"A culture war is fundamentally about distraction. You're trying to distract your opponents from issues that you don't want to talk about & move them onto issues that you do". Me in @cnni, on why Johnson is fighting culture wars in the middle of a pandemic edition.cnn.com/2020/06/20/uk/…
"Boris Johnson is fundamentally a newspaper columnist". As governing becomes more difficult, "his reflex is to go back to newspaper commentary ... because that's a way of mobilizing his own base and of throwing a hornet's nest at his opponents". edition.cnn.com/2020/06/20/uk/…
As a public health crisis becomes an economic crisis, distraction becomes both more necessary to govt & more difficult. Either voters will lose their patience with these stunts, "or the stunts are going to have to become nastier and more divisive to hold the public's attention".
As @ProfTimBale puts it, channeling the spirit of de Gaulle, the Prime Minister's team "are hoping to keep the flame of polarization alive by generating other issues that are likely to trigger the same adversarial feelings" as Brexit.
Thanks to @tarajohn for the chance to contribute to such an interesting piece. More here: edition.cnn.com/2020/06/20/uk/…
