Victor Anderson argues that the threats from the Right are not really about “Culture Wars”
The British Constitution is a peculiar thing. There are some academics who enjoy debating whether it exists at all. There is certainly no written document setting it out, like the constitutions of the USA and Germany. There are no protected provisions to guarantee individual rights, safeguard devolution or require a two-thirds majority in Parliament to make a drastic change.
The key general principle, established over centuries of conflict with monarchs and aristocrats, is that Parliament is sovereign, and is governed essentially by majority vote in the House of Commons. First Past The Post makes it possible for any party (or combination of parties) which finds itself the largest minority amongst voters to become an enormous majority amongst MPs, as Labour did at the last general election.
Now we face the possibility of the Reform Party, perhaps combined with the Conservatives, in an electoral pact, coalition government, or just through tactical voting, doing the same thing. The Left doesn’t look properly prepared. Much of its focus has been on “culture wars” issues: criticising the Right for its values and attitudes, most obviously its racism and the ways it tries to appropriate “patriotism” and (more recently in Britain) Christianity. Many voters do vote on culture war lines, to see their own attitudes articulated and represented.
But now it is surely time to give some thought to the prospect of a Right-wing Government changing laws: bringing about the repeal or drastic amendment of some specific pieces of legislation. Here I will outline four examples.
The Human Rights Act 1998 contains the sorts of protections for individuals that many countries include in their constitutions. In the UK, the Act is just one act amongst many. It can be repealed by a parliamentary majority – and there would go its protections of freedom from torture, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, and the rest. Nigel Farage has consistently called for this repeal.
The Equality Act 2010 protects people against discrimination and victimization on the basis of sex, race, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, pregnancy and maternity, or gender reassignment. Suella Braverman, who is Reform’s Equalities Spokesman (sic) says Reform will scrap the Act. “The Britain that I love is being ripped apart by diversity, equality and inclusion.”
There have been a whole series of Representation of the People Acts, including ones which extended the right to vote, starting with the 1832 Great Reform Act, and then the ones which followed campaigns by the Chartists, Suffragettes and others. There is currently a Representation of the People Bill 2026 making its way through Parliament, which will give the right to vote to 16 and 17-year-olds. A future Act could simply reverse this process, for example, by limiting the legal right to vote to British citizens born in the UK, thereby cutting down on the Irish, black and Muslim sections of the electorate.
‘Public order” sections of the Crime and Policing Acts have already been used by the current Government and recent Conservative ones to restrict the right to protest, as well as adding to the Acts by sneaking through new restrictions using statutory instruments, which enable governments to add in details of law usually without going through much parliamentary procedure. Support for Palestine Action was criminalised based on a strange interpretation of the word “terrorism’. But why stop there? For example, a 2019 report from the right-wing oil-funded think-tank Policy Exchange advocated outlawing Extinction Rebellion as “terrorists”. Under the Terrorism Act 2000, there is already a Home Office list of organisations which have been given that label. It can just be added to.
None of this directly touches economic policy or immigration, and there are many more examples which could be given. These four examples are just an experiment in imagining the potential next government, which wouldn’t restrict itself to striking attitudes and articulating values. Culture wars arguments have their importance, and can often lay the groundwork amongst the public for changes in the law. However, the familiar arguments about attitudes shouldn’t distract us from paying attention to some very specific threats to people’s rights.