20 June 2019
Leadership ‘Debate’
And the winner was?
By Lynda Goetz
Whose idea was it to perch the ‘contestants’ on bar stools so that they were forced to sit rather like naughty schoolboys, with their feet tucked uncomfortably on the cross bar, whilst being supervised (not too effectively) by Emily Maitlis, elevated above them at a lectern? Was this some carefully thought-out plan of the BBC’s to ensure they all looked ridiculous? Even Rory Stewart, who eschewed the perch mode in favour of a rather more languorous long-legged lean, never looked comfortable. Clearly this was the point. Why otherwise was this ‘debate’ not conducted with the participants seated as, say, in Question Time or even standing at lecterns as has been done in the past?
Indeed, was this even a debate? If you look up the word online, the first definition which comes up for the noun is ‘a formal discussion on a particular matter in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward and which usually ends with a vote’. Well, in what was effectively a question and answer session, the opposing arguments seemed largely to come from outsider Stewart pitted against Johnson, Hunt, Gove and Javid. Nor, of course, did anyone get to vote on Tuesday night; nor indeed will most of us when the selection process gets down to the last two. This is a comment, not a complaint, but it does bring into question the point of the exercise, which most commentators agreed was cacophonous and chaotic and certainly not very formal.
A few selected members of the public were able to ask a question by video link, which the aspiring leaders were expected to answer. How questioners were chosen was not made clear, but they were evidently supposed to be a cross-section of the public – insofar as that is possible with just eight questions. Questioners ranged geographically from Southampton to Glasgow via Belfast, Bristol and Norwich and in age, gender and ethnicity, from Scottish schoolgirl Erin, with her question about climate change, to Bristol Iman Abdullah asking about Islamophobia.
None of the aspiring leaders stood out. Boris was almost as boring as Jeremy, but managed in spite of some goading from Ms Maitlis not to put his foot in it. ‘Saj’ seemed rather quiet. Only Michael seemed his usual bumptious and irritating self. Against them all was the Left-wing ‘new boy’ Rory, who seemed generally rather bad-tempered and impatient at the failure of all the others to see ‘reality’ as he saw it. He may well, however, have had a point when he questioned how any of the others propose to get ‘no-deal’ through Parliament, if this is necessary to leave by 31 October (or in the cases of Messrs Gove and Hunt, as close to it as possible); but how he proposed to resuscitate the ‘dead as a dodo’ Withdrawal Agreement was an equally valid question. In the event, Mr Stewart, in spite of his valiant efforts, was eliminated by Wednesday evening. As for the question he legitimately posed, nobody in the Tory party wants a General Election at this point, but if it comes down to a vote of no-confidence at the end of October, then Nigel Farage’s offer to Boris of a deal may well need to be seriously considered.
By the end of Thursday, when two more ballots will have been held, we will at least know who, apart from Boris, has made the cut. By then, how the BBC treated the candidates, how they behaved and what the public thought of all of it will no longer matter. It is how they are judged by their fellow Tory MPs which is all important. Politics, after all, is politics – not a media circus.
