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This ‘plain-speaking’ culture war has the potential to turn poisonous

Memo to those who’ve been raucously applauding actor Laurence Fox’s “anti-PC” outburst on Question Time. No, Fox wasn’t “brave” or “refreshing” in dismissing the racism aimed at Meghan Markle. When a mixed-race university lecturer in the audience pointed out that he was speaking as a white privileged male, Fox embarrassed himself by retorting: “I was born like this… So to call me a white privileged male is to be racist – you’re being racist.” Later, he was on Twitter, quoting Martin Luther King. Seriously, Mr Fox, there’s this thing called self-awareness. Why not try it? It may not be quite as painful as you fear. However, he was right to say: “The tide is turning.” This tense sociocultural moment wasn’t just about “white privilege”, it also signalled a new dawn for woke-bashing.

White privilege is complex, but that doesn’t make it any less real. Who has it? All white people perhaps, in certain circumstances, just to varying degrees. So not so much poor white schoolboys with socioeconomic odds stacked against them, or other disadvantaged white groups, but people such as Fox must realise they spend their lives splashing in the stuff. It’s almost fascinating: why are some people (even erudite types such as Fox) so blind to their own advantages – even bizarrely laying claim to victimhood, with all that “I can’t help being born this way” codswallop? This race flip wilfully ignores the power structures, barriers and more that people of colour have to deal with every day. But hey, when did boring old logic ever allow people to let rip?

One quickly realised that the Question Time incident, and the overblown, polarised public reaction, wasn’t just about racism. This was about declaring all-out war on “woke”, an explosion of venom against identity politics that’s been festering for years.

The screeching on both sides obscures the fact that nuance, respect and understanding are more needed than ever. But that’s hard work and tedious so let’s all have a cartoon ding-dong instead. Hence the primal howl of people who feel they’ve spent too long muttering: “You can’t say anything these days.” (I’ve always shuddered at this phrase: what, exactly, do they want to say?) People struggling free of the PC-chokehold (Racism! Sexism! Feminism! This and that ism!) and then wondering what they can get away with in these boorish times.

This stance has long been oversold as plain speaking, but what it really amounts to is a power grab, specifically, a grabbing back of the power certain people feel they lost when they had to watch what they said, behave respectfully and all those other appalling, unendurable hardships that the rest of us call being normal.

This is what Fox has, perhaps unwittingly, stumbled into as its new illiberal, plummy voiced poster boy and he may yet regret it. What looks like a turning tide could become a freshly churning swamp.

A benefits error that came at a deadly cost to thousands

Iain Duncan Smith
Iain Duncan Smith: no friend to benefits claimants. Photograph: Oli Scarff/AFP via Getty Images

How can Britain pose as a functional society when 5,000 chronically sick and disabled people have died before getting their rightful benefits repaid?

The claimants were incorrectly downgraded by Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) errors from 2011-2014. The DWP has since been reviewing 600,000 cases of underpayment and 122,000 people have been reimbursed at an average of £5,000 per head. The affected sick and disabled people were incorrectly recategorised, so that they were only entitled to the lower employment and support allowance (ESA), rather than the incapacity benefit or severe disablement allowance they were due. By the time these mistakes were rectified, 5,000 people had died.

Of course, it can’t be known if there are direct links between these deaths and underpayment of benefits, but stress and poverty never improved anyone’s health and landlords don’t tend to thoughtfully reduce rents even when tenants are fighting an unfair benefits system. This mess continues, with 75% of ESA complaints won on appeal.

A cynic like myself might wonder if the DWP fiasco was part of a systemic delaying tactic – to dishearten and exhaust people into giving up. Perhaps we should ask the recently knighted Iain Duncan Smith. As secretary of state for work and pensions, he presided over what was condemned by a cross-party group of MPs in 2018 as a “culture of indifference”.

It took six years to correct the mistakes expected to cost the DWP at least £340m in back payments, and £14m in administrative costs. That’s the cost to the government. The true cost is to chronically sick and disabled people, in terms of their health, peace of mind and, in at least 5,000 cases, their lives.

Are Rutland’s burghers ready for a Big Mac and fries to go?

Rutland
Rutland, soon to be home to the golden arches. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Rutland is getting a branch of McDonald’s. As a proud former Rutlander, allow me to clutch my pearls.

Previously, the smallest county in England was also the only one not to have a McDonald’s, KFC or any major fast food chain. Now there will be a drive-through McDonald’s in the market town of Oakham.

I attended sixth-form college in Oakham, when “olde worlde tea shoppes” (boiling-hot stainless steel teapots and toasted teacakes) were about as racy and modern as it got. If you wanted a burger, there was a Wimpy in Stamford – not that far away, but in Lincolnshire. (Please try to keep up!)

Now I’m torn. It’s good that jobs will be created and rural towns that cling hysterically to quaintness are always in danger of becoming airless theme parks for Ye Olden Days.

However, I understand why some Oakham residents wouldn’t want the golden arches. I’m also bewildered by the argument that “young people” were clamouring for it. Seriously? McDonald’s would be more likely to appeal to older people, with children. Rutland’s young and trendy (and yes, they do exist) would doubtless prefer, say, a vegan sausage roll from the revitalised Greggs chain.

The Rutland McDonald’s is happening, but spare a thought for the fast-food sticklers and don’t pin this decision on the young.

• Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist