During my long adulthood there has been an under-appreciated change in British politics: whereas left and right used to at least agree upon what the issues were, this is now less true.

Historically, left and right disagreed upon economic issues: nationalization or privatization; capital or labour; fiscal or monetary activism; regulation or deregulation; austerity or not. But for all our differences, we at least agreed that these were the big questions.

This agreement, though, has faded. Whist many of us are still pre-occupied by economic questions - how to raise productivity, decarbonize, democratize the economy and so on - many others are not. Their concerns lie elsewhere: in combatting imagined attacks on freedom whilst ignoring real ones; in identity politics; in talk of "diversitycrats", wokeness or "gender identity ideology"; in what should be taught in schools; or in "stopping the boats."

This divide is not wholly a left-right one. There are some on the left who are obsessed with identity politics (albeit far fewer than in the right's fevered fantasies) and others in the Labour party who fret about second-order issues, whilst some centrists haven't abandoned interest in economics. Nevertheless there is, I sense, an overlap between the left-right split and the disagreement about what matters.

Which leaves many of us older economic-orientied leftists befuddled. As Duncan Weldon tweeted:

Worst NHS crisis of my lifetime, dire economic situation and the public policy discussion today is about a maths teaching plan for the mid to late 2020s which we don't have the teachers to deliver.

To a degree I've not seen in my lifetime, left and right disagree not just about policy but about what the issues are.

Brexit was an example of this. Before 2016, the big division wasn't so much between Leavers and Remainers: such words had no meaning then. Instead, it was between a few rightists who thought EU membership was a big issue and the rest of us who didn't: one of the right's great rhetorical tricks was to call themselves "eurosceptics" rather than what they really were - which was eurofanatics.

Which poses the question: why has this division emerged?

Part of the story is the spread of poshcuntstalkshit programming. The lack of demand and supply of genuine experts means these are filled with "commentators" whose main talent is being able to turn up to a TV studio at short notice. As these are unable to talk intelligently about complex issues - the stalling of productivity growth, fiscal policy; falling real incomes; the NHS's problems - they resort to the drivel one could hear from thousands of golf club gammons.

But there's something else. It's that actually-existing British capitalism - whether you call it neoliberalism, financialization, rentierism or whatever - has failed most people; even before the jump in gas prices real wages were barely higher than they had been 15 years previously. If you are going to talk about economics, then, you must either talk of big change or defend a system that works only for a minority. It's no wonder therefore that many on the right would rather point to a dead cat: Prince Harry is the latest one, but there'll be another along soon enough. "Culture wars" are a product of capitalist stagnation.

With the economy flat-lining, tricky questions arise. Should we allow public services to deteriorate or raise taxes, if so on whom? Do we really want to cut private consumption to make room for more public consumption? Given that higher energy costs mean that the UK is poorer as a country, whose real income should take the hit: nurses and railworkers, or others, and if so whom? In short, who do we throw under the bus?

These are nasty trade-offs. Which many don't want to talk about. This is true more of the centre and right than left: whereas the latter are comfortable demanding higher taxes on the rich (maybe too comfortable) the former don't like to call explicitly for the impoverishment of nurses.

Instead, if they must talk of economics they wibble about electability or a lack of money - which is only slightly less moronic than asking about nationalizing sausages. Better for them that they retreat to the comfort zone of culture wars.

I would read Truss's ill-fated premiership in this context. Although she spoke of being pro-growth and breaking with Treasury orthodoxy, this was mere cargo-cult economics. It was language without substance, and assertion without evidence - for example that tax cuts would boost growth. Instead, it was identity politics - invoking a (partly fictitious) image of Thatcher and appealing to Tory prejudices rather than seriously engaging with genuine issues.

Whatever the reason for this divide about what we should talk about, it has an important implication. One facet of political power is control over the agenda: if we're talking about immigration or trans people or "wokesters" we are not talking about the failure of capitalism. One under-appreciated route through which the media exercise influence is in deciding what it is that we do talk about. Given this, it's not at all clear to me that it is even possible for the BBC to be truly impartial.