Among the reasons that Britain’s vote to leave the European Union upset people was the realisation of many that morning that even if you aren’t interested in politics, it is <\/em>interested in you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The irony won’t have been lost on journalists, politicians, and activists, most of whom live like an obscure, ambitious musician in the pained knowledge that nobody is paying them much heed. Campaigners largely live and die on the sidelines of public life, but at least people thought the referendum mattered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n While some of this anger lingered after the vote, the sense that the people, processes and policies that govern our lives are a fringe concern has mostly returned. During the December 2019 general election campaign around 40% of voters could recall no political news when asked, with even big stories named by only 5% (see page 17<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The disregard most people have for political news stories makes the daily news cycle seem as relevant as a Twitter bitch fight. Couple that with the flimsiness of some news stories, which are often controversies over what somebody may have said 20 years ago, and political talk seems absurd. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Such criticism has been a reasonable counter to many pundits’ fixation with the eccentricities of social justice activists. The likes of James Lindsay, a self-described \u201cexpert on wokeness\u201d could be fairly seen as wasting his time combatting a movement<\/a> that has no clout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This was true enough five years ago. But to look at the response to George Floyd’s death is to see that much of the rhetoric and ideas of social justice activists has been absorbed by wider societies on both sides of the Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n James Corden, an English late show host, prostrated himself <\/a>as a guilty white man in a monologue. American corporations line up to denounce racism in social justice terms<\/a>. Even the archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who heads up a church where women bishops are controversial, talks about the \u201congoing evil of white supremacy<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n