Tag: brexit

LIBERALISM, CLASS POLITICS AND THE CULTURE WARS

September 29, 2022 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on changing public attitudes and the culture wars, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 25 September 2022, under the headline “Britain is becoming a more liberal and open society. But we are ever more divided too”. “The ‘woke’ outlook on national identity, national sentiment and immigration now tends to be the more popular”; and “whereas it might once have represented a widespread view, now the ‘anti-woke’ position on ‘culture war’ issues often appear to be more of a […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: anti-racism, brexit, british politics, british social attitudes, culture wars, john curtice, liberalism, social polarisation, wokeness

INEQUALITY AND POLITICAL DIVIDES

March 3, 2021 by Kenan Malik

. This essay, on perceptions of inequality in Britain, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 28 February 2021, under the headline “The left/right divide still exists. But it’s struggling to escape the lure of identity politics”. First, the good news. Britons see inequality as a major problem and divide broadly along traditional political lines in their attitudes towards it. Then, the bad news. Britons are also inclined to see inequalities as driven by individual behaviour as much as […]

Categories: Britain, Philosophy & Ethics, Politics • Tags: bobby duffy, brexit, british politics, conservative party, covid 19, identity politics, individualism, inequality, labour party, pandemic, racism, reluctant individualism

ON BEING WHITE AND ON BEING WORKING CLASS

October 20, 2020 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the debate about the “white working class”, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 18 October 2020, under the headline “Being white won’t hold boys back. Being working class just might”. White, working-class boys fare badly at school. About that, almost everyone is agreed. More contested is the reason why. Last week, the first witnesses gave evidence to the commons select committee on education’s investigation into “Left Behind White Pupils From Disadvantaged Backgrounds”. The hearing made […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Race & Immigration • Tags: brexit, education, identity politics, inequality, left behind, racism, schools, white privilege, white working class, working class

FROM REFERENDUM TO BREXIT (WELL, SORT OF)

February 1, 2020 by Kenan Malik

So, farewell then, EU. Well, sort of. Almost four years ago, on the eve of the 2016 referendum , I wrote about why, whatever the result, the underlying issues would not be addressed: But, if the world will not end for Britain, neither will the key issues at the heart of the Brexit debate have been resolved – or even properly addressed. Hostility to the EU, not just in Britain, but throughout Europe, has been driven by frustrations about democracy and […]

Categories: Britain • Tags: brexit, british politics, immigration, labour party, left, populism, racism, working class

ON THE DEGRADATION OF POLITICAL DEBATE

November 25, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on contempt for the electorate and degradation of political debate, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on passport checks in Oxford.) It was published on 24 November 2019, under the headline ‘Once, politicians treated voters as adults. Now they are contemptuous’. Two men go head to head in a TV debate. They wrestle with Britain’s relationship to Europe, the meaning of sovereignty, the nature of global influence, the question of job losses. […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: brexit, british politics, everyman library, jonathan rose, roy jenkins, tony benn, working class

A BREXIT POLL NOT AS SHOCKING AS SOME WANT TO BELIEVE

October 26, 2019 by Kenan Malik

‘Most Leave voters… think violence towards MPs is a ‘price worth paying’ for Brexit.’ ‘A majority of Remain voters… think protests in which members of the public are badly injured are a ‘price worth paying’ to stop Brexit.’ So claimed a press release from Cardiff University about a Brexit opinion poll published last week. Professor Richard Wyn Jones, director of Cardiff University’s Wales Governance Centre, and co-director of the Future of England Survey, was ‘genuinely shocked’ by the results. Newspapers, and Twitter, […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: brexit, brexit violence, british politics, opinion polls

THE SHIFTING LINES OF THE PRESENT AND THE PAST

October 14, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the changing character of anti-German chauvinism and the contested lines of Britain’s relationship to its past, was my Observer column this week. It was published on 6 October 2019, under the headline ‘We can mention the war. Should we now talk about Britain’s darker history?’ ‘I wonder if Kenan Malik is clear that the “Don’t mention the war” episode of Fawlty Towers is intended to make fun of the British obsession with the Second World War that he criticises?’ So wrote an […]

Categories: Britain, History, Politics • Tags: angela merkel, anti-german chauvinism, brexit, don't mention the war, far right, fawlty towers, germany, john cleese, nazism, nigel farage, peterloo, racism, richard tice, susan neiman

HAS THE RETWEET RUINED THE WORLD?

July 29, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on Twitter, engagement ad democracy, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Bryan Magee.) It was published on 7 July 2019, under the headline ‘Twitter won’t ruin the world. But constraining democracy would’. Has the retweet ruined the world? Chris Wetherell, the software developer who built Twitter’s retweet button, thinks so. Introduced in 2009, retweeting transformed the social media landscape, he suggests, by allowing people to pass on information without having bothered to […]

Categories: Politics, Science & Technology • Tags: brexit, democracy, donald trump, education, fake news, social media, social polarisation, technology, twitter

CLASS REALITIES AND CULTURAL DIVIDES

June 3, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the importance of class as a political issue, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on Boris Johnson and lies.) It was published on 2 June 2019, under the headline ‘Forget culture wars. Class is still the defining force shaping British lives’. If you are a woman living in working-class Middlesbrough, you are likely to die seven years earlier than if you were living in affluent Hart in Hampshire. If you are a […]

Categories: Britain, Class, Politics • Tags: brexit, british politics, Class, conservatives, john cleese, labour party, working class

THE CORROSIVENESS OF BULLSHIT

February 4, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on bullshit in contemporary politics, was my Observer column this week. It was published in the Observer, 3 February 2019, under the headline ‘Bullshit, not lies, is the corrosive influence blighting our public life’. ‘Bullshit’, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt observed in a seminal essay on the subject, ‘is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.’ He wrote that in 2005. But he might have been watching recent episodes of This Week, BBC’s late-night politics […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: andrew neil, brexit, british politics, bullshit, experts, harry frankfurt, james delingpole, ken livingstone, michael gove, technocratic politics, this week, venezuela

WHEN DEMOGRAPHY BECOMES POLITICS

January 28, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on politics and demography, was my Observer column this week. It was published in the Observer, 27 January 2019, under the headline ‘Demography is not destiny. Politics should be about winning minds’. Peter Kellner’s ‘crossover day’ has caused some commotion. Last Saturday, according to the veteran pollster, Britain became a majority Remain nation through demographic changes alone. Kellner’s calculations suggested that in the period since the 2016 referendum, sufficient old folk (who largely voted Leave) had died and enough teenagers, overwhelmingly Remain, had reached […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: brexit, british politics, crossover day, democracy, demography, identity politics, peter kellner, political demography, youth

SOCIALLY POLARISED, POLITICALLY PARALYSED

January 14, 2019 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on the peculiar character of contemporary social polarisation, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on the calls for the sacking of reactionary lecturer John Finnis.) It was published in the Observer, 13 January 2019, under the headline ‘A divided Britain is not new. So why do today’s schisms seem intractable?’ A few years ago, we stayed in a cottage in the Yorkshire Dales. One night, we went for a drink in the […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: anna soubry, brexit, british politics, left, polarisation, semiotics, social movements, symbols, tribalism

POSH MAY BE PASSÉ BUT CONTEMPT IS NOT

December 31, 2018 by Kenan Malik

This essay, on changing attitudes to class, was my Observer column this week. (The column included also a short piece on cookery books.) It was published in the Observer, 30 December 2018, under the headline ‘Posh is so passé – today’s elite prefers the myth of the meritocracy’. I’m not posh,’ an irate David Dimbleby told the Today presenter John Humphrys. ‘I come from Wales, as you do.’ Dimbleby, who this month stepped down as host of BBC’s Question Time, was being interviewed by Humphrys, […]

Categories: Britain, Class • Tags: brexit, Class, david dimbleby, david runciman, democracy, donald trump, education, elite, elitism, meritocracy, michael young, populism, poshness, privilege, richard dawkins, technocracy, upper class, working class

THINKING ALLOWED ON THE WHITE WORKING CLASS

March 2, 2018 by Kenan Malik

. This is a discussion on BBC Radio 4’s Thinking Allowed programme on ‘the white working class’ , in which I took part with Gurminder Bhambra and Noam Gidron. . The painting is ‘The Workers’ by Walker Scott.

Categories: Class, Politics • Tags: brexit, donald trump, identity politics, racism, white working class, working class

TOO POLARISED? OR NOT ENOUGH?

December 24, 2017 by Kenan Malik

This essay was published in the Observer, 24 December 2017, under the headline ‘A Britain of common values was always a myth. By arguing, we shape ourselves’. What links the results of the Catalonia elections last week with the row in Britain over the proposed new blue passport? The one is the latest expression of the polarised character of electorates, the other of the way that the most arbitrary, irrelevant issues can become the focus of intense political controversy. Neither […]

Categories: Britain, Politics • Tags: 1984/85 miners strike, brexit, british politics, donald trump, protests, thatcherism, vietnam war, working class