How a debater can make a difference

I love putting my skills as a debate coach to good use outside of the classroom as well as inside it as each time gives me an extra piece of evidence of the importance of public speaking and critical thinking to our everyday lives, not to mention our most ambitious projects. Last week I went from the London Chamber of Commerce to Tower Hamlets Town Hall to a fundraiser for my leadership programme in Rwanda, proving (first and foremost to myself) the difference a debater can make.

My whirlwind tour began with the JCI debating and speaking competition at the Chamber of Commerce, marking the culmination of my training series, Debating for Professionals. Junior Chamber International (JCI), a global network of active citizens whose past members include John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton, and Kofi Annan, has always taken public speaking and debating very seriously in recognition of their importance to the personal and professional development of their members. Debating Professionals was a monthly series for JCI London that taught members how to apply the principles of debating to their professional lives, from interviewing for a new job to delivering a big presentation. My role in last week's competition was to set the motion and chair the debate. In the spirit of JCI, the motion I went with was: 'In today's economy, it pays better to be an entrepeneur than an employee'. Victory was awarded to the three best speakers on the night (as opposed to the winning side), with the champions now going on to represent London at national convention in Canary Wharf next month. If they win there too, they'll be off to European Congress next year in Turkey to represent the UK.

Next up, Tower Hamlets Town Hall, where I delivered the first instalment of a six week training programme for the borough's Young Mayor candidates. The council came to me following my work with the Youth Council earlier this year and explained that the Young Mayor elections had been fraught with difficulty in the past and needed a new approach. Election campaigns have a reputation for been bitter and spiteful, while previous winners had failed to deal with the responsibility of the office and dropped off the radar. Teaching young people the importance of caring about public policy and how to be effective advocates for their communities is the greatest service a skilled debater can offer their community, which is why I have taken such an interest in the project. Last week's session was just about getting everyone to feel comfortable speaking in public. This week we move onto policy planning. Initial observations? I'm delighted to see two thirds of the group are girls, a first for the Young Mayors' campaign, which has created an atmosphere of collaboration and support distinct from the predominantly male intake of previous years, so I am told,



Finally (pardon the grainy image) I ended last week in Leicester Square at the Quaker Westminster Meeting House for Friday Night Soapbox, a new experimental debate format hosted by my club, Debating London. You can read the full review of the debate here, which was held in aid of the fundraising campaign for Debate Camp Rwanda. A voluntary initiative by a team of 8 debate trainers working in partnership with Kigali based charity, iDebate Rwanda, it is by far the most ambitious and rewarding project we have ever delivered. Following on from the success of Debate Camp Rwanda 2013 attended by over 150 young people, this year we will be teaching 300 students how to talk about the big questions facing their country as it rebuilds itself out of the ashes of the 1994 genocide and to how to teach others in their community to do the same. The camp will take place in early December lasting 2 weeks, but the real work is the year round programme of debates, competitions, and training sessions that iDebate run for their network of 40 schools all year round. Their aim: to ensure the next generation of leaders have the skills and resolve to challenge the one-sided propaganda that made the horrors of 20 years ago possible, so that 'Never Again' means exactly that.

The difference a debater can make in just one week.

Who do MPs really represent?

"MPs don't represent their communities; they represent the people who vote".

This was one of many thought provoking comments from the teenagers attending Tuesday's Model Westminster conference, organised in conjunction with the Speaker's Commission on Digital Democracy.

Is this true and why would it be a problem if it was?

The second part of that question is probably the easiest to answer. Yes, it would be a problem because that's not the way democracy works and there are many people within any given constituency who can't vote (children, the mentally ill) who need their MP's support as much as anyone else. Moreover, if that was the way democracy worked, it would be considered reasonable to demand proof that you had voted before being admitted to MPs' surgeries or requesting their assistance, but it isn't. Constituents only need to prove they live in the right geographical area - if that.

Does it still happen, anyway? To a degree, yes. When I was a campaigner, I was given canvass cards with a special column reserved for 'non-voters'. Once these people were identified, the party would stop contacting them and they would be forgotten. Nobody would knock on their door to see if they had an issue we could help with. No one consulted them for their opinions during election campaigns.

Could you blame us? Political parties have finite resources with which to get their message out. Why use them on those who have no intention of voting for you?

The problem is, this approach doesn't change much once you're elected. When you go door-knocking, you still do so as a representative of your party and you still have finite resources, which means you still sideline constituents who are unlikely to vote for you. Unfortunately, this policy doesn't just freeze out those who won't vote, but also those who can't vote, such as the teenagers I was privileged to work with on Tuesday.

There are several notable exceptions to this rule, though. Stella Creasy, for example, proved phenomenally popular with the youngsters at Model Westminster (of all political persuasions) for the way she uses social media to engage with her entire community. Similarly, Lynne Featherstone is revered by campaigners for being one of the first MPs to take to the internet and engage her constituents through her blog.

The reason they can interact with their entire communities and not just those who vote is because on the internet it costs nothing to communicate with your constituents, except time of course, of which Creasy and Featherstone put in a tremendous amount to make themselves available to their followers. Nevertheless, when asked what they liked most about Creasy's Twitter feed, for example, the teenage conference delegates replied that the personal nature of her posts, often unrelated to her work, made her come across as a regular person and not just another politician.

Try doing that with conventional communications. Somehow I don't think knocking on someone's door to show them a picture of a cat would have quite the same effect as it does online.

When I turned up on Tuesday for a conference on digital democracy, I thought it was going to be one big discussion about electronic voting, but now I think the Speaker's Commission may be on to something. Do MPs only represent those who vote? The good ones don't and anyone with a decent grasp of twitter and a commitment to democracy will fast be on the case of those who do.

How to judge the Scottish Independence debate

I've judged many debates in my time, dating back from my student days to as recently as the Sunday before last. So, I asked myself: how would I judge last night's Scottish Independence debate if it took place at a debating competition? Below, I've tried to do exactly that, analysing some of the key clashes between First Minister, Alex Salmond, and his opponent, Alastair Darling MP, and then explaining my verdict at the end.

Democracy:

Salmond: "one thing we can say with absolute certainty, when Scotland becomes independent then at every single election we'll get the government Scotland votes for - every time Scotland goes into a general election, we have the risk of having people we didn't vote for ruling over us. That has happened for more than half of my life. I want to change that and have the certainty of democracy in this country."

Darling: "I didn't vote for him (Salmond), but I'm stuck with him. I just accept that that's what happens in a democracy."

Salmond: "It wasn't a surprise to find out Alastair didn't vote for me. The point is, Alastair, a majority of people in Scotland did vote SNP at the last election and therefore we got an SNP government. The difficulty in a general election is that the majority of the people in Scotland vote against the Tory party - they have one MP, more Pandas in the zoo in Edinbourgh than Tory MPs in Scotland - but we still get a Tory government. That is what is undemocratic about the status quo."

Darling: "That's a nice line, but it's not a good answer. Most people believe we can get the best of both worlds. We have a government in Scotland and we are also part of a larger country..."

Analysis:

Actually, it's a perfectly good answer as there is a massive difference between an individual not getting the person they voted for and a nation not getting the party a majority of its people voted for. Prior to this exchange, Salmond did also add that as a result of this, the interests of the Scottish people have been harmed by policies drawn up in Westminster by governments the majority of Scots didn't elect. In other words, it is impossible for Scotland to solve any of these problems as long they remain a part of the UK. 

While there were plenty of things Alastair Darling could have said in reply to that, such as devolving more powers to the Scottish Government for example, the fact is he didn't and he needed to make an effort to engage with the First Minister's argument rather than just taking a cheap shot at him.

Currency Union:

Darling: "People want to know how much their money will buy; how much their savings are worth. You said you want a currency union if we vote for independence, which seems to me a bit like getting a divorce and keeping the same join bank account. If you do that, you've got to get agreement from the other side (the UK government in Westminster) who are saying no, so what is going to happen - what is plan B?

Salmond: "We'll keep the pound, Alastair, because it's our pound as well as England's pound. It's logical and desirable to have a currency union because England is Scotland's biggest export market and Scotland is England's second biggest export market. So for these reasons, it's in the interests of Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom to have a currency union. So we'll keep the pound because it's logical and desirable."

Darling: "What is your plan B if you don't get a currency union?”

Salmond: “This is Scotland’s pound. It doesn’t belong to George Osbourne. It doesn’t belong to you…I said it was logical and desirable for Scotland and the United Kingdom. I chose these words carefully because I was quoting you exactly from an interview with Newsnight Scotland from the 10th January 2013.”

Analysis:

Ronald Reagan once said: “if you’re explaining, you’re losing.” It should be noted that if you’re refusing to answer the question and the audience is heckling you out of frustration, you’re also losing. This is the pattern this particular exchange followed as Salmond mocked Darling for apparently changing his position on currency union, the Euro, and for his performance as Chancellor of the Exchequer during the financial crisis.

What Salmond needed to do was show one of three things to be true:

1. that the UK government was bluffing or would change its mind (which he took a stab at with his comment about export markets, but never really explained); OR
2. that Scotland did not need currency union to remain economically prosperous; OR
3. that even if currency union was denied to Scotland and even if the consequences of losing the pound would be severe, it would remain a necessary price to pay for independence.

Unfortunately, all he showed is that Mr Darling may have contradicted himself in a TV interview, which is meaningless as even if the former Chancellor did secretly support currency union, that wouldn’t make it a good idea.

A ‘successful’ Scotland:

Salmond: “Do you agree that Scotland could be a successful independent country?”

Darling: “I have never said Scotland can’t go it alone, but…small countries have to make sure they live within their means, they sometimes have difficult decisions they’re going to have to take. My argument about Scotland is simply this:…about 15% of Scotland’s tax revenues come from North Sea oil, we know they’re in long term decline, we know they are volatile. Last year alone, Scotland lost £4.5bn in revenues, which is more than we spend on the schools budget…(cut off by Salmond)

Salmond: “Let me just say you’ve said yes to the idea that Scotland could be a successful independent country…Even your partner in the ‘No’ campaign, David Cameron has said…it would be wrong to suggest that Scotland could not be another successful independent country. Do you agree with David Cameron on that?

Darling: “Small countries do have to make sure that they can balance the books (heckled by Salmond and the audience)…your own figures show we have a much bigger deficit at the time you want to have independence from the UK and that would mean some very difficult decisions, which you are not prepared to face up with.”

Salmond: “Do you agree with David Cameron or not?” (he repeats three times)

Darling: “Let me answer your question (now being loudly heckled by the audience) – the other thing about small countries….

Analysis:

You can probably guess this exchange didn’t end well. In fact, I had to cut the transcript there or it would have run on for three pages with Salmond asking the same question and Darling trying to talk about small countries.

Let’s not kid ourselves here, Alex Salmond’s sole objective in this exchange was to put Alastair Darling in an embarrassing tight spot, something he did very well. However, while this move may have delighted his supporters, it did nothing to help undecided voters make up their mind, mainly because we never got a definition of the word successful.

Definitions are important, they give us an objective term of reference against which we can measure the accuracy and consistency of competing arguments. Otherwise you just get two different sets of claims thrown at you with no way of testing them, which is when people start factoring in things that should be irrelevant such as the speakers’ looks or sense of humour. 

My advice to Alastair: next time you get a question like that, ask Alex Salmond how you’re meant to answer the question when no-one has said what successful means and then push him to give a concise definition, the same way you pushed him to explain his plan for currency union.

The verdict:

Obviously, there was more to this debate than just the three exchanges above. Nevertheless, if this were a debating competition, I would narrowly award victory to Alastair Darling. While Alex Salmond did successfully demonstrate that there are problems with Scotland's membership of the Union, he failed to prove that leaving the United Kingdom would be the BEST or ONLY way to deal with them, while Alastair Darling successfully exploited the uncertainty around the risks of leaving.

However, this is not a competition. It is not a game. This decision will affect real people's lives forever, which is the reason I felt moved to write this blog post. When the Scottish public goes to vote in September, when the UK (with or without Scotland) goes to vote in the general election in May 2015, and again in the EU referendum of 2017, I want those big life-changing decisions to be made based on (to paraphrase Martin Luther King) the contents or our leaders' arguments rather than the colour of their rosettes.

That's why I hope come September, the voters of Scotland will judge their leaders as if they were contestants in a debating competition - whatever the verdict.