How masks became a fault line in Britain’s culture war

Some believe forcing people to wear face coverings by law is an overreach of state power and people should be free to make their own choices. Others argue the need to protect people is the more pertinent libertarian view.

“You can present this in terms of an ideological tension within conservatism, and that definitely exists,” said Jeremy Black, emeritus professor of history and an expert on conservatism. But, he said, there was also a “sheer bloody-mindedness” at being told what to do.

Masks appear to have sparked more outrage in Britain and the U.S. than around continental Europe, where nations told to wear them have quietly gotten on with it or quietly ignored the rules, without such ferocious debate. Black put that down to “a different tradition of political action and independence” in those countries. “In Britain, the adversarial notion of politics is one that may well make the British ungovernable,” he said. “It reflects a different form of political culture.”

The one thing most Brits agree on is that the decision to make face masks mandatory in shops came late in the course of the pandemic.