The polarisation problem: can we speak across the divide?

Recorded at the Battle of Ideas festival 2024 on Sunday 20 October at Church House, Westminster.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION

It is almost a cliché to note how ‘bitterly divided’ and polarised politics and culture has become. The UK’s summer riots revealed a deeply troubled society, with different groups in our towns and cities seeming to live parallel lives. Meanwhile, polarised abuse is ubiquitous on social media. No doubt algorithms keep us trapped in ‘echo chambers’, but the sense that there’s less willingness to engage with, or even hear, the views from the ‘other side’ is pervasive. Straw men are the order of the day, rather than steel-manning arguments.

Indeed, we don’t agree on what problems we face, let alone the solutions. In fact, we often presume the problem is each other. We even seem to speak different languages – sure, we communicate in the same native tongue, but we can’t agree on the basic meaning of words. For example, what does ‘far-right’ mean when it is promiscuously applied? Likewise, many who run institutions seem fluent in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion lingo, while millions become tongue-tied when faced with acronyms such as LGBTQI+, or trip-over linguistic hurdles thrown up by prescriptive language codes.

Beyond describing this polarisation, what’s to be done? Calling for more civility and a better standard of debating is undoubtedly a positive initial step. Yet often those who claim they want to make exchanges less toxic, preaching a kumbaya ‘be kind’ approach, advocate for censorship which, in turn, only creates more polarisation.

Consider the core message from Labour culture secretary Lisa Nandy when she declared that the ‘era of culture wars is over’. ‘In recent years we’ve found multiple ways to divide ourselves from one another’, she told her new staff at DCMS, ‘changing that is the mission of this department’. For many, this ‘nothing to see here’ approach read as an order to ‘shut up’. Indeed, Nandy’s colleague, the education secretary Bridget Phillipson, dumped the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act for similar reasons, arguing that it was an example of the Conservatives’ ongoing ‘culture war’ against Britain’s institutions. For technocrats, polarisation is merely a nuisance that gets in the way of efficient governance. Labour may be desperate to draw a line under all those tetchy debates about trans rights, racial identity politics and free speech, but isn’t that asking one side to accept defeat rather than achieving genuine peace?

Is it possible to encourage genuine pluralistic debate without sacrificing your principles and ideals? After all, it’s no good pretending to get along if our political divisions represent real problems that need solving. Can we transcend our acrimonious personalised differences in an era of individual and group tribalism? Is identity politics the problem, rather than polarisation? And if the culture wars aren’t over, can we argue our way out of them?

SPEAKERS
Dr Calum TM Nicholson
director of research, Danube Institute

Max Sanderson
assistant managing editor, Guardian

Tom Slater
editor, spiked; co-host, spiked podcast and Last Orders

Dr Kathleen Stock
columnist, UnHerd; co-director, The Lesbian Project; author, Material Girls: why reality matters for feminism

CHAIR
Claire Fox
director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!