Audience members in Leaders Question Time

Watching Leaders’ Question Time, Friday, on the BBC was a lesson in complex power relations. On the stage, the leaders of the four largest political parties – PM Boris Johnson (Conservatives), Jeremy Corbyn (Labour) Scottish National Party (Nicola Sturgeon) and Jo Swinson (Liberal Democrats).

In the audience, a carefully curated mixed group of voters given the license to ask these candidates for Prime Minister anything they wanted. On the bridge, the news journalist Fiona Bruce, veteran of the Antiques Roadshow and all round ‘national treasure’ – a term that carries the full weight of British irony. Especially at a time when British identity is deeply in question.

The context for this one-hour show is a snap General Election, called because the PM failed to deliver a do-or-die promise for Britain to leave the European Union by October 31st.

For him this is all about getting a renewed mandate from the people to ‘Get Brexit Done’. Each of the other parties – as explained in our last two editorials (ref) – are hoping to reframe the election along competing agendas. With less than three weeks to go, this TV debate is crucial for deciding what the people believe they are voting about.

From the evidence on QT, the Lib Dems’ Jo Swinson is offering to the electors a proxy People’s Vote, inviting anyone who is a Remainer to forego their traditional party, choose Lib Dem and forget we ever had a referendum. Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn wants this to be an austerity election that sees reversing the last ten years of increasing poverty as the defining motivation in the ballot box.

The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, while sympathising with Corbyn, sells it to the Scottish people as a constitutional election, in which everyone should have a right to a second referendum – whether on Independence or Europe. While all pay attention to the environmental issues – Labour in particular offers a Green New Deal – the Green Party aren’t in the debate, so we miss their clarion call on making this a definitive climate election.

But there is an even bigger, longer-term frame that shapes why and how this debate was very different from the last comparable election. The role of the audience is much greater than ever before. In the 2015 and 2017 elections, there seemed to be more reverence from the participants, giving each candidate the chance to share their manifesto. There were outbursts of challenge, but these were memorable for breaking the mould.

On this week’s Question Time, the candidates are very clearly on trial and the audience seems very aware of their soft power – their ability to shape the election by the way they control the narrative unfolding on the stage. Without entering into the battleground ourselves here – that’s another editorial - we spotted many new skills on display.

Some participants have clear strategies and come prepared with facts, figures and incident reports – “on this day, this happened and you were seen to do this” - with which to pin a candidate down and make the viewers see him or her from that, often singular, perspective. Others make more emotional appeals, inviting those watching who may be less driven by detail, to just get behind or against a candidate.

It’s a very live space in which applause plays an important role. Yet there is less heckling than during the regular, non-election Question Time shows: maybe the audience have been warned beforehand to keep it polite.

Not all the candidates are as ready to be in “listen and respond” mode. But gone are the days when politicians used to reply with a ready-made line from the manifesto as if they hadn’t heard the question. Appearing human, approachable and able to listen sits right alongside being authoritative and knowledgeable today. Yet they have to be very adept at not allowing the questionnaire to succeed in taking control of the argument to the extent that their own message is completely drowned out.

In this regard, Fiona Bruce played quite an uneven part in controlling the narrative. Her interventions varied enormously from candidate to candidate. She sometimes held them to account for not answering a question in the spirit that it was asked, and sometimes didn’t. Only one candidate was confronted with their voting record. In this way, the BBC revealed its own agenda more clearly than in earlier elections – although, like every other media outlet, it has always had one.

Some people watching would not be seeing this meta-narrative at all, others will have been on the look-out for it from the start. Yet there was a handful of startling moments when it would have been hard to ignore.

For example, at one point a participant responded to one candidate’s attack on another one with an appeal to both the room and to the 4.6 million viewers around the country to notice the tactics. “She gets one hard question and then she switches straight to attacking (someone else)” Then he gets straight to debunking the diversion she used. These are not simple objections, they are counter-actions with an awareness of where agency lies.

All this acutely reflective self-awareness in the Question Time room, coming from all sides, show that there is some room for hope in the long run. But we confess, it’s early days for any real citizen empowerment and these moments are still, therefore, hard to watch. Why is it only every five years that these voices become relevant?

In the final round of questions with the Prime Minister, there was not a single supportive question. Maybe because it was set in Sheffield, far from London where Boris Johnson made a mark as Mayor. After ten years of a Conservative government, logic would say the record should be up for judgement and there was plenty.

Audience members on Leaders Question Time

At one point a series of questions challenged the ‘truthfulness’ of his claims and why anyone should believe a new pledge when the old ones were never delivered. Stories of thwarted lives and the internal breakdown of the NHS. Plain, poignant points that Fiona Bruce helped to give focus to. There was even a question directly taking Johnson to task about fake news and deliberately misleading the voters on line. One might have thought it was a bad night for the Tories.

Yet in the final moments of the tv show, Johnson’s electoral strategy re-surfaced loud and clear. None of what he and his party have always wanted to do – apparently - can be done until Brexit is out of the way. When it is, there is no stopping all of us getting what we want.

Some may find it unbelievable that he was hoping to shift all the responsibility of the past ten years to an issue that only a small section of the population grappled with until three years ago. But the narrative has far deeper resonances: Brexit has become a symbol of autonomy which touches on everyone’s life in a different way. It invites people to yearn for their freedom even when there is nothing in the specific Brexit offer that can help them find it.

For some, it conjures up a return to the old days when Britain was more powerful and the places we lived in were less affected by globalisation. For others it’s less specific, yet still appeals emotionally as a need that has to get met. The architect of the Leave vote, Dominic Cummings, knew this better than anyone and is actively working it through the Conservative media strategy. There’s every chance it will work.

There was much on QT to suggest we are, as a nation of voters, are becoming more aware of how politicians work the public space to gain power. But it may still be early days for our own self-knowledge to become an active factor in the democratic debate.

We have to start noticing how we ourselves respond to emotional triggering. How we and others are subject to both our traditional and our current cultural conditioning. And how to nurture our ability to separate the cacophony that comes from public space, from our inherent capacities for making sound judgements.

At the same time, there are no mechanisms – on line or face to face – that really allow local deliberation of these complex issues to be carried upwards to the national level. Imagine a politics that really honoured individuals’ experience, welcomed place-based deliberation and organised for the considered proposals of the people to be included in national level strategies?

In other words, when facing our multiple crises, imagine including every citizen in the plans to address them. Not just to be nice, but to be effective.

Instead of that we have a politics that intentionally divides people and renders them unable to contribute except on one day every five years.

The Alternative UK has spent the last three years identifying and piecing together the suite of tools and practices that could make a new politics possible. From methods of self- and community development, to the means of carrying subtle relationships and conversations into the virtual realm. To join up the dots around the country so that we can being to co-create our future.

As we move towards the 2020s we will share what can already be mapped and built with you. Hopefully you can get on board, with the kind of concrete plan that this election can occasionally indicate, but the current political structure and culture cannot deliver

Alternative Editorial: Democracy On The Move