WHEN it comes to masks in shops, we have a small illustration of how a “culture war” works, and how to fight it.

Some parts of the left have got very worried about the weapons the right waves about in a culture war.

A culture war is a US description of backlash politics that shifts the argument from economics to issues of “traditional” culture. 

It means trying to bind voters to the right through arguments about family values, patriotism, law and order and race.

A culture war tries to picture the right as a friend of the “man in the street” — and his wife — by saying they share the “ordinary” Sunday-roast-dinner values and picture the “left” as a liberal elite. 

By focusing on cultural issues not economic ones, the cultural warrior hopes to shift the terrain so that the Conservative Party, funded by bankers and stuffed with public schoolboys, looks like the party of the “common man.” 

The Labour Party, funded by the unions, is pictured as weirdo metropolitan snobs.

In the case of masks, some Tory voices are trying to — unpatriotically — import a US-style culture war, and say they are an affront to manly rugged individualism, an assault on personal liberty, a piece of namby-pamby red tape, strapped directly across our face.

What the Masks v Libertarianism argument tells us, is that culture wars are rather obviously a trick to help the government do what it can for big business, the big state, and its big old self. 

The government doesn’t believe in “individual rights” or “libertarianism” — after all this is a government that in the Windrush scandal stole the very citizenship from its own people and deported them. 

A government that is so enthusiastic about locking people up and taking their rights is not libertarian. 

But having a few individualist cranks making anti-masks noises do help them out.

The government dithered over making masks compulsory in shops for two basic economic reasons.

Most recently, Boris Johnson thinks the best way to revive the economy out of the lockdown slump is to push for a splurge of shopping. 

Just as with the 2010 financial crisis, the government doesn’t want to get into any of the social investment that could rescue — but also change — the economy. 

Instead it wants to try to get a consumer spending boom going: only consumers are nervous and not patriotically going shopping. Retailers fear masks in shops will further dent their fragile confidence. 

Former Tory MP and Marks and Spencer chairman Archie Norman made this plain, saying he thought masks would “make it less likely that people feel comfortable being in shops in the short-term.” 

The government dithered on masks because it values big stores above safety, not because it is “libertarian.”

Before that, the government dithered over public mask laws, even as they were enacted throughout comparable European countries, because they had made such a mess over PPE supply. 

The government could barely ensure masks were available for care homes, clinics and hospitals. It feared if the public were told to buy masks, the supply would collapse. 

Ensuring mask supply for the most risky settings was a legitimate reason to not mandate their wider use — but it helped having some noise about this being a “freedom” or “libertarian” issue because it gave cover for the deeper reason: government failure to supply basic kit.

So after procrastinating, the government has now given in to the health and safety argument. But they and their friends in the media are still promoting some anti-mask “culture warriors.” 

These are rather clownish types — MPs like Desmond Swayne and Christopher Chope. They make comedy protests, ripping off masks to reveal bright red noses and grease-painted smiles before they run about in their big flappy shoes. 

But they provide some distraction from the government’s vacillation. So this is a rather comedy-culture-war battle. 

That said, I don’t think it is a good idea to lean too hard into it — the response for materialists and socialists to a culture war is to emphasise the material and the social. 

So just having a go at the anti-mask warriors by shouting “Science!” “Facts!” and “Idiot grandad!” are missing the point a bit. 

A similar approach made by pro-EU campaigners on the Brexit really looked snobby and backfired.

Instead the left — and Labour — should look to the material. As in, supply those material face coverings. 

If the government thinks masks are a necessary health move, then it should ensure their supply. 

So in Tuscany, the northern Italian region with about four million inhabitants, the left-led regional government distributed face masks free to all citizens. 

Less left-wing governments have also distributed face masks. In Spain and France the government gave commuters masks to encourage their use. 

In South Korea the government took absolute control of all face mask production, to ensure their supply throughout all shops. 

The government also capped their cost to stop profiteering. Labour should demand the government supply free or low-cost masks. 

If the Tories refuse, Labour councils should consider stepping in to supply some masks and perhaps even local Labour Parties should think of collective solutions to mask supply.

If face masks are a public health measure, there should also be public education about how and why masks can be used — including an explanation about those groups who are, because of personal or health conditions, exempt from wearing masks.

The mask argument shows that culture wars, which are supposed to be a secret way for the right to drill into the psyche of the masses can turn out to be just the right making themselves look a bit barmy. 

The left should respond by looking at the material conditions of the mass of people.

We particularly need to emphasise one very material fact — at present, shop assistants are one of the occupations with a higher death rate, at 60-75 per cent higher than the general populations. 

Masks might be a bit hot and uncomfortable, but less hot and uncomfortable than coronavirus. 

Shop assistants are, we have discovered, essential workers, so let’s treat them like we care.