A plea for nuance

By Emma Burnell / @scarletstand

When I first started blogging I was given some excellent advice by veteran Lib Dem blogger Mark Thompson. He told me to keep a list of possible topics that occur to me when I don’t have the time to blog so I can return to them when inspiration and not having to do real work happen at the same time. A week ago I added to my list the phrase “whatever happened to nuance?” This was before the riots. Then it was a concern about the way we engage in public discourse. About the way the most extreme viewpoints always get a hearing and the way rhetoricians rise to the top while the more considered struggle to get a hearing. Now it is an urgent and serious matter. Our lack of ability to use nuance in public rhetoric could jeopardise a proper public response to what has happened.

With the demise of deference in politics the rush to create more interesting media events from politics became ever greater. It was once believed that the rightful loss of deference would lead to a media that sought to better inform us of the behaviour, thoughts, theories, concepts and policies of those who represent us. Sadly it has led instead to anti-deference, where the behaviours of both media and political elites has become a sideshow of sparring and retort. Thoughts, theories, concepts have to arrive fully formed to receive an airing, and their proponents must show no doubt, no room for manoeuvre no ability to be persuaded from their one true path.

Television journalism has become little but a search for the “Gotcha” moment. Documentaries jostle for space and ratings with polemics from the left and right and no distinction is given between them. In the press, we have columnists whose sole role is to ensure they are talked about, clicked through to on the website. Good or bad doesn’t matter, it’s the hit rate alone that counts.

We are likely to enter into a time where nuance is both needed more than ever and is more lacking than ever. When people are angry and frightened they lash out. We have all been angry and frightened over the last few days. We all want to strike back hard, even if that would make things worse. It’s a natural impulse. That doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

There isn’t one cause of these riots. There are no magic wands or simplistic policies that will change either what happened or what caused it to happen. A range of different public policy options will be available to the current and future governments to see what works. A mixture of deterrents from those who see this as simply a criminal justice issue and social and economic drivers from those who believe the causes to be more worthy of investigation than the stemming of the effects.

All sides must respond to this with clear heads and long term visions. Those visions will differ, we can argue about that. But we need to be clear that we do so not based on dogma. We need what works. We need to know what works. We need to be able to make mistakes as it’s the only way to get things right in the end. I will tell the Tory government when I think they are getting it wrong. That’s democracy. I will expect to be listened to if I can back up my gut instinct with facts. That’s good public policy. If I’m proved wrong I will say so. That’s good manners. But I won’t scream and shout. I won’t riot. I won’t write blogs specifically intended to rile people up and get myself noticed. I’ll put some ideas out there and look to see if the reaction brings anything interesting.

There has rightly been criticism of the way politicians have handled this situation. But we need to look not just at the brutalised culture of those who are rioting but also the coarsened and desensitized way in which we talk about them and about each other. We need not a return to deference, but a new age of nuance. We need it now.