The Great British Moan Off

A Christmas party game provides an insight into the far right's politics of small grievance.

At Christmas we played a card game called "The Great British Moan Off."
The cards had questions framed around an everyday trope that Brits love to whine about: “Who’s most likely to get in to a row when driving?", "Who's most likely to complain in a restaurant?", "Who gets most irate at the casting decisions when a classic movie is remade?"

Every family has its own resident arm chair film critic (“A black James Bond?”) consumer crusader (“I use Amazon because of the free returns”) or healthy lifestyle critic (“Have you seen the latest? Wine is bad for you.”). The game was a litany of “funny cos it’s true” caricatures and was fun to play.

But deep into the game it struck me that the cards’ knowing observations were of a piece with the kind of cultural material the far right use to pollute our politics.

The perfect game for a northern, white working class family gathering eh?

Nigel Farage and the culture warriors have built political careers from “nudge, nudge, wink, winking” to people about stuff like this. When Farage wangs on about the things he does ("Woke Milk") he does so with a cheeky grin on his mush. Half serious, but also half taking the mick.

The whole trick of culture war is to explain people's everyday frustrations through race and gender coded identity politics. To nudge, nudge, wink to the "masses" that the "other" (the "other" being generally women, people of colour, LGBT people, muslims, "the elite" aka "communists") are a threat to "real people's way of life"

For Farage, the presence of soya or almond milk as opposed to good ol fashioned, full fat cow’s milk provides him the cultural raw material to draw an identity based dividing line, to speak to a small, but everyday frustration some of the masses have.

What he’s trying to do (in common with the far right everywhere) is to imply that "the other's" love of soy or almond milk is “yet another” example of the wider assault on the way "normal people" live.

Reducing everything (milk, avocados, coffee - eg "Latte Liberal") to a signifier of political or cultural identity is absolutely the way the right wins a foothold in the public's mind, all the while pushing out other things such as scientific ideas, financial or economic considerations. In this way it’s possible to see how “the economic” in particular ends up being totally absent from the thinking spaces ordinary people inhabit

Farage is a “shit-houser”

In footballing parlance Farage is a "shithouser" and we diligently fall for it.

Because, when it comes to politics lets face it progressives are among the most joyless people in the room. When we see Farage's latest rant, we respond with matronly shock, pearl clutching, tuts and sneers. But in doing so we lend credance to the far right’s populist claim levelled everywhere, that the left are a bunch of boring, out of touch, word policing authoritarian elitists.

We need to react differently, by trying to outcompete Farage on our own terms.

It shouldn't be difficult to hear the frustrations of people right now (if I had to name an emotion that most accurately defines Brits right now it's: frustrated) from floods, to crap public transport, extortionate hospital car park fees to the fact you can't get a reliable 5G signal anywhere on this island.

All of these everyday frustrations have their roots in failed political and economic policy.

There's a smorgasbord of other frustrations to go at too, each of them a bridgehead into the public's mind. Why not speak to these frustrations in a funny, un-earnest way, but offering economic rather than identity based explanations for them? The alternative is to let the likes of Farage keep an uncontested foothold in ordinary people's minds.

Epilogue

At the end of our festive card game the person with the most cards, was crowned "Britain's Greatest moaner," to assembled laughter, derision and fun.

But I'm not going to tell you who "won" the game having accumulated the most cards (it categorically wasn't ME!!!).