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What exactly is British culture? It is something that both Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick have struggled to articulate during the Conservative Party’s protracted leadership election. Badenoch argued that some cultures were superior to others, but then could not explain exactly which cultures she meant. Jenrick warned that immigration was threatening English culture – but at the time could not explain what exactly English culture was.
There are a number of theories as to why both candidates struggled. The wrong thing is to think that they had a hard time because there is no such thing as English or British culture. That is clearly so. My own family is spread over three continents. We have a shared family culture, but we also have our own English, American and South African cultures.
This is true even despite the fact that the part of my family that would pass muster with the English ethnonationalists – the white South African part that can trace its ancestry deep into the English past – is the least culturally English. There is no doubt that a country in which 74 percent of the population had the same culture, values and beliefs as white South Africans would be a very different country to England and Wales, where 74 percent of people are white British. Culture evolves, changes and is shaped by events and crises – just like everything else.
You know it when you see it. Although the world has yet to produce a South African version of it The officeAnyone who watches a few episodes of the American and British versions can see a different sensibility and a subtly different worldview, as can anyone who picks up a copy of the long-running South African cartoon Mrs & Eva can see something completely different at work. That doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy it or can’t enjoy it Peanuts as British; I’m just saying that if Charles Schulz had moved to Britain as a child, he would have produced something completely different. I’m not going to pretend that this list is exhaustive, but there is a clear set of British cultural mores, including understatement, a commitment to scatological humor and an obsession with class, that heavily influence most British cultural products.
This is not to say that a United Kingdom without distinctly British comedy or drama would be any less safe, cohesive or successful. The emphasis that something must contribute to ‘community cohesion’ or national prosperity to be meaningful is part of the reason why both Badenoch and Jenrick struggled to define what ‘English’ or ‘British’ culture could be.
It is, of course, ridiculous to suggest that understatement, crude humor or an obsession with class are important for maintaining the health of a nation. In terms of community cohesion, national prosperity and the rest, what really matters to Britain is liberalism, religious tolerance, respect for people’s individual choices and their own bodily autonomy. So in a sense, what difference does it make if those values lose their quintessentially British accent?
But the cultural traits in question are worth preserving, because without them you won’t get a cultural output as varied as Charlie Brooker’s Philomena Cunk and the video game. MediEvil. These things are good in themselves.
And while in a globalized economy you’re not going to compete for arts and entertainment based on a shared set of broad, state-sustaining liberal values, neither will small and medium-sized countries like Britain and South Africa. are able to maintain their own distinctive cultures without any form of government subsidy.
This is what successive governments in France have recognized with their support for French-language film and television. All British governments are indebted to the progressive thinking of the Conservative government of the 1920s in setting the BBC license fee. If you care about preserving a distinctive British or English culture, and not just generic ‘this could be any liberal democracy’ liberalism, then the BBC is the only game in town.
Yet both Jenrick and Badenoch were explicitly hostile to the company last week. Badenoch described it as a tool of the left, while Jenrick, without any apparent thought or consideration, said he was “strongly tempted” to support the abolition of the license fee. But there is no obvious way to produce or sustain a shared national culture or identity that is not through the public broadcasters in general and the BBC in particular. Whatever annoyances the political output causes to MPs of all stripes, they should remember that the enterprise provides a cultural service that they cannot easily replace.
stephen.bush@ft.com
