Why Tories are opening a new front in the culture wars

Sometimes it is extraordinarily easy to spot a political party’s tactics, and the Conservatives’ reliance on “wedge” issues is becoming a little embarrassing. Instead of wanting to talk about nurses’ pay or cutting waiting lists, Steve Barclay, the health secretary, wants to stoke up an argument about “sex specific” language and trans patients on hospital wards. Thus, on the same day we have Mr Barclay talking about “sex specific language” and trans patients on hospital wards, closely followed by home secretary Suella Braverman announcing changes in the rules on trans prisoners. Other fronts include race, after Ms Braverman’s declaration that multiculturalism has “failed”, followed by business secretary Kemi Badenoch’s possibly unfounded claim that Britain is the best country in the world in which to be black. Some ministers, such as energy secretary Clare Coutinho and Mark Harper, the transport secretary, have even begun scrapping with an imaginary enemy – fabricating claims about a “meat tax” planned by Labour, or local councils imposing Taliban-like limits on the movement of citizens in so-called 15-minute cities.