Ministers’ efforts to breathe new life into suspiciously old fights over statues and protests are just political trolling
What if you started a war and nobody came? It’s over half a century since that question, posed by the mother of an activist jailed for resisting the draft, became a rallying cry for the peace movement during the Vietnam war. But lately the idea of refusing to go along with someone else’s aggressive agenda has started to take on a rather different meaning in British politics. What if a government with little else to offer angry voters tried to start a culture war, only to find itself having a fight in an empty room?
Downing Street’s enthusiasm for getting some – arguably any – kind of “war on the woke” going in time to motivate the troops for this spring’s local and mayoral elections is all too clear. First out of the traps was the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick, seizing on a brief lull in pandemic news last month to announce a minor tweak in planning rules dressed up as a crusade to stop historical statues being taken down if they cause contemporary offence. Now the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, who you might have vaguely imagined would be devoting every waking minute to organising the reopening of schools in three weeks’ time, promises a “free speech champion” to fight back against the no-platforming of speakers on ideological grounds in British universities.
