Sound and Vision? The referendum campaign enters the televised ‘debates’ phase

A campaign that, frankly, already feels like it has lasted an eternity has entered its final phase. The first television broadcasts for the Remain and Leave camps have been aired. This week sees the start of a series of televised events or ‘debates’ between the two sides and their senior representatives.
The first of these occurs tomorrow and Friday on Sky when David Cameron and, on the night after, Michael Gove, the Justice Secretary, make their arguments to an audience moderated in each case by Kay Burley. The week after sees a similar format on ITV when the Prime Minister is followed by Nigel Farage (to the immense irritation of the official Leave team who did not want the UKIP leader as their representative) with Julie Etchingham overseeing proceedings. There will be a further event on that channel two days later. For the final push, the BBC dominates the story with David Dimbleby hosting a Question Time Special with, yet again, first Mr Gove and then a few days later Mr Cameron facing questions from a studio audience. If that was not enough, the Beeb has a vast final ‘debate’ on 21 June at the 12,500 seater Wembley Arena with the ultimate line-up to be finalised with the very last word going to Jeremy Paxman on Channel 4 on the evening before the referendum itself.
This is merely the main programme. There are plenty of other referendum discussions scheduled across multiple television and other platforms. The question, though, is what difference it will make?
There are reasons to doubt whether the televised debates will make much difference
There are a series of reasons to be sceptical about the influence of all this activity on the media. The first is that historically the impact of debates in elections and referenda everywhere appears to be limited and, in so far as these matters can be measured, diminishing over time. This is true even in the United States, the home of this form of political broadcasting. This stretches back right to the infancy of the medium.
It has entered folklore that John F. Kennedy secured the White House back in 1960 because of his performance in the first ever televised presidential debate with the then Vice President and Republican candidate, Richard Nixon. Mr Kennedy may well have looked and sounded better on that night but the raw truth is that the day that debate was broadcast he was on average a single percentage point ahead in the opinion polls and, come the election itself, he was ahead in the popular vote by less than a single percentage point, so if that debate was decisive it was decisive in an extremely understated fashion.
Where a debate can be devastating is when a candidate makes a serious mistake. In the Republican contest this year, Marco Rubio’s seemingly promising prospects of achieving the nomination ahead of Donald Trump were effectively upended in a New Hampshire debate when he was accused of mastering pre-scripted 25 second responses to every question by a rival (Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey) and responded with what seemed to be a pre-scripted 25 second reply. He finished fifth in a state where he should have come second and never recovered. It is only if the televised referendum encounters lead to such a moment that they might be pivotal.
This is unlikely, however, for the second and third reasons to be sceptical. These are that none of the televised exercises which feature the Prime Minister are ‘debates’ in the sense that the televised battles between Gordon Brown, Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg were in 2010, and that even if they had that quality (which they do not) the two sides would not be dealing with the same issues but would be seeking to make completely different subjects central to the electorate.
Much as he almost did last year (when he conceded a mere one televised debate involving himself and further insisted that almost every other party leader, no matter how obscure, took part), Mr Cameron has tried to nix any notion of a ‘real’ debate which would involve himself as the undisputed leader of the Remain campaign taking on head-to-head, in a one-on-one showdown, either Boris Johnson or Mr Gove (or even Mr Farage for that matter). Downing Street has been determined to avoid any such overt disagreement between senior members of the Conservative Party (or ‘blue on blue’ events, in a phrase borrowed from military parlance about when a side manages, accidentally one assumes, to kill its own troops). This will inevitably render what are described as ‘debates’ somewhat less compelling as a spectacle.
Even if the format were less rigid, the chances are that the debates would not be that critical. All of the indications thus far are that the two lobbies would not properly engage with each other. This is because they have reached the conclusion that completely separate issues are central to the matter. The Remain lobby wants to talk about the economy almost exclusively with security being in there as well but as a manifestly secondary consideration. The Leave campaign wants to talk about neither of these subjects but instead focus on immigration and sovereignty with the balance between the two determined by exactly where the individual spokesperson involved is on the centre-right spectrum. The public is likely to be left a little bemused as these alternative notions of the ‘issue’ are outlined.
The fourth and the final reasons to be sceptical involve the nature of modern political engagement. The reason why televised political spectacles such as these debates seem to have less impact than is claimed in advance is that they tend to be viewed by the most politically interested section of the population and such persons are the most likely to have settled views on the referendum. This is not an audience which is watching in order to have its mind changed but is much closer in outlook to those who attend a sporting event because they want to see how well their team will do.
The sole exception to this was the very first debate of 2010 which, as it was the first time anything like it had occurred in British politics, attracted an unusually large and quite diverse set of spectators, and it did (briefly) trigger ‘Cleggmania’, an outcome which so disturbed the Prime Minister and his party that it has sought since (with some success it has to be conceded) to prevent any repetition of it.
Finally, terrestrial television is in remorseless decline as a means of connecting the public to politics. Social media has displaced it as far as the young are concerned. Watching Ms Burley, Mr Dimbleby and Mr Paxman is a distinctly ‘old school’ choice of pastime, not one for the disengaged or the undecided.
Are all these hours of televised coverage like to be politically inconsequential?
No, perhaps ironically. In a sense what takes place over the next few weeks is potentially immensely consequential politically but not because many (indeed, in the net, any) votes for or against staying in the European Union are set to be determined by them. They matter because, as alluded to above, it is the political class which will be scrutinising them, not more normal members of the population.
They matter because the manner in which they are conducted will either ease the tensions that so clearly exist within the Conservative Party and suggest that there is some sort of route back towards a politics ‘as normal’ after 23 June for the Prime Minister and his parliamentary colleagues or, by contrast, what is stated in them might harden positions further and make it even more difficult to restore conventional party discipline in the aftermath of the referendum result.
At least one of Mr Cameron and Mr Gove/Mr Johnson will have to consider the extent to which they are willing to tone down what they say about the other camp in order to make reconciliation within the Conservative Party afterwards more straightforward or all of them may come to the conclusion that the maximum outcome for them in the referendum trumps everything else and that they cannot risk being more ‘civilised’ in their arguments with each other now for fear of losing support on referendum day. It will be worth watching the otherwise uninspiring ‘debates’ simply to see how they decide to play it. A tiny audience within a much larger audience is what will really matter over the next three weeks.