Would a live TV general election debate encourage public political participation?
For the first time, the prime ministerial candidates for next year’s British general election may engage in live TV debates, possibly hosted by Sir David Frost. The first American TV presidential debate was back in 1960 when the young upstart John F. Kennedy took on the then Vice President Richard Nixon. There are similar televised hustings all over the world but Britain has never managed to organise them in the past. What if they had?
David Cameron looks more likely to come off better in a TV duel with Gordon Brown but Tony Blaire would have trounced Cameron in his day. Margaret Thatcher would have taken down Tony and given Harold Wilson a run for his money. To go any farther back would mean comparing politicians of the pre-TV era with those who were formed within it. I never heard Winston Churchill or Harold MacMillan speak live but, from their newsreel performances, perhaps those radio-informed orators would have come across poorly on live TV.
The paths of general elections in other countries have been changed in the past by performances in TV debates; Sarah Palin’s early appearance briefly rallied her party’s outlook in the Republicans’ uneven contest with Obama last year. But supposing who would probably have won previous TV debates in Britain, it’s not obvious how previous election results would have been affected. Obama raised an internet army of volunteers and small financial contributors during his election campaign that ruthlessly focused on obtaining votes. The President has been criticised by some of his supporters for failing to capitalise on this politically novel resource since his inauguration. Just when the US seems to show that electioneers must use the internet to gain significant advantage in political and financial support, British political parties may have finally come around to the last century’s mass communication system.
At first glance, it may seem that the failure of British political leaders to come to agreement about live TV debates confirms our suspicions about them: They don’t really care about what the public thinks; they would only take live political risks if their own parties could gain some advantage in the way the debate is structured; they focus on the demographics of key marginal seats when they want to form a government in our crazy, first-past-the-post electoral system, not on national issues.
Stepping back though, considering the British political system as a whole, how far back would you have to go before there really was a grassroots tradition of live political debate? The reactionary-sounding refrains that TV turns serious issues into sound bites and politicians into personalities have some truth. Following the MPs’ expenses row, politicians are particularly unpopular. John Riley, head of Sky News, has invited the leaders of the three biggest national parties to a live TV debate that he will share with other TV channels. “Something must be done to restore faith in our political system,” he said. While he has also said that he would “put out three chairs” and film whoever turned up and let the public punish whoever didn’t, Riley has also promised to engage an independent organisation such as The Hansard Society or the Electoral Commission to ensure fairness in the event.
The currently discussed format is comprised of three debates of an hour; one on foreign policy and defence; one on domestic and economic policy; and a final “town hall” event where the studio audience could ask the candidates questions. Welcome to 1960! Should it go ahead, live TV debate is unlikely to duck a situation afflicting all party-political debates at the moment.
None of the parties has much interest in talking about policies, except the Liberal Democrats who are vanishingly unlikely to win. Labour is running what Spiked editor Brendon O’Neil calls a zombie government. The party thinks it is going to lose the election and is focused on damage limitation that will probably do it more harm than good. The Conservatives are favourites to run the country from the spring, but don’t want to lose any support by expanding on their plans for austerity measures. Both candidates with a chance of winning have an immediate interest in letting events take their course, rather than firing up the public with ideas – even if they had any.
Beyond the immediate lack of motivation for the parties is a profound intellectual crisis that has been deepened by the financial crisis and the recession. The management of never-ending slow growth has been the arena of political contention in western economies for two decades. Now that boom and bust has clearly not been managed out of the system, there are no intellectual alternatives except marginally influential left- and right-wing fringes.
It would be more democratic to see the political leaders debate each other live, with as much studio audience and national audience participation as possible – but to what extent is the format capable of producing a genuine debate?
If the TV debates can be organised, and if the leaders can have an argument of substance - two big ifs already – then there is a third difficulty; in what way would the public engage with the issues raised? The public is a very slippery concept. Everyone is in the public but few would confidently predict what it will do in a general sense. In terms of voting, the public is imagined in demographic blocs of people who are more or less likely to vote for a political party, people who are more likely to change their vote and those who may not vote at all. In a broader sense, the public is a problematic concept, distrusted as much as relied on as the underpinning of cultural institutions.
In Jurgen Habermas’s classic book, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962), the public sphere was being privatised by all kinds of interests such as political lobby groups for business, all kinds of campaigns and an influential advertising culture. The public sphere was the space that had once comprised the intellectual forces that contested the future. It was a very small in its 17th century beginnings, but later adapted and absorbed the media to encompass the masses in society. As it grew, it emptied itself of broader questions of progress and formal public representation within it became more claimed by organisations than won directly. The public sphere began to organise more limited contests in the name of the people without really involving them. Today, most people more or less agree with Habermas.
Even Habermas, though, thought that the period before an important election could call forth a public sphere that involved a greater percentage of the population in a public debate about the future. The public today is certainly capable of making itself felt, but does not engage in general political activity.
Public outrage about MPs expenses was anticipated and duly reported. This illustrated how unlike previous periods of mass-participation in politics ours is. The expenses issue polarised opinions about whether politics is any use or not. The anger of politically motivated people at least matched that of political cynics because the behaviour of MPs had encouraged further cynicism. Against this background, the result of the general election seems a foregone conclusion, although a huge mistake by Cameron might just conceivably tip it back to Labour.
A live TV debate between three leaders of whom one is thought to have already won, and where two of them have little interest in showcasing unpopular policies, would be interesting but incapable of creating public debate unless the public intervenes in it.
It is hard not to be cynical about politicians when they are shy of saying what they will do when they are power, but politics, in the broadest sense, remains the only way to change things. This makes it doubly unwise for anyone to be cynical about the public; it is largely submerged, but it is still out there. Sometimes it surfaces in all its might to bite someone.
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