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There is happy news, if you can hear it above the babble of social media and the self-interest of some politicians, who would make us hostages to madness. The culture war does not exist in Britain not yet. Some just seek to will it into being for their own ends or emotional imperative.

But Twitter is not life not yet and if we are lucky, it wont ever be. I spend too much time on the platform whatever else it does, it is first with news and sometimes it feels like my head will blow off and roll across the floor. That would be uncomfortable in life.

Yesterday a report was issued by the charity More in Common UK. It is called Dousing the Flames: How leaders can better navigate cultural change in 2020s Britain.

It has done what Twitter cannot. It has dug deep into the data and interviewed more than 10,000 British people in polling or in focus groups over 18 months. It paints a far more benevolent, and hopeful, portrait of this country than we are used to imagining when we read of statues and paintings torn down, or not torn down, and when we doom scroll through social media.

We do not, despite the pleadings of this false mirror, hate each other and we are not at poles. We are not America, which really does have a culture war, with its two opposing sides aligned on almost every issue, facing each other across an abyss, and with guns.

In Britain, we have only a perception of division for now; in 2020, after the Brexit chaos, half of those polled said they had never felt more divided.

But it is a perception because our fault line, rather, is between the highly engaged activists on the Right and Left who are immersed in culture wars and everyone else. Broadly, we divide into seven categories, not two, and there is agreement on a surprising number of issues between these seven. We are not an abyss, but something more interesting. We are a kaleidoscope.

I know that facts are not as fashionable as daydreams, but here they are. More in Common finds that there is broad agreement on many issues in British life. On history and heritage, we are not divided into people who would tear down offending statues (and I believe the Edward Colston statue was offensive: it was opposite the war memorial, it bathed in its goodness) and those who would keep them. That is a delusion, and it should be expunged, because it is frightening.

The majority would prefer offending statues in museums to be given proper context, which should satisfy all reasonable people. The lesson there is that the Colston statue should have been removed from the centre of Bristol long ago: political paralysis is dangerous, and opportunists will always fill the vacuum. The initials of Colstons company were branded on enslaved children. Does anyone, honestly, want to keep his image on a plinth opposite a war memorial?

This knowledge that we are mostly reasonable will amaze both sides in the would-be culture war, and so it makes me smile.

Britons are proud of how far we have already come in creating a more just society and are more progressive than you might think. Some 46 per cent support the broad aims of the Black Lives Matter movements, and in a country where Conservatives have an 80+ majority (35 per cent think it is a bad thing).

And 57 per cent think Gay Pride is a good thing, with 12 per cent against. (In 1987 the country was roundly homophobic, with 75 per cent of people believing same-sex relationships were wrong. In 2019, it was 17 per cent). For MeToo female emancipation it is 41 per cent good to 15 per cent bad.

The lesson from this data is that the country veers towards moderation. It doesnt, on the whole, seek racism, misogyny and homophobia. Those who say it always does, or it always doesnt, are equally dishonest, and equally to be shunned.

There is a problem though, which could animate culture wars from social media and into life: opportunists. Conflict sells. It isnt dull. I also know that speaking to a base even an invented base is comforting for a politician because who doesnt love applause? A culture war is a distraction from more serious problems. Have a problem you cant solve? Start a war. It neednt be a real war or, at least, not yet.

The biggest problem is not the divide, which does not functionally exist, but the way in which people feel shut out of the debate, for their inability their lack of desire to scream at each other on social media.

And most people are worried about the tone of the debate. Fearful of making mistakes (bigotry) or prompting an overreaction (cancelled) they opt out of politics and leave it to the nutters (not a technical term, I give you), and this is dangerous. The wise (responsible) politician will dig in with truth and those unbearable and unfashionable things: nuance and compassion. Its where the country is. So where are they?

But there is happy news at least. The culture wars are, for now at least, a hopeful myth; an understudy hoping to make it on the stage. Think of her as a screaming Tinkerbell. If you dont believe in her, she dies.

See the rest here:
Dont mention the culture wars they arent big here... yet - Telegraph.co.uk