This week, the front page of the Daily Mail screamed “Outrage as Oxford students plan to axe queen”. In reality, a group of postgrads voted to take down a portrait of the queen in a single common room, in a single Oxford college, because of the portrait’s association with the UK’s colonial history.

Whether it’s the interior decor of student common rooms or athletes taking the knee in support of Black Lives Matter, by the time you listen to this podcast, new outrages are constantly emerging.

How did we get here? In the middle of a pandemic, why do these debates take up so much media space? And how should progressives respond?

The Weekly Economics Podcast is back and for the first episode of the new series, Ayeisha is joined by Hanna Thomas Uose, principal consultant at Align and David Wearing, senior teaching fellow at SOAS and associate lecturer at Birkbeck.

-Read the report "Divide and Rule: How the 'culture wars' are a reactionary backlash constructed to distract us, and how to respond" by NEON and Align https://neweconomyorganisers.org/divide-and-rule-how-the-culture-wars-are-a-reactionary-backlash-constructed-to-distract-us-and-how-to-respond/

-For similar themes, listen back to the Weekly Economics Podcast on the future of conservatism https://neweconomics.org/2019/07/weekly-economics-podcast-the-new-prime-minister

-Watch Akala discussing knife crime on GMB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvS78MlAXAQ

-Read the Parekh Report by the Commission on the Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain https://www.runnymedetrust.org/companies/29/74/Future-of-Multi-Ethnic-Britain-The.html

-Grab a copy of David's book "AngloArabiaWhy Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain" https://politybooks.com/bookdetail/?isbn=9781509532032

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Music by Blue Dot Sessions under Creative Commons license.

Researched by Margaret Welsh. Produced by Becky Malone.

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The Weekly Economics Podcast is brought to you by the New Economics Foundation. Find out more at www.neweconomics.org