Tens of thousands of Britons have died from coronavirus. But Boris Johnson is stoking a culture war. – CNN

But critics say that instead of tackling the crisis head-on -- perhaps with a reshuffle of his ministerial team; a shakeup of government policy; or the announcement of an inquiry -- Prime Minister Boris Johnson has engaged in a tactic of an altogether more Trumpian style. He has launched a culture war.

And while his government struggles in the face of the onslaught of Covid-19, Johnson announced the merger of two big government departments -- the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), which oversees the UK government's foreign policy, and the Department for International Development (DFID), which runs aid policy. The purpose: To fulfil a policy aim favored by the conservative right that foreign aid should be tied to the UK national interest.

Johnson's government is sitting on a thumping 80-seat majority. It could do anything it wants. Yet experts say the Prime Minister -- a former journalist who is an instinctive campaigner -- appears to be indulging in what amounts to a re-election effort four years before the date of the next poll. The mystery is -- why?

"His reflex is to go back to newspaper commentary and to write columns on statues, to seed stories in the press about trans issues, because that's a way of mobilizing his own base and to throw a hornet's nest at his opponents," Robert Saunders, a British political history expert at Queen Mary University of London, told CNN.

That base is considerably larger than it used to be, and includes many voters in areas that were formerly strongholds of the opposition Labour Party, like the former industrial towns of the English Midlands, Wales and northwest England. Many of those voters were drawn to Johnson by his straightforward electoral promise to "get Brexit done."

That promise was fulfilled when Britain officially left the European Union at the end of March, and the debate switched from an ideological "in or out" battle to the practicalities of trade and fishing rights. With Brexit largely resolved in the minds of the electorate, the Conservatives might be seeking a new way to "reinforce the impression that the Labour Party only stands for liberal, educated young people, and does not really have a sense of what is going on in middle England," said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.

By stoking the divisions that emerged from Brexit, the Prime Minister's team "are hoping to keep the flame of polarization alive by generating other issues that are likely to trigger the same adversarial feelings," he added.

The polemicist

Johnson's dog-whistling added to the straightforward narrative of an island nation under siege, an effective distraction from more prosaic concerns like access to the single market. "A culture war is fundamentally about distraction," Saunders added. "You're trying to distract your opponent from issues that you don't want to talk about and move them onto issues that you do."

Pejorative language

Culture war issues are not just an instrumental technique "to shore up the base and expand it," Bale added. "Some people around Johnson literally believe this stuff and do think traditional British values are under threat from a 'cancel culture,' which they think is inimical to the traditions of this country."

Johnson announced the launch of a Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities, which will also examine why white working-class boys fell behind in school. Downing Street policy chief Munira Mirza has reportedly been tasked with helping to set up it up.

The Prime Minister defended his aide in Parliament on Wednesday, saying he was a huge admirer of Mirza as she is "brilliant thinker about these issues."

Johnson said the new commission would learn "very fast" what changes needed to be made, according to PA news agency.

Encouraging majoritarian fears

"Johnson is a pound shop Trump, slightly more acceptable and less utterly crass," Christine Burns, a trans campaigner and author of "Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows," told CNN. "Just as Brexit emboldened people to be racist," to roll back on transgender rights at such a febrile moment "is not just emboldening people to be transphobic in their language, but also to use physical force," she warned.

The axing of the Department for International Development (DFiD) demonstrated Downing Street's preference for ideology over capacity, according to David Hudson, Professor of Politics and Development at the University of Birmingham.

"It is somewhat astonishing that it has happened right now in a middle of a pandemic [when] the government and civil service are massively stretched," Hudson told CNN. The merger, criticized by three former Prime Ministers, would lead to less transparency on how aid is spent and risks diluting DFID's poverty alleviation agenda, he said.

Johnson defended the move on Tuesday, saying: "for too long, frankly, UK overseas aid has been treated as some giant cashpoint in the sky that arrives without any reference to UK interests or to the values that the UK."

Will Johnson focus on governing rather than rule via press release as Britain's economy nosedives, the country faces "appalling levels of unemployment, and probably further waves of the pandemic?" Saunders asked.

There are one of two routes the UK could go, he added. The public's "patience for these stunts might diminish" and Johnson focusses on "talking about jobs, employment, and health policy," he said. "Or the stunts are going to have to become nastier and more divisive to hold the public's attention."

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Tens of thousands of Britons have died from coronavirus. But Boris Johnson is stoking a culture war. - CNN