This month Owen Kelly looks at some of the deeper meanings of Katie Lam’s recent remarks on cultural coherence.
NOVEMBER 7 | SERIES 2025
STREAM Meanwhile in an Abandoned Warehouse | EPISODE 80
PARTICIPANT
Owen Kelly
COMMENTARY
In this episode Owen Kelly looks into the idea of cultural coherence, something that bubbled to the surface after Katie Lam, a member of parliament for the Conservative Party used it in an interview with the Sunday Times. She appeared to use it one way, and then later claimed she meant it in a rather different way.
What do people mean by cultural coherence? Should we regard the idea as dog-whistle politics, or should we see it as a useful idea we need to claim for ourselves, before it gets claimed by those who would whistle to dogs…
REFERENCES
Sam Leith: In Defence of the Rules-based Order, in The Spectator
Tali Fraser: The Tories and the search for cultural coherence on ConservativeHome
