Seems to me the problem

with so much political and other debate is that we give so little opportunity or room for it to develop. It's happening I see again today with the Labour Party and Israel/anti-Semitism. Whilst I do think that the party has a problem, I also think that there's nothing necessarily wrong in eg comparing Israel to an abused child turning abuser - one may or may not agree, but it's not necessarily a dreadful (let alone anti-Semitic) thing to say. But no - once somebody has said some words which can be used by their opponents as a weapon against them, then ha ha it's too late, bad luck, you're out, end of story. The effect of all that is that debate becomes chilled and stilted, because everyone sticks to what they know is safe/right thinking territory - nobody really dares step outside easy parameters because they know what will happen. That in turn leads to people feeling that political debate is failing completely to deal with things they actually think and talk about amongst themselves - immigration was a classic example - it was not politically permissible to say anything other than immigration good - despite lots of people having all sorts of reservations about scale/speed etc etc - so the disconnect between voters and politicians became wider and wider allowing good old Nige to step into the breach. So I think a real problem with all this is that debate is being completely stifled because people aren't allowed to express thoughts, argue, change their minds, develop their opinions, make conjectures, express themselves badly and so on - they're taken because of some comment or other, to be beyond the pale, completely irredeemable.

anyway, i bloody hope we win tonight. I'll be hiding behind the sofa, bravely sticking my fingers in my ears and humming loudly

Posted By: paulg, Nov 8, 11:27:01