The Daily Telegraph

Question Time heckler showed base nature of our public debate

Voices of sense and moderation are being drowned out in our sharply divided nation

- By Judith Woods

When David Dimbleby kicked out a rowdy heckler from the audience in Plymouth this week, a loud and distinctly non-partisan cheer of relief went up. Whatever his own selfrighte­ous narrative, Steve German was ordered to leave not because he was a socialist, not because he was a lone voice of the people among the pundits but because he was rude. Small word; big problem.

This one single moment was all the example we needed to show just how divided a nation we currently are. And while Steve German’s heckles were the loudest, he certainly wasn’t the only one shouting – there were several members of the audience and the panel who were quite happy to butt into other people’s points or talk over someone’s argument before they had finished making it.

What have we become? It doesn’t take a Jacob Rees-mogg to complain about the increasing­ly shambolic shoutiness of public debate or an orchestrat­ed Day of Rage to make the most peaceable citizen feel irked that nobody has yet thought to stage a March of People Feeling A Bit Put Out But Not Enough To Make a Rowdy Fuss.

Because rowdy fuss is fast becoming the norm just about everywhere and anyone who does not fuss, rowdily, seems to be construed, comrade, as a quizling, a filthy collaborat­or, a politicall­y quiescent lickspittl­e. Or worse, a Lib Dem.

I remember shouting an awful lot in the Eighties, when I was at university in Scotland and Thatcher was on the throne. I took Days of Action against the poll tax and racism, I danced at the student union to free Nelson Mandela and caught leaky coaches down to London to protest. Back then the lines were clearly drawn between Them and Us. There was a degree of certainty about who was the enemy, but no longer.

These days both the Government and the Opposition are so riven by internal division that it’s quite hard to know where, definitive­ly, to channel the hatred when the enemies plotting a bloody coup inside the tent are arguably more pernicious than those on the outside merely following Queensberr­y rules by p---ing in the door. It’s all terribly nuanced, which is ironic, given that nuance is dead. Social media killed it in 140 characters or less (I would say ‘fewer’ but grammar lies in the dirt, untended, and anyone foolish enough to flaunt the subjunctiv­e will be set upon by a rampaging mob of misplaced apostrophe­s).

Today, there’s no place for equivocati­on or weighing up least worst options. Every U-turn, however welcome (May’s dementia tax, Corbyn’s shoot-to-kill terrorist policy spring to mind), is met with raucous contempt rather than embraced with jubilation because political discourse in our society isn’t about persuading and informing but deriding and shutting down every other opinion.

We live in serious times; Brexit, terror attacks, the heartbreak and outrage of Grenfell Tower. The national mood is anxious and defensive with everyone feeling like they are in a race against time to get their point of view across and make a difference.

But when democratic forums for the exchange of ideas – like Twitter, like

Question Time – are hijacked by the loud and the lairy it’s impossible to escape the conclusion that all that talking is just a blowhard buffer that saves them and so many others from listening to what’s really important. Sense.

 ??  ?? Steve German, top, heckled and interrupte­d speakers on Question Time, prompting presenter David Dimbleby to tell him to get out of the studio
Steve German, top, heckled and interrupte­d speakers on Question Time, prompting presenter David Dimbleby to tell him to get out of the studio
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