Until recently, elections were widely seen as being won or lost on economic grounds.  Yet events such as the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s election as US president have challenged this conventional outlook.  These results had more to do with conservative cultural values than with material interests.  Likewise, the backlash against Brexit and Trump has been mainly focused on defending liberal cultural values, not the state of the economy.  How did culture become more politically salient than economics?

Some say elite interests have prompted this shift.  In this view, the right has politicised culture to manoeuvre poorer citizens into backing policies that favour the rich, such as tax cuts and market deregulation.  This argument has some substance.  Trump’s election and Leave’s success both depended on blue collar voters, and in each instance culture was used as a tool of mobilisation and concealment.

In the US, this sort of politicking has been going on for some time.  The Republican party started provoking the cultural sensitivities of working class Americans following its victory in the 1994 midterms.  During this period, high-profile Republicans like Patrick Buchanan began preaching about the “war for the soul of America” and the left’s threat to “the values of faith, family, and country”.  But while the party talked up the kulturkampf, its policies continued to benefit economic elites.

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