore increased representation. I refer you to Karine Tournier-Sol’s article in this very issue of the RFCB.

81 Claude Ake (1975), “A Definition of Political Stability” in Contemporary Politics op. cit., p. 273.

82 Ibid.

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References

Electronic reference

Raphaële Espiet-Kilty, “The Conservative Party and the “Culture Wars”: When Instability Creates Stability”Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique [Online], XXX-3 | 2025, Online since 15 September 2025, connection on 16 December 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/14504; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/14qkj

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About the author

Raphaële Espiet-Kilty

Raphaële Espiet-Kilty is Senior Lecturer in British area studies and political history at University Clermont Auvergne. She writes about the British Conservative Party and has recently edited a book on the so-called “culture wars” titled Towards a Very British Version of the “Culture Wars”. The Rise of National Populism in the UK, Social Fractures and Political Communication (Alma-Pierre Bonnet & Raphaële Kilty (eds.), Series Studies in British Politics, London and New York, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, December 2024, https://doi.org/10.4324/9781032627199). For more information about the author: https://cv.hal.science/raphaele-espiet-kilty ; https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2855-8386

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