Theresa May has called for a General Election to be held on June 8th 2017 – a decision which was later approved in Parliament by an enormous majority (522 MPs in favour, 13 against). When subsequently asked whether or not the Prime Minister would take part in a live television debate with the leaders of opposition parties, a Number 10 source responded “Our answer is No”, and the Prime Minister herself advised the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme that she preferred “…to get out and about and meet voters…”.
Several bodies responded to this by suggesting that the best approach would be to ‘empty chair’ the Prime Minister, and the leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn stated that “Elections and democracy are about public debate. So it’s rather strange that only a couple of hours after calling for a general election, the prime minister is saying she’s not going to take part in TV debates. “…Well, I say to Theresa May, who said this election was about leadership, come on and show some. Let’s have the debates. It’s what democracy needs and the British people deserve.”
Less than a week later, the Labour Party announced that Jeremy Corbyn would not take part in any debate that did not also include the Prime Minister, with a spokesman for the party stating “If you’re talking about a debate about the possible outcomes of the general election, you’re talking about Labour and the Conservatives first and foremost, so to have a debate among the opposition parties doesn’t meet that objective at all.” The spokesman went on to say that “We’ve made clear that this election is a choice between a Conservative government or a Labour government; there is no other possible outcome, and it’s extraordinary that the prime minister feels unable to face a television debate with the leader of the only other possible government that could come out of this election.”
Concentrating on this reaction first, it is clear that the Labour Party considers that only either Labour or the Conservative Party are able to govern the United Kingdom. Is this judgement considered after evaluation of the competencies of the members or each party? Or is this rather a judgment of the current political process which means that realistically, only one of two parties can ever be elected in sufficient numbers? If it is the latter, then perhaps this is an issue that the Labour Party would like to address in its manifesto – or perhaps it is content to perpetuate a process which is unrepresentative and which is unfair?
Aside from this apparent reluctance to address electoral unfairness, Labour seems to also exhibit an unwillingness to support its own principles. Having indicated that public debate is a key part of elections and democracy, the party then refuses to participate in any public debate. In so doing, Labour is not only throwing away the opportunity to support the principles of democracy (and with it the moral high-ground), but it is also throwing away the opportunity to challenge the Prime Minister and the Conservative Party in the very area in which they are the weakest.
The Prime Minister Theresa May has spent the past few days in parliament preparing the Conservative Party election slogan “…a Strong and Stable Leadership…” and yet she evokes neither strength nor stability; since September 2016 (8 months!!) not only has the government sent conflicting messages concerning the Hinkley Point and London Runway decisions, but it has also reneged on several policy decisions that have been announced:
Foreign Worker Quotas – the government announced and then retracted a policy to force UK companies to publish the number of Foreign Workers they employed
Refugee Children – the government agreed to take 3000 refugee children in 2016 and then called a halt after having accepted only 350
National Insurance Rise – the government announced in the budget that they would raise NI for self-employed, only to retract this shortly after
General Election – Theresa May stated multiple times that the Conservatives would not call for an early election, only to then do so when it was politically convenient
The performances given by Theresa May during Prime Minister’s Questions illustrates (to me at least) that she is someone who confuses being aggressive with being strong, and with reiterating the same message again and again (“…Brexit means Brexit…”) with being stable. The Prime Minister neither answers questions nor enters into reasoned debate, she is someone who considers it appropriate to avoid the question and attack the opposition art every turn. It seems odd then, that given the chance to demonstrate the Prime Minister’s weakness in open debate, given the chance to display clearly in front of everyone the self-evident contradiction in the Conservative Party mantra of ‘Strong and Stable Leadership’, why the Labour Party would not jump on the opportunity to show this up for what it is.
The Labour Party decision not to participate in televised debates is as cowardly as the decision to approve a general election which has been called on purely party political grounds. The Labour Party is allowing itself to be bullied by the Conservatives, allowing itself to be cornered by hectoring abuse (not to mention the abuse that it inflicts on itself through the snipping an infighting between elected members). The Labour Party is not only playing into the hands of those who see politics as all ‘image over substance’, but more importantly, it is denying the public the opportunity to judge the political parties through a lens which is free from media interpretation, free from bias and free from local concerns.
Clearly, despite what it says, the Labour Party cannot believe that democracy is about public debate – otherwise they would debate…