How to debate

Another day, another unedifying row in the Labour Party’s never ending leadership contest. This time about a suggestion by the Corbyn campaign that we consider women only train carriages one of the ways to deal with sexual harassment on public transport.

Personally I think it’s a bad idea. And given that the question from the campaign was “should we consider it?” rather than “I will do this, do you agree?” I didn’t (and don’t) think it was a threat to my neutrality to say so. Which I did.

But the Labour Party is in a thin-skinned place right now. Everyone is in a bad mood with everyone else. Day after day, we scream past each other on Twitter, on Facebook, on here. Things are being said that can’t be unsaid. So criticism of a mooted policy becomes a personal attack. And personal attacks become just another way of doing business.

This is in no way restricted to any one leadership camp or its supporters. Frankly, the way some people on the right of the party have spoken about and to the supporters of Jeremy Corbyn has made me wonder if they are not secret agents. When they aren’t being patronising, they’re being downright rude. It’s the weirdest way to try and win someone over I have ever seen.

Politics used to be about the art of persuasion. Of trying to convince people of your arguments, of trying to win support for your policies. Now it seems more like performance art. A way of demonstrating your moral superiority to your peers and denigrating your opponents. It is ugly and unattractive, but it does not seem to be about attracting any more. Supporters of one side or another don’t want the “wrong” sort of voters – the Trots or the Tories.

We all need to remember how to debate and how to persuade. We all need to remember that we’re all part of the same Party. We need to remember that you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. Persuasion has always been about finding common ground and working back from there. It doesn’t mean losing your own sense of purpose, but finding ways in which that purpose can be matched with others to find a common purpose, a common understanding. Perhaps we could start with some common decency.