A more mature kind of politics?

Is it time to question the Question Time confrontations and seek more common ground, Violet political columnist Sam Willis asks

Sam Willis

Have the duels on Dimbleby had their day?Eyedropper

Anyone given to wasting away their Thursday evenings watching Question Time has the right to feel disheartened. Besides a glimmer of sensible debate in Bangor, the weekly grind of angry recrimination and condemnation has been dispiriting. It shouldn’t matter what your actual views on Brexit are. It simply doesn’t sit right. Though a programme like Question Time is of course a limited gauge for public feeling, and though we can tell ourselves this again and again, it still does not sit right. Maybe something is broken, not just at the top.

This has been my cheery outlook for the past couple of months. When judges are attacked for doing their job, when large swathes of the population are abused by the press for their heartfelt beliefs, when a knife-edge referendum result (and this is not to deny the result) is used as a sledgehammer to batter down all opposing views, to beef up the power of the executive, and all this is cheered on by much of the press – yes, optimism comes easily in times like these.

But I have come to think there is another side to this. Now, there’s no denying referenda are a poor way to govern. They split nations down the middle in a way general elections do not. They force complex issues into binary oppositions. They deny the mediating effect of parliamentary process, whereby all views are heard and reflected upon. What referenda can do, however, is force people to think outside of narrow party-political lines. I have noticed this in myself.

Any excuse to feature this Question RhymeFestivenewzz

Take Lord Heseltine – a senior minister under Thatcher, deputy prime minister under Major, now Tory peer and grandee. A year ago, I would have struggled to find something positive to say about Heseltine, if I’d had anything to say at all. Now I find my opinion more nuanced. I still disapprove of the Heseltine of the 1980s. Of course, I disapprove of what his government did. But the Heseltine of 2017, forcefully arguing against his party’s line – I do have respect for him.

This is not an anomaly. Politicians suddenly have a more complicated presence in my worldview: from prime ministers John Major and Tony Blair, to prime minister-who-never-was Ken Clarke, from aspiring-phoenix Nick Clegg, to newer blood Anna Soubry and Nicky Morgan. Morgan’s rehabilitation from evil bogeywoman as Education Secretary (both my parents are teachers) has been especially striking for me.

“Politics is a juggling act with limitless balls”

This has been matched by my sinking opinion of certain members of the Labour Party. I never bought into the Corbyn project, so his apparently relaxed attitude to Brexit doesn’t sting so much. My local MP Diane Abbott’s dismissive attitude towards the views of her constituency, combined with her evasiveness (a story for another time – my brother’s attempts to pin her down… and failure to do so), is disappointing. Keir Starmer, seen by some as the future, recently released his vision for Brexit – somewhat late to the party, it must be said.

It’s appalling to recognise that only alternative to the government is too puny even to hold it to account, let alone challenge its mandate to govern. Yet maybe there can be some positives in the long-term. Maybe the younger generations will or have already noticed there is a first-rate political education to be had from Brexit: the realisation that we’re not surrounded by enemies, but potential allies; that the person who agrees with the most people on at least one thing, not everything, rules; that ideals come to nothing if blinded by idealism. The realisation that politics is a balancing act. A juggling act with limitless balls, many of them invisible, and an audience inclined to pelting.

Maybe they realise this, maybe they don’t. I like to think they – we – do. Not a kinder sort of politics, but a more mature sort. A kind of politics that doesn’t make a habit of splitting the country down the middle. Now wouldn’t that be nice