Spare a moment for Liz Truss, minister for women and equalities, whose literacy and numeracy skills were apparently damaged by being educated about discrimination. “While we were taught about racism and sexism,” she claimed, reflecting on her childhood schooling, “there was too little time spent making sure everyone could read and write”.
It was a sentence that encapsulated the spirit of her flagship speech this week: misguided efforts to tackle entrenched bigotries against minorities hinder efforts to address the basic needs of the majority. It’s clear that the Conservatives intend to encourage resentment of those who advocate equality to further stoke a culture war. But there was another key takeaway from the speech: the chutzpah of a British right that has spent a decade stripping away social provision now claiming that the left is fixated on “identity politics” at the expense of class-based inequalities.
Truss assailed Birmingham city council for “promoting new streets named Diversity Grove and Equality Road – as if that counts as real change”. Aside from the point that, if a council was commemorating Winston Churchill, it is doubtful Truss would be ridiculing the futility of symbolism, the real issue is the fact that the council’s funding has been slashed in half since 2010. Spending on housing fell by over a half while adult social care was hit by nearly 15%, fuelling hardship and widening inequalities.
Replicating the devastatingly successful strategy of Boris Johnson in the last election, Truss behaved as though the Conservatives haven’t been running the country for a decade and it wasn’t their policies that created economic inequality. These issues include 600,000 children being driven into relative poverty since 2010, tens of thousands forced to rely on food banks, and soaring numbers in overcrowded housing. Over the last decade, schools with the most deprived pupils have been clobbered with the biggest falls in per-pupil spending, damaging educational outcomes for the most disadvantaged. The Conservatives have poured fuel over already raging fires, then claimed their opponents have no interest in putting them out.
The minister for women and equalities pointedly remarked that economic inequality is an issue faced disproportionately by “white working-class children”. But many of those fighting against economic oppression are in fact black, Asian or minority ethnic. It is a stubborn, inarguable fact that nearly half of black and minority-ethnic households live below the poverty line, that nearly a quarter of British Bangladeshi households are overcrowded, and that unemployment is highest amongst British Pakistani workers. None of this detracts from the need to combat the social miseries afflicting millions of white people – who are oppressed because of their class, rather than the colour of the skin – it simply means recognising that racism too is a driver of injustice that needs to be specifically addressed.
Those campaigners being vilified for ignoring material concerns in favour of “identity politics” are in fact the very people who most passionately champion policies that benefit working-class people. Anti-racism campaigners fight against police stop-and-search powers, which are disproportionately used against young black men; but they may also campaign for free university tuition encouraging more working-class young people to attend university, or better rights for renters, or increased investment in our National Health Service. The strength of progressive movements has always been their ability to find common ground when the right can see only division, and their focus on fighting for structural change rather than individual fixes.
However, there is a profound warning here for the left, because Truss’s poison may prove effective. It represents a clear break from the past. Thatcher abhorred class politics. “Class is a communist concept,” she said. “It groups people as bundles and sets them against one another.” But today’s Tories have reconceptualised it. Class isn’t about economic relationships – about access to capital, and workers being exploited by bosses for profit – but a cultural identity. Theresa May introduced it in her notorious 2016 “citizens of nowhere” speech, telling working-class people that the liberal elite “find your patriotism distasteful, your concerns about immigration parochial” – but now it will be taken to a new level. The government intends to wage war on social values that are articles of faith for the young but feared by many older voters who represent the Tory core vote.
There is, to be sure, a well of resentment in the electorate for the Tories to tap. The trap for Labour is to accept this vision of the UK’s cultural mapping – to concede on minority rights, alienating their own voters and emboldening the Tories further. A courageous defence of minority rights combined with a policy prospectus aimed at improving the living conditions of working-class people – irrespective of background – is Labour’s only viable response. Anything else is as morally bankrupt as it is politically doomed.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
