The debate deficit: how the 2010 election has failed the electorate

Wednesday May 5, 2010

Dennis Hayes wonders why, in an election without debate, none of the political contenders came out as the ‘therapy party’

I thought I would be writing an article at this time reflecting on the ‘therapeutic election’ of 2010. We already have unnecessary counselling for the unemployed, self-defeating happiness lessons in schools, money being wasted on ‘subjective well-being’ rather than our physical health in the NHS and other services, so why not therapy for voters?

I thought that at least one party would present a vision of an austerity future with no jobs, nothing worthy of the name ‘education’, no new roads or railways, no technological innovation but an offer of compassion and concern with ‘therapy circles’ in every neighbourhood and workplace? It turned out to be less explicitly therapeutic than I expected but therapeutic nevertheless.

After Nick Clegg’s victory in the first ‘wannabe’ Prime Minister ‘debate’, the Lib Dems seemed to be getting unconsciously close to being The Therapy Party. The Guardian’s Jonathan Freedland saw that Brown had missed ‘what Clegg intuited perfectly – that TV debates are aimed not at the logical, but at the emotional part of the voter’s brain’. (1) Tapping in to the ‘emotional part’ of the voters’ brains became not just a feature of this series of ‘debates’ but of all election ‘debates’.

Watching his “a plague on both your houses” performance, Clegg tapped in to the anti-political mood and the anti-politics of our time in a way that reminded me of the ‘Not in my name’ anti-politics of the ‘Stop the War’ movement. No old-fashioned anti-imperialism, just an emotional desire not to get mixed up in big power politics. ‘I want to stop the war … I’m a nice person, and nice people don’t do war!’ Likewise, Nick was too nice to get embroiled in this conflict and was unconsciously adopting a therapist’s approach. He was concerned but not involved. A nice, good looking young man was the consensus!

In the 1990s Prime Minister John Major was vilified for being a ‘Nice Guy’ and took to the streets with his soap box! Being nice then meant ‘ineffectual’ and lost him the 1997 election. Now being ineffectual seems to swing voters’ interest in the election. The nice candidates look like being elected all over the UK. Even the debate about alliances is about who will be nice enough to work with others.

But there’s nothing nice about being nice either then or now. Over 20 years ago the American academic and writer Allan Bloom characterised today’s students as ‘nice’ and he said: “I choose the word carefully”. He felt that students, because times were good and young people were not tested in class and other conflicts, were not particularly moral or noble, and their primary preoccupation was “with themselves”. (2) Some of those students have grown up to be today’s politicians and we can say the same of them now.

Today’s politicians are ‘nice’ and I choose the word carefully. They are not particularly moral or noble and are primarily preoccupied with themselves. What they want to avoid above all else is conflict or contestation. Attempting and often failing to be ‘nice’ they know that this is all that matters and being clear about anything would lose votes. When Brown’s advisors wrote the line about Cameron and Clegg being “squabbling children” it sent out the message that they had understood that wherever possible debate was to be avoided. It was squabbling; not a nice thing at all.

In the ‘Election Uncovered’ Dispatches programme, broadcast on Channel 4 on 3 May, the real discovery was made by an anonymous woman in an Islington pub who commented that the wannabe PMs didn’t get into the debate but just asserted bits from their election statements. She was right and what was unique about this election was not the ‘three horse race’ but the avoidance of debate.

Without a hint of irony Brown declared on the day after the final debate: “The time for debate has passed.” But there had been no debate, and hardly any discussion about how to deal with real issues such as the UK’s huge financial debt. That ‘debate’, like many others, will never happen. It wouldn’t be nice to discuss nasty cuts and restructuring. This attempt to be nice to us, the voters, is the therapist’s approach. It assumes that we are too vulnerable to face up to these issues and so it’s best for politician’s not to raise them.

The tragedy for all of us is that after 6 May it will be only possible to react to policy and not influence it. The need to appear nice is not just a device to conceal the bitter pill we are going to be forced to take it’s a real imperative for politicians in our therapeutic culture. ‘Niceness’ is part of the therapeutic ethos that dominates social and political life today. Being nice gets people’s support in all spheres of social life.

Tapping in to the ‘emotional part’ of people’s brains is a feature of all ‘debates’ and not just the current election ‘debates’ and even of discussion about debate itself. Recently a senior education advisor asked me in a debate about school teaching and the lack of debate: “Surely you don’t mean debate in which students argue for and against something?” I could only reply, “Err, yes!

That’s what debate is!” Even in education, the essence of which is debate and argument, debate is frowned upon in favour of some woolly-minded consensus or a non-judgmental acceptance of all opinions as valid.

But you can’t debate if your main concern is with being seen to be nice. Even ‘Bigotgate’, which revealed Brown and the political elites’ contempt for ordinary people and their views, was treated as a personal slip when Brown accidentally said something not very nice. His contrition was entirely an attempt to get back from impoliteness and confrontation into the therapist’s role.

Being nice is now part of the political world in which our betters, the therapists, treat us as their clients who need their care. ‘Bigotgate’ showed that this care is caring contempt. But mostly this is masked because politicians daren’t show their contempt. That would not be nice. The only way to expose their real views would be to force them to debate by expressing our views in a way that wasn’t nice. It was too hard for most people. It was too difficult to overcome the general malaise of ‘niceness’ that is an expression of our therapeutic culture. Too much like the old class war than the modern ‘couch war’.

The consequence of the lack of debate means that whoever wins will develop into the therapy party. The only alternative is to go back to standing up for what we believe in and saying what we think, whether or not this makes us popular. We need to adopt my version of an old saying of James Larkin’s, the Irish socialist and trade unionist:

“The therapists only appear necessary because we are on their couch. Let us rise!”

(1) Jonathan Freedland, Leaders’ TV debate: ‘I agree with Nick’ was the night’s real catchphrase, Guardian Friday 16 April 2010:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/apr/16/leaders-tv-debates-jonathan-freedland

(2) Bloom, A. (1988) The Closing of the American Mind: How higher education has failed democracy and impoverished the souls of today’s students. Harmondsworth: Penguin: 82.

Dennis Hayes is Professor of Education at the University of Derby and is one of the authors of the Institute of Ideas Education Forum’s Election Education Statemento.

As well as writing about education, he is an election analyst and commentator. In 2002 he published, with Alan Hudson, an influential study Basildon: the mood of the nation (Demos).