I was watching Question Time last night.
Yes, I know, I know. I’ve tried to kick the habit, but within the first couple of minutes of Dimbers’ weekly bumblefest I’m on my feet, roaring at the television, causing a good deal of collateral damage to my carpets and red wine glasses. What can I say? I’ve got a problem.
Last night’s panel comprised of a woman from Dragon’s Den (who, for someone in the ‘Let’s Make It Relevant to Da Kidz’ slot was actually pretty good), the steely-eyed Yvette Cooper, Charles Kennedy, Iain Duncan Smith, and Independent columnist, professional socialist: the permanently outraged Owen Jones. And last night he encapsulated one of the many things that are wrong with political debate in this country.
Owen’s a former bag-carrier who managed to break free of Parliament, and I’ve met him a couple of times. I like him even though, apart from the basic business of staying alive, we have precisely nothing in common. That said, I find him sound on the Assange issue and, as the phrase goes, if he takes his work seriously, he doesn’t take himself seriously which is a commendable combination.
But on Question Time last night, I just couldn’t cope with the guy. Owen’s rather like a New Statesman editorial in that you can usually predict what he’s going to say on any given issue without actually having to listen to him. A nation should have been prepared for what transpired on Question Time last night, but it stuck in the craw nonetheless.
The main areas up for debate were the latest ramifications in Gaza, and welfare reform. It’s not like these are simple issues with easy solutions, right? Wrong! My friend Alex Diner wrote a very sensitive piece earlier in the week, which concluded that the Israel-Palestine conflict is one of those thorny buggers in that the more you try understand it, the more opaque it becomes but for Owen, it’s simple: Israel are the aggressors. They are in the wrong. Chucky K. said, reasonably in my view, that the violence on both sides needs to stop in order for talks to take place.
Oh no they don’t!
Owen’s reply: “Well obviously I am very disappointed with that response.” Why? Why in the name of all that’s holy or profane would you be disappointed with that? Because, it seemed in Smith Towers at least, that Owen wasn’t actually interested in nuance or a workable compromise, simply establishing that, in effect, Israel started it – a surprisingly confident distillation of many hundreds of years worth of conflict – and that the Palestinians were in the right. The western Israeli imperialists are the bad guys, the collectivist downtrodden Palestinians are the good guys.
Oh yes they are!
Then welfare reform. This was always going to be a thorny one. The Miliboy was recently booed by protestors by suggesting that, whatever happened, there would have to be cuts. Because obviously the reason he said this is because he is ‘evil’ or ‘just doesn’t get it’ and really wants to screw the life out of the VOTING punters for these reasons and not, in fact, because we’re in the middle of a bloody big recession and any government couldn’t afford to maintain the previous levels of boom-time public spending. Amirite?
Apparently, yes. Duncan Smith was accused of making this debate ‘toxic’ via a ‘cynical demonisation of people on benefits by this government.’
I’m with Owen on the probably certainty that David Cameron views on those who live on council estates with all the benign tolerance of Bill Cash at a camembert convention, but whatever you think about Duncan Smith’s policies, he is not – the Tories are not – ‘evil’. This is the demonisation that really boils my blood, not because I carry any particular brief for IDS, but because it reduces complex arguments and difficult situations into nothing more than a form of Trotskyite pantomime with Owen cast as Jack, and Duncan Smith as a malignant bloodthirtsty giant. This presumably makes Chucky Widow Twanky, Yvette the beanstalk and the Dragon’s Den woman the chorus and, predictably, the audience honked and clapped on cue.
The Israel-Gaza situation isn’t as simple as Owen presents.
Oh yes it is!
The reason that benefits are being cut is not because the government hates poor people and wants to humiliate them before flaying off their flesh in order to make filofaxes for the Coalition cabinet.
Oh no it’s not!
John Stuart Mill said, ‘the worst offence that can be committed by a polemic is to stigmatise those who hold a contrary opinion as bad and immoral men.’ And I reckon he said this, not because the practice is ungentlemanly, but because it makes the answer to the practical question, ‘What the hell do we do about this, then?’ harder to answer if people are labouring under the misapprehension that said answer is a simple one relating to the morality of the participants.
Disagree with what the government’s doing. Disagree with what Israel’s doing in Gaza. But if you think the answer lies in simplified polemicist rantings then you are emphatically not part of the solution.
Owen said that he doesn’t live in an ‘ivory tower’.
Probably not, but I bet the world looks massively more simple from atop that beanstalk, when you’re not troubled by involvement in the messy complexities on the ground.
[Thanks to @AlexDiner for helping me out with the quotes]
Comments
Ian H / November 23 2012 3:46pm
Good article. I consider myself a left-ish liberal, I cannot abide the way that renta-a-quotes like Owen and Penny Red on one side and Mad Mel on the other get asked in on so many TV and radio slots. Question Time really has become a joke.
Mark R / November 23 2012 4:13pm
I agree with Ian. I am a leftish liberal and I am tired (especially of many Guardian writers) who seem to have all the answers to all the problems but have never had to get their hands dirty. Rent-a-quotes are all very well but as the article suggests, they get you absolutely nowhere.
Matthew Palmer / November 23 2012 4:50pm
The issue is that every time Mr Owen yelled his left wing "right on" trite the Audience clapped heavily - as they do with every lefty every week. What does it tell you about the audiance of question time?
Rt Hon Bill Quango MP / November 23 2012 6:35pm
I consider myself a rightish liberal and agree with all that you and Ian H write.
SueFew / November 23 2012 7:09pm
Bit harsh! I think the left has lacked a voice for too long. The hard pushed unrepresented workers of this country lost their voice when those capable of decent articulation were enticed out of the "working classes" into the realm of yuppyland and the promise of a higher social status. But that status seemed to reach a limit as more "workers" were educated to be exploited in a different way. The facts speak for themselves.
Marx defined working class more clearly than we seem to define it today. In his terms the large majority of us are still working class - if you need to work for another person in order to live you are working class. Time that class had a voice that speaks in a way that is more easily understood by those with no time to reflect on the way of the world. Owen Jones has such a voice - good luck to him. The world needs it.
paul / November 23 2012 7:31pm
I could write 100 billion words in support of owen & 100 billion more in condemnation IDS.
But i will let their actions and time do the work for me,History will not be kind to these political protectionist
The PrangWizard of England / November 23 2012 9:04pm
I am on the 'Right'' I don't like socialists/Marxists and all others of that ilk. They are dangerous enemies of free speech, mind controllers and potential totalitarians. They don't like ordinary people, the plebs, and anyone who doesn't agree with them. They despise us. They are very dangerous.
I didn't see this programme but I've seen Owen before on the BBC who do indeed seem to love him. We will see much more of him, I'm afraid.
I get the impression he's been to the Marxist/Militant Tendency/Labour political equivalent of a terrorist training camp. You know, where the fighters crawl along in the dust under barbed wire while someone fires live bullets past their ears.
This guy has had his humanity forced out of him and replaced with Leftist vitiol, and trained in the art of talking without a break to wear down his opponents with torrents of lies and insults.
rad lester / November 23 2012 9:41pm
Poor Owen, he has more chips on his shoulders than Harry Ramsden
Jim M / November 23 2012 10:46pm
What a refreshing piece, so so true. It can be applied to many of the important issues facing this country today too. Often, if you oppose what is essentially a left of centre viewpoint then you are portrayed as an elitist, insensitive person who is profoundly evil as you say. It's not confined to the left though as there are some right wingers too who hold strong views and can be very condescending, abusive and dismissive of opposing standpoints. I'm no right or left winger, my views depend on the specific issue in question, yet it's clear to me good debate is trivialised by the media far too much these days to be able to draw satisfactory conclusions. Unfortunately much of the public seem to fall for it hook line and sinker.
Tish / November 23 2012 11:36pm
It depends on your definition of evil. I doubt that Iain Duncan Smith went into politics with the intention of killing people, but that is what his policies have done. He may view such things as an unfortunate side effect of making people take responsibility for their own actions, but the reality is that people are dead now who wouldn't be if it wasn't for the actions of Iian Duncan Smith. The same is of course true for Tony Blair, and I've always found it disturbing that it is often religious people who seem willing to take these decisions that lead to the death of others without ever being willing to face up to that reality.
adamdelved / November 24 2012 12:17am
Tories are not evil? At the core of Tory philosophy is the gleeful exploitation of the poor by the rich, the weak by the strong. Xenophobia, jingoism, racism, misogyny, homophobia and greed emanate like poison gas from the Tory backbenches.
George Silver / November 24 2012 2:54pm
As a left of centre bod, it pains me to see people like jones, abbott, penny who turn everything into a "I'm right, anyone who disagrees with me is racist, nazi, evil". I can no longer read the guardians CiF pages as its filled with little clones where anyone who takes a realistic view to any contentious issue is decried as a class traitor/racist/evil/tory stooge or indeed all of the above! Some of the columnists like la toynbee or monbiot who preach this rubbish frankly need sectioning.
Very little in this world is black/white (in a didactic sense ;o) but we on the left seem intent polarizing everything into monochromatic with the resulting disasters everyone else's fault
Sy / November 24 2012 6:50pm
SueFew
I think the reason the left has lost it's voice is because it has nothing to say and nothing to offer. We have tried all the left wing theories to death and they quite simply do not work. Giving people in poverty more money through benefits hasn't worked to decrease levels of poverty. It has, through redistribution of taxes just dragged more people into it. Left wing views on crime and the causes of crime viewed through the prism of lack of opportunity and seeing the perpetrator as a victim of society has increased levels of petty crime and casual violent crime.
What has the Left got left to offer?
Madasafish / November 24 2012 9:34pm
It's simple. Man who protests a lot does not have to pay for those who rely on benefits so demonises those who do.. when he should be thanking them.
Always the way.. Those who have are demonised for paying for the poor..usually by someone who is very rich (the Guardian writers) or who has never done any useful work in their lives (Balls)...
Rob / November 25 2012 1:28am
What's a bag-carrier?
Hoover / November 25 2012 9:50am
@PrangWizard: "This guy has had his humanity forced out of him"
See, you've just illustrated another aspect of the same problem. Mill complained that calling your adversary immoral degrades debate; suggesting they're not human is just as bad.
Sadie Smith / November 25 2012 12:05pm
Rob,
A bag-carrier is someone who works as a staffer to an MP. It's an ancient and noble art that involves making the tea, and chasing around after them, clearing up their messes.