The ’culture war’ is pouring petrol on the fire that's been burning the community out of community politics for a while. Here's a thread about why that should scare you

Early on in my political journey, I faced a lot of criticism because of how invested I was in being able to tackle structural inequalities and faults in local economic systems as an aspiring councillor. I was told I wasn't good enough, because I didn't care enough about my ward.

And that's a worryingly prevalent idea in community politics. Councillors who think that being a councillor begins and ends with pointing at pavement parking, potholes and poo - occasionally spicing things up by opposing some affordable housing or paying for the odd flower bed.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pointing at potholes as much as the next aspiring councillor BUT doing ’pavement politics’ without also fighting for systemic progress is like trying to fight a forest fire with a watering can. It's rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

I'll fill out pothole repair forms and deliver street letters until my fingers bleed for my residents - I'm a dedicated community activist - but if I do that without also trying to improve the world they live in then I'm just tinkering around the edges of their problems.

When we tell people that being a community politician means tackling narrowly defined ’local issues’, and select candidates, and elect politicians, based on their ability to campaign on those issues, we bypass the community entirely.

What does this have to do with the culture war, you ask? Because the culture war is all about communities. It's a war between liberating the marginalised vs keeping them in the margins.

While it might seem like MPs are the frontline in the fight against the systemic effects of marginalisation - its really local councillors. Policing, youth work, housing, education, green spaces, clean air, affordable healthy diets, economic opportunity - they're local issues.

Things like racial justice, economic reform, gender, sexuality etc are already seen as risky vote losers in local campaigning - better to stick to potholes, everyone hates potholes - and an ever more polar ‘culture war’ climate pushes those issues to the edges more now than ever.

One major consequence of this is that it lets bigots off the hook and onto the ballot paper - because who is asking? A homophobe and a LGBT+ rights activist look the same pointing at potholes.

People from marginalised groups, & those who fight for them, are seen as even more risky. Picking ’token’ BAME, women, lgbt+, disabled etc candidates is taking a side in the culture war. Pandering to the ’metropolitan elite’ over the caricatured ’working class’ battleground.

The collapse of the ‘red wall’ being blamed on Labour being so invested in tackling economic and social inequality that they ’forgot’ about real working-class issues is just one of the consequential narratives of this phenomenon.

And with Kier Starmer currently hiding behind a lampost on trans issues at the moment, we see the start of what that does to our politics. The issues that impact people in communities - civil rights, inequality and economic empowerment - aren’t /really/ ’community’ politics.

When we tell politicians that they can sit out of the ’culture war’ - require it even - we leave the people who need community politics the most without it. We’re pointing at potholes on dead high streets, ’defending green space’ in a housing crisis...

We’re at pride parades that our trans constituents can't go to because they can't use public bathrooms that match their gender, scowling at pavement parking while poor local residents scrape together what little change they have for expensive bus services (if they get one at all)

We’ve forgotten the roots of community politics - the ’left behind’ starting social housing co-ops, community centres, fighting for fairer funding & empowering themselves as they fought the system for equality - and the
’culture war’ is a distraction from returning to that.

And if we’re not fighting those issues on a local level - and the big boys in Westminster are too busy splashing £900k on union jack paint in between imprisoning people for a decade for tearing down statues - then who is?

Social progress is not linear - pushing forward and not being pushed back is playing whack-a-mole against people who stand to profit from a less equal world. If ’winning’ the culture war means losing those fights then we have a duty to lose - and that doesn't win council seats.

Unless we stop feeding the myth - because that's what it is, there is no culture war. Every time we give credence to it, select our candidates and pick our battles with it in mind, we carve a niche in reality for it to manifest. We could - and should - end it tomorrow.