Does the cost of living crisis mean an end to culture war?
People are angry about the cost of living crisis. But will conservatives be able to hold back from blaming the public as the disaster unfolds?
The political scientists think that a cost of living crisis means the end of culture war.
But does it?
Read this quote from the incoming Institute of Economic Affair's Director of Strategy, Alex Morton.
"As head of policy for the Kemi Badenoch campaign, my goal was to inject fresh thinking on topics such as the interaction between the 'culture wars' and economics, the dangers of an arbitrary Net Zero target, a more focused and efficient smaller state that allows for substantial tax cuts, and overturning the declinist Treasury orthodoxy on growth. We wanted to show how the values of personal responsibility, accountability and freedom can solve the huge problems our society is grappling with.”
With the cost of living crisis about to move into a horrific new stage, progressives would naturally love the debate to focus on the policy and technicalities of getting more support to people so they can survive.
But what if conservatives refuse to meet on this terrain?
Despite being repeatedly slow to act in response to the crises that have hit since 2020, the Conservatives will surely have to act on the cost of living, eventually.
So how will they sell it?
“Moral strength”
In the mid-1990s the political psychologist and guru of framing, George Lakoff, wrote a paper about the metaphor of “moral strength” and how it was central to the way conservatives think about society.
In the paper, which you can read here for free, Lakoff asserts that for conservative minded people:
Being good is being an upright citizen,
Being bad is being low,
Doing evil is failing, and
Evil is a force (both an internal and an external force).
To be an upstanding member of society one must be strong enough and have the “moral backbone" or "fibre" to “resist” or “stand up" to evil.
However, moral strength has to be “earned”. People need to build it, like they build muscle: through “discipline” and “self-denial”.
"Punishment is good for you"
“One consequence of this metaphor is that punishment can be good for you,” Lakoff wrote.
There's a temptation for some conservatives to frame economic hardship as "character building.” It’s implicit in some of the articles that creeping in the right wing media, lecturing people on how to cut their costs, see the below from the Times.
It should be obvious that this this is dangerous territory for Conservative politicians. People I’ve spoken to who are regularly focus grouping the public report that the traditional British pastime of “kicking down” at the poor has quietened recently, with people less willing to blame others who are struggling. But as the crisis winds on and even eases this attitude will doubtless change.
In the meantime the temptation is always there, (especially among Conservatives who fail to “read the room”) to fall back on the moral strength framing.
“Cleansing" and “surgery"
In May this year with the cost of living crisis barely gaining momentum, an anonymous government source briefed a BBC journalist:
“…. there has already been enough pain relief for people…. it’s time to do the surgery that the economy requires.” The BBC journalist who tweeted this out, subsequently deleted it.
This medical metaphor is a popular one whenever governments want to justify socially harmful policies, like austerity.
Of course, in the real world, “the economy” is us: it's flesh and bone humans, children, the sick, the elderly, people who have lost jobs, people who can’t afford to feed themselves. WE are the economy so it’s people like you and me, our kids, our elderly relatives who will have economic surgery done to us - not some mythical “economy” that is separate and abstract.
“Self-control”
To get around this, Lakoff argues, conservatives turn the metaphor of moral strength inwards. As things get worse people will be told about the importance of “self-control”. The purpose here is to internalise the cost of living crisis, and show people that what really needs to be straightened out in society is “one’s own will.”
We’re already seeing hints of it, as with the comments of Conservative Party grandee Edwina Curry this week.
People at the sharp end of the cost of living crisis will be scolded and told they must develop the willpower to exercise "control over their bodies and over their desires” (wear thicker jumpers, eat porridge, stop expecting the government to solve your failings).
If the public starts to pine for lasting structural change to deal with the problems highlighted by the crisis, we can expect to hear warnings not to "give in to the temptation of envy” not to covet the wealth and goods of the rich. People will be urged not to “self-indulge” in anger or frustration because “self-indulgence is a vice, while frugality and self-denial are virtues.”
Lakoff argued that the moral strength metaphor “is the one that matters most”, he said:
“It determines much of conservative thought and language - as well as social policy. It’s behind the view that social programs are immoral and promote evil because they are seen as working against self-discipline and self-reliance…… welfare and affirmative action are immoral because they work against self-reliance…. moral strength underlies conservative opposition to providing condoms to high school students and clean needles to drug addicts…. The morally strong should be able to ‘Just Say No!’…. [and] If it is always possible to muster the discipline to just say no to drugs or sex and to support yourself in this land of opportunity, then failure to do so is laziness and social forces cannot explain your poverty.”
Framing leads policy, not the other way around.
The metaphor of moral strength is powerful because it lays the foundation for regressive and socially harmful policies while short circuiting alternative explanations (about failing markets, the distribution of wealth and income or the burden of taxation), in effect blocking or distracting people from hearing alternatives.
And note that the framing comes first, before policy is even uttered. Without a powerful prior framing, policy is too abstract, no-one listens or hears it.
But held within the frame of moral strength, the mind has something to latch on to. Moral strength is the go to framing that conservatives use to prime or cultivate people’s minds for their preferred set of policy solutions.
What’s the alternative: the “connected economy”?
Whatever your background or wealth, we all want the same things: food on the table, a warm home and hope for a better future for ourselves and our kids.
An alternative, progressive, way of talking about the economy and the cost of living crisis, is by emphasising that the economy is us and that we are intimately connected and entwined within it.
An empirically tested example of this, is the "connected economy” frame used in this TUC video here.
It’s really well worth a watch.
But what do you think?
Are the political scientists are right, is culture war dead?
What do you reckon to Lakoff’s moral strength metaphor? Convincing or not?
And finally, I’d love to hear any examples you have of progressive economic framings that build on the “connected economy” framing. It’s through ideas like these that we’ll find our way to convincing the public that we are all worth more than the dismal “moral strength” framing and that a better world for us all is possible.
Lakoff's moral strength is a generally convincing metaphor of how conservatives think/communicate about lots of things. But, at the same time (and you have no idea how much it pains me to say this) the poli sci types are sort of right this time, the culture war is going to sleep for a while (not dead.)
Asleep because it can come back as the crisis eases. But asleep because during this crisis too many people are affected for the "moral strength + look down on those failures who are failing" frame that is conservatism to work right now. Let me propose that while there are "swing voters" there are also "swing feelers/metaphorists." 20% of the population at each end really believes right or left wing frames (as outlined reasonably by Lakoff) - the middle bit believe bits of both and what they believe at any moment in time is a combo of their past experiences and the current situation. What is grim for the Conservative Party right now is food and petrol have gone up noticeably. You can frame "moral strength" around turn the heating down, but the loose end of the Tory coalition gets irritable when their personal prosperity takes a hit - and it's taking a hit from a number of angles.
Meadway thinks the government can ride this out with a ton of borrowing, energy support and tax cuts - and he's probably right. Where I differ is I'm not sure the moral strength frame allows them to do it. The pandemic only allowed them to step beyond the frame in policy because it was a fundamentally extraordinary event.
As for the Connected frame - this reminds me of Henry Ford. I think it can work, but I suppose my structuralist view is that while more effective messages help, it's distribution of messages that defines the framing battle.