Politicians are using culture war as distraction tactic, poll finds

[IwantToRetire]

Ahead of general election, top issues people said would determine their vote include cost of living, inflation, NHS and social care

More than half of the British public feel politicians are using culture wars to distract from other “important” issues, according to a survey which also found the term “woke” is increasingly seen as an insult.

Almost two thirds (62 per cent) of 3,716 people polled said politicians “invent or exaggerate” culture wars as a political tactic – up from 44 per cent three years ago, the research suggested.

Just one in 10 people felt politicians who talk about divisions over cultural issues genuinely believe it is an important topic, with 56 per cent feeling they are just trying to distract people from other important topics.

The research, by King’s College London (KCL) and Ipsos UK, found that – ahead of a general election – the top issues people said would determine their vote include cost of living, inflation and the NHS and social care.

Channel crossings were also seen as an important voting issue, while transgender rights and free speech were at the bottom of the list, with just 1 per cent of people saying these issues would determine their vote.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/politics-culture-war-woke-suella-braverman-lee-anderson-b2440455.html

So does that mean FWR is the 1%?

Less that FWR is the 1% (with all the connotations that comes with that loaded term!) than that most of the public actually think gender ideology is frivolous nonsense.

99% of the population would prefer politicians to be concentrating on stuff that matters, rather than trying to acquiesce to a loud but very unrepresentative group of online activists determined to have new law made to suit their ideology.

I think for the vast majority of people, it’s simply obvious that male prisoners should go to male prisons. And that single sex hospital wards should be single sex. And that women’s sport should be for female people. Politicians and officials should always have been operating on that basis, not pissing about with new laws aligned with gender ideology.

Let’s face it, if politicians had just given sensible, clear direction on single sex provision, the need for cautious, exploratory treatment of children and sensible guidance for schools to prevent activism taking root in the curriculum and pastoral care, then most of FWR simply would not care about this stuff either. I feel pretty confident that the majority of the British public really is much more
sensible on these issues than online activists want us to think.

Obviously the UK is in a dreadful mess and people are likely to prioritise the issues that immediately affect their lives in their voting decisions.

My own reluctance to vote for Labour isn’t based simply on gender ideology (although how the party approaches it is indicative of broader problems). Gender ideology isn’t even close to the main problem I have with Labour. Similarly, I’m not going to vote Conservative just because they can occasionally trot out something obvious about what a woman is - that is not going to outweigh their dreadful track record in power and continued policy announcements I’m not on board with.

The Lib Dem’s have reduced themselves to a total joke on every front. And the Greens represent everything that is wrong with online culture really. In Scotland, the SNP have a growing record of incompetence in government and are beholden to the truly terrifying Scottish greens in ways that have been bad for Scotland.

In summary, I’d love it if politicians were less concerned with ‘noisy on twitter/X’ and more competent in general. None of the parties are offering me any hope that the next government will be more competent than the current one. Which is so depressing.

I think culture wars will be an important election issue for a significant percentage of the population maybe just those that don’t respond to kcl research pols.
i am pretty sure that photo of Keir and Angela kneeling will be unleashed at some point rightly or wrongly and that will persuade some people against voting labour whereas I don’t think it will persuade anyone undecided to actually vote labour.
i am on the fence about culture issues. I wish the left would stop provoking them making the right respond but that’s social media for you!

I think the poll is probably accurate - kcl policy institute on the whole know what they're doing. Here's a link to the analysis page (which has a link to data slides) if anyone's interested.

https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/public-increasingly-see-politicians-as-stoking-culture-wars-study-finds

Interestingly, the data show that while a majority think that politicians exaggerate culture wars for their own nefarious purposes, a majority also think that culture wars are a serious real world problem. There is a LOT of data there, and the Independent have cherry picked.

The Tories are clearly using cultural issues to distract from their dismal economic failures. People are not stupid, and they can see this. At the same time, the more intelligent Tories, such as Badenoch, see the issues for what they are and I believe they are sincere about women's rights.

Just keep plodding on, pointing out that we're talking about women's rights, not trans rights, that the Moores and Stocks of this world write for conservative publications because they are offered space, and that this issue is not part of any culture war.

WRT to Labour, there are many reasons not to vote for them. Their refusal to ackowledge biological sex is a symptom of a general reluctance to engage with reality rather than anything else. So you can vote for Tories who want to fool you, or Labour which wants to fool itself. Or the Greens and LDs, who are at some stage beyond foolery.

I think the conclusion that politicians do use ‘culture wars’ stuff to distract from all sorts is pretty accurate. It amazes me than anyone disagrees with this.

I also think that data very clearly shows that the public do not think that the government should be squabbling over or prioritising enhancing trans rights (for example). Most British people likely do think that these fringe issues shouldn’t matter - and also aren’t impressed by how this stuff takes root in schools and universities or how many largely pointless EDI initiatives they’re forced to pretend to care about at work.

I do agree that FWR posters who say that women’s rights are the main determinant of their voting decisions are probably not very representative of society (and there’s probably some rhetoric at play). Most people probably do agree that the dire state of the economy and the disaster that is currently NHS provision and things like that really are the most important issues.

But a finding that politicians are self serving and want to distract the public from their own failures feels totally fair. Whatever they’re using as a squirrel.

People have always voted according to values and over-arching perspectives, not just bread and butter issues. This, i suspect, is what people are talking about when they talk about 'culture wars'.

Now that society has fragmented and there is little unity - especially in this age of social and digital media with ever more individualistic options; people don't all watch the same few tv programmes like they used to, and so on.......of course such issues are going to become even more pronounced.

Politics is about our visions for society as well as about taxation and the NHS.

And being full on 'woke' - the Independent doesn't approve of the fact that their pet ideologies and preferences are now receiving some push back - now that the public has become more aware. They'd prefer to have their ideological hegemony undisturbed by the common masses.

Culture wars can be very localised. More than half of the population may not have an issue about immigration but if my local MP wasnt outspoken about it, hes not got a chance of being re-elected.

The gaza Israeli mess wouldnt be a top election issue nationally, but it is a problem for some MPs.

If a school has a well known problem with gender woo, it may impact on a local election.

Everyone knows this, saying it isn't is just party faithful trying to convince themselves otherwise.

well, labor pretend to think men who identify as women are the most oppressed group in the world ever, and that some women can have penises, so the Tories pretend to care about the opposite. You can’t possibly tell me that labour really believe in ladydick and that putting rapists in prison with women is a fucking brilliant idea, so I can only conclude that if one party didn’t pretend to believe in utter garbage, the other party wouldn’t pretend to care about the harm the utter garbage the other party are pretending to believe in will do to women.

I do agree that FWR posters who say that women’s rights are the main determinant of their voting decisions are probably not very representative of society (and there’s probably some rhetoric at play). Most people probably do agree that the dire state of the economy and the disaster that is currently NHS provision and things like that really are the most important issues.

I agree and that is a HUGE problem, as both of the 'big' issues, economy and NHS in this example should all be addressed on a sex based basis. Many women are dissatisfied with NHS provision and how they are treated in it. The economy is causing serious problems for SAHM and working mothers trying to afford decent child care, with many having to make painful decisions about upping their hours.

Women have the vote, but I confess it frustrates me sometimes that more women actually don't vote along the issues that will particularly affect them. We are largely apathetic, content to have a 'women's minister' working within a misogynistic system, who largely talk and make noises often in no particular fine detail about 'empowering more women into work' or nods to domestic violence or occasionally children. But not in any real meaningful way, or we wouldn't have so many food banks and experienced a baby formula milk crisis and we certainly wouldn't be sanctioning women with children in the benefit system for some examples.

The threat to women's essential existence as women is perhaps the ONLY women's issue to get broad political attention and it is referred disparagingly as mere 'culture wars' and most women according to this poll don't even consider it serious enough to influence their voting policies.

I do appreciate that people are individuals and don't have to vote according to group heuristics, but still...

www.kcl.ac.uk/news/public-increasingly-see-politicians-as-stoking-culture-wars-study-finds

Interestingly, the data show that while a majority think that politicians exaggerate culture wars for their own nefarious purposes, a majority also think that culture wars are a serious real world problem. There is a LOT of data there, and the Independent have cherry picked.

Thanks for pointing that out, will try and find time to look.

I think part of the problem is (yet again) how the media reports it. So they will happily stoke up the culture wars themselves, on some of the smaller issues, eg clothes, pronouns, compared to as said up thread, the end conclusion of gender ID eg the impact on women's health provision and many other areas of women's lives that are impacted negatively because of sex discrimination.

Perhaps we could start of new slogan of "No self ID until sex discriminaton has been defeated".

Although are language is now so mangled and can see that many wouldn't get the point.

We know from the Denton's report that the last thing trans activists want is for their proposals to be made public. Essentially reports like this state that law changes shouldn't be made public and up for public debate.

Also these are misleading because only 1% are interested in transgender rights. This is assumed that 1% are either for or against, whilst 99% don't care either way. I believe that it is actually 1% who are pro-trans rights and it is important to them, 99% don't care about trans people and their rights.

This will be worded as "do you support trans rights?", not "do you support trans rights to infringe on your rights?".

It seems to me that there are a couple different things people could mean by this.

And it's not really easy to unpick what people are thinking about it and how it might impact their voting.

So, for example, something like gender affirming care for kids, or men in women's prisons.

In my experience most people think men should never be in women's prisons, and that there should be very strict limits on gender affirming care. And they also think these are "serious" things, not frivolous.

So who is it, in their minds, who is creating or inflaming the culture war?

Or is it simply that this survey only covers those people who have decided how to vote and/ or to actually cast their vote? There was a recent survey showing 11% of men and 25% of women are undecided. It may just be that these are the people who care passionately about women's rights? 🙄

Its worth reading the press release from KCL for the study figures, as it is more interesting. I am reposting the link as the one above seems to have got some stray characters added to the end so that you just get an error message. Hope MN's buggy software doesn't add them again! https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/public-increasingly-see-politicians-as-stoking-culture-wars-study-finds

Not sure how these figures can be matched with those saying they aren't an election issue:

The public do not see this as a purely manufactured issue: people are still far more likely to see culture wars as a real-life problem (49%) rather than one that only exists in the media and on social media (22%). And for the first time, a majority (52%) now say culture wars are a serious problem for UK society and politics, an increase on the 43% who said the same three years ago.

This is interesting - the last paragraph:

In the last three years the public have become less likely to say there is a great deal or fair amount of tension between various groups in the UK today.
The biggest change is in perceived divisions between Leavers and Remainers: in 2020, 78% thought there was at least a fair amount of tension between these two groups, but this has since declined to 58%.
Over the same period, the share of the public who see tension between those who support different political parties fell from 75% to 64%, while the proportion who said the same about immigrants and people born in the UK also declined, albeit to a lesser extent, from 80% to 74%.
One exception is the share of the public who say there is tension between men and women, which has remained relatively steady, at 32% in 2023, compared with 28% in 2020.

Although if you go on to read the concluding comments, it seems that in fact people blame the media as much as politicians for stoking up culture wars.

“Over the last few years, this research programme has tracked an intensifying story on culture wars across multiple strands: awareness and media coverage are rising, alongside a public that both continues to believe that the UK is divided and that culture wars are a real, serious problem, but also thinks that the media and politicians are exaggerating the problem. Meanwhile ‘woke’ and ‘anti-woke’ prompt very different reactions depending on someone’s age, gender and political stance.

When they say media etc are exaggerating the problem, do they mean saying it is worse than it is, or actually making the issues worse?

When they say media etc are exaggerating the problem, do they mean saying it is worse than it is, or actually making the issues worse?

I think the implication is that papers are exaggerating, but I suspect that those answering (depending on the wording of the question) could have thought either.