Don’t argue about who’s in the leaders’ debates – just cancel them

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/16/argue-leaders-debates-cancel-format-politics

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There’s been an awful lot of discussion concerning David Cameron’s decision to boycott the leaders’ debates unless the Green party were included this week. And although pundits have expended a lot of energy arguing over whether the prime minister was right or wrong to do so, none have paused to ask whether we should have leaders’ debates in the first place. That seems a tremendous shame, because the answer is, of course: absolutely not.

If there are two things I’m certain of in politics, it’s that Dante should have dedicated a circle of hell entirely to prime minister’s questions, and that people hate politicians. So why the media is deigning to broadcast what is essentially a version of PMQs to 9 million people is beyond me. People are rightfully unimpressed by privately educated, white middle-aged men trading rehearsed insults with one another. It’s cringe-worthy and pompous, and reduces important issues to a personality contest. I have a feeling that viewers will leave the debates feeling even more certain that politicians are all the same, and tragically, if they don’t, it will only be because Nigel Farage has managed to ram home his fraudulent persona as the anti-establishment outsider.

This is why, if the show must go on, I do wish the Greens could have a platform. And, for that matter, Plaid Cymru. Not for political reasons, but because it would just be nice to have a change from the braying maleness of it all. Or perhaps one of the debates could feature high-ranking female MPs instead of the leaders. This would be difficult for the Lib Dems, who apparently don’t believe in having women in their party, so maybe they could just ask a woman on the street outside to stand on the podium for a bit. To be fair, I doubt she’ll screw it up any more than Nick Clegg will.

One thing you often hear in favour of the leaders’ debates is that they engage people in politics, even beating the viewing figures for Coronation Street in 2010, as ITV breathlessly announced at the time. But this isn’t evidence that leaders’ debates are a productive way to do politics, or even that people like them. It’s a symptom of the fact that most people are totally starved of a way of engaging in politics in their everyday lives, and so when a big national opportunity to do so comes along, they grab it with both hands.

Instead of this tedious showboating months before a general election, politicians should be thinking about ways of improving political participation all the time, most importantly through education. Schools should teach pupils how to register to vote, and hold regular discussions and debates that involve researching policy and its effects. Then, when the pupils leave school and become adults, there should be a local political party for them to get involved with. Labour tried to do this by hiring community organiser Arnie Graf to reform its branches, but that initiative seemed to fizzle out. Finally, when there is an election, why not make it a week-long Mardi Gras of voting? We made a ridiculous fanfare about the Queen’s jubilee, so why not do the same over something that actually matters?

Perhaps then, the public would care less about how politicians eat bacon sandwiches and more about their local government reforms. Perhaps if the public was genuinely engaged in politics, each party’s policies would be really, thoroughly scrutinised. And if politicians seem reluctant to create a society in which that happens? Well, I suppose you have to ask yourself why that is.