Posts Tagged ‘Uncut Awards 2021’

The Uncuts: 2021 Political Awards (Part III)

01/01/2022, 09:46:19 AM

Political Bravery Award: The women who stood up for Gender Critical beliefs

2021 may well go down as the year that it became impossible to ignore the clash between the ongoing campaign for transgender people to be able to self-identify themselves as the opposite sex, and the women’s and children’s rights on which this campaign impinges.

It was also the year when the BBC finally realised Stonewall, at the centre of this campaign in the UK, was a political lobbyist rather than a neutral service provider. And so, it finally left its Stonewall Diversity Champions scheme only after a piece of brilliant radio journalisism by the BBC’s very own Stephen Nolan and David Thompson. It was the two Ulstermen’s ten-part series which methodically exposed the sharp practice that Stonewall had been pulling off for years, with hundreds of companies: assess them for “diversity”, and then sell their services to those same companies to fill the gaps identified. Conflict of interests? Us?

But perhaps most importantly, the “cancellation” of figures who challenge the Stonewall-driven conventional wisdom – that men should be able to get access to women’s spaces by dint of simply saying that they identify as one – continues apace. It continues even to the point of apparently being official Labour policy, much to the dismay of many of its members and voters. Partly for this reason – with a few noble exceptions – it has mostly fallen to non-politicians to take a political stand on this.

Now this year, as for the last several years, J K Rowling – in the face of a furious backlash from the entertainment and literary industries – has been in the news for periodic, uncompromising tweets and articles on women’s rights. To a large extent, she has acted as not just a British but a global figurehead for the many, many women who refuse to be told to pipe down on this issue.

(more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon

The Uncuts: 2021 Political Awards (Part II)

31/12/2021, 07:11:04 PM

Culture War Winners: The England football team

England might have been denied the European Championship, but by the time the final Italian penalty went in, they had won arguably a more significant prize: victors in the battle of bended knee, the England football team effectively ended the main phase of the UK’s culture wars.

Priti Patel, Boris Johnson, various Tory MPs and right-wing commentators had bloviated about “gesture politics” and the Marxist connotations of taking the knee in the run-up to the European Championships. It was the high season of the Johnson premiership and the prevailing narrative was of an extraordinary leader who had used Brexit and cultural values to remake politics in the UK. The attack, like over Brexit, was on the values of the left for being unpatriotic, un-British and in direct opposition to the mainstream view of the country.

At the start, few in politics expected a team of pampered millionaires prone to serial under-performance when it mattered most, to win the argument. But the England team stood, and knelt, together. And most importantly, they won football matches.

This might have turned out very differently had they been dumped out of the tournament in the group stage. But they weren’t, they made it all the way to the final, capturing the imagination of England en route.

Suddenly, a new cast of characters were the ones who were unpatriotic for attacking the national football team. Tory MPs like Lee Anderson, who boycotted England matches because they took the knee, were made to look like fools. Drowned in the hope and adulation of a nation that backed their football team. The polls moved conclusively with the majority for those supporting the knee rising from +13% to +24%.

Unsurprisingly, since then, there has been very little from the Government or its outriders attempting to open new fronts in the culture wars. Their defeat was conclusive and has marked a shift in the battleground of politics. To appropriate the Sun’s headline after the 1992 general election, “It was England wot won it”

Own Goal of the Year: Owen Paterson (more…)

Facebook Twitter Digg Delicious StumbleUpon