Form of a Question: How we talk politics matters and context is too often neglected

How we talk politics in the public sphere matters. In political interviews, the most common space, we need to consider carefully the form of questions, because context is often neglected despite mattering deeply.

Owen Jones stirred up a few hornets nests in the last week, by calling into question both the ingrained privilege and biases of those who work in the British media. Despite some angry response, the statistics align with his point.

It is important to question our assumptions. To look at the facts from a number of angles. It is the job of any good journalist. And that, sometimes, means journalists looking at themselves and those they work with.

Especially when it comes the politics in it's rawest form, we need to think and act carefully. The media doesn't just shine a ray of light on the lay of the land, it gives structure to the whole weather system and decides what parts of it we are even able to see.

For most viewers, the crucible in which most Westminster politics is consumed is in the form of the political interview. From Andrew Neil, Laura Kuenssberg and Andrew Marr at the BBC, to Robert Peston at ITV or Krishnan Guru-Murthy at Channel 4, it is a high profile format.

It's also a highly problematic format. I'm not looking here to tear down any practitioners of the political interview 'genre'. But there are questions that should be raised about it's dynamics and how the process unfolds.

The way interviewers approach these set-pieces raise a lot of questions - all of which need careful thoughts. They are gatekeepers to platforms, some with colossal reach. As such they have extraordinary political power, and that must always be held to account.

But here I want to focus on a very particular issue. At present, the common form of questioning in a standard political interview does two things - that might be thought of as mistakes - that seem to render the interviews futile.

From the outside, these interviews follow a particular course - as follows.

Mistake 1: The interviewer asks a question that is phrased in a way that casts them as a proxy for their interviewee's opponents. That means the interviewer adopts the opponent's subjective context as the framing device for the question - as in, what they, subjectively, construe as good and bad.

The result of this is that the interviewee avoids giving a straight answer. They instead attempt to reframe the question to their own - in essence, polemically opposed - context, simply because their own context is an intrinsic part of why they believe what the stand for is 'good'.

Mistake 2: The interviewer treats this attempt to reframe, on the part of the interviewee, as a refusal to give a straight answer and treats them as hostile. They demand that their interviewee give a simple answer within the invalid framing, despite it being fundamentally ill-fitting and distortionary to any answer that might be given.

The result is that the interviewee is rendered incapable of answering the question, as even if they wanted to give a straight answer - or often any answer at all - the framing of the question directly prevents them from doing so.

Any answer given by an interviewee, in this environment that rips it from its native context, is robbed of it's meaning and serves only the opponent's narrative.

Consider an example.

The Tories traditionally think that tax & spend is 'Bad'. So if Labour tax & spend, then Labour are framed as 'Bad' - in this case with the meanings of wasteful, redistributing in a socially negative way that rewards bad habits, etcetera.

However, Labour traditionally think that tax & spend is 'Good'. Yet to confirm their commitment within the framing of the Conservatives is incorrect - in this different context, the meaning is different. Context changes meaning.

That means that, in this scenario, a Labour spokesperson is rendered unable to answer such a question - without first being able to address, and contest, the context within which the answer will be understood.

In this hostile environment, unable to answer, they must either conform to the narrative, or fight it - leading to the perception of evasiveness under questioning or deception, both of which will be criticised.

These points matter.

One direct consequence of this form of questioning is that it creates the perception of politicians who won't answer questions, by directly preventing them from being able to.

In a world in which snippets of interviews are seen more than whole recordings, it also gives people an incorrect impression of deeply-biased mainstream journalists parroting the polarised positions of political parties.

This process, additionally, affords an absurd amount of power to those who 'create the political weather' - who lead the public conversations on values. To a media cycle built around creating and then reporting on, and thus reinforcing, public opinion.

There are no easy answers to this. What is the root of this? Is there perhaps a misunderstanding about what it means to be 'balanced'? Or is it as simple as time constraints?

Either way, context is being left out of the dominant form of political discussions. And that is a mistake. Possibly a tragic one. In politics, every idea, every policy, has a context that gives it meaning.

In fact the fight over the context is often far more important than the day to day fight over any given policy. It is the big war, fought behind the scenes - but it should be up front, in the spotlight.

"We don't pass by" - Jeremy Corbyn lays foundations for compassionate narrative based on renewing belief in public service

Jeremy Corbyn addresses a thousand people in Manchester Cathedral at a meeting organised by the CWU for their People's Post campaign, while several thousand more assemble outside.

Last night, Jeremy Corbyn had a strong message of support for the CWU's People's Post campaign. Yet just his presence alone was a great success for the Communication Worker's Union, as he drew an audience of around eight thousand people to the Manchester Cathedral meeting - the majority of whom were gathered outside for a parallel overspill event.

As part of the week of protests parallel to the Conservative Party Conference, it capped off a successful weekend for the People's Assembly that saw sixty to eighty thousand people assemble to march against austerity.

Jeremy Corbyn opened his speech with another of his recent references to the media coverage of himself, dismissing personal attacks by saying he really doesn't care about them:

"Once you get out of the swamp of personal recriminations people have to listen to the political arguments"

He also praised the politically active young people turning out for events like those this weekend, who he said had been 'written off by the political establishment'.

The focus of Corbyn's speech was on his belief in public service. Along with Dave Ward, the General Secretary of the CWU, there was praise for the post office as a strong force for good that connected people. The was also praise for the grandness of the principle behind the Universal Service Obligation.

Corbyn set his comments within the context of the importance of the public sector's role, echoing fellow speaker Natalie Bennett's sentiment that the private sector is 'no answer' for public sector provision of essential public services.

Corbyn also told the audience, echoing others at the People's Assembly rally on Sunday, that the campaign for the 2020 election starts now, not two or three weeks before 7 may 2020, and that campaigners need to start now to win ordinary people's hearts and minds over to hope. He expressed confidence that he, Labour and the anti-austerity movement would succeed.

The event also featured Kevin Maguire of The Mirror acting as chair; Owen Jones - who looked particularly fired up; and Natalie Bennett - who, looking more comfortable and confident than six months ago, received a warm welcome from a crowd that clearly had a lot of empathy with the Green Party's leader and her message.

Ultimately though, this was Corbyn's moment. This was another chance for him to lay out his new politics, with a different approach that is more reasonable and more democratically engaged with civil society. It was also a chance to lay the foundations for a new and more compassionate narrative, with which to oppose austerity based on renewing people's belief in public service. He summed up that message with the words: "We won't pass by".

The task now ahead for Corbyn and his team now is to maintain the momentum of the social movements that have come together against austerity. It was clear, however, that the majority of the crowd appeared to have turned up to see the new Labour leader and he was met, and departed from the hall, to standing ovations. If Corbyn can pull in near ten thousand people to hear him speak everywhere he goes, estimations regarding his chances of victory in 2020 are going to start changing dramatically.

Anti-austerity 'Take Back Manchester' event tries to prove that the Left is back in fashion

Billy Bragg plays to the crowd of protesters gathered at the start of the the march, which saw 60,000 people walk the streets of Manchester around the Conservative Party Conference.

The tone was set for several days of People's Assembly 'Take Back Manchester' protests at a day long gig on Saturday, organised by Sam Duckworth at the People's History Museum in Manchester. The event was headlined and closed out by Billy Bragg, who saved a rendition of The Red Flag for his encore - an anthem that Jeremy Corbyn's election seems to have brought back into style (Dearden, 2015).

The 'Take Back Manchester' protests, aimed at bringing the anti-austerity campaign right onto the Conservative doorstep at their autumn conference in Manchester (Pidd, 2015), follow an upsurge in activity after the shock Conservative election win. That surge has been given new energy by the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party (Young, 2015; Kuenssberg, 2015).

Billy Bragg told his audience on Saturday night that he'd been a member of the movement so long, it had become fashionable again. And that's a message that the People's Assembly is keen to impress upon the Conservatives - that the days of austerity are numbered in the face of a resurgent popular democratic Left.

Natalie Bennett addresses the crowds assembled at Castlefields arena at the end of the march.

That message was at the heart of what the speakers had to say to the crowds gathered in the sun at the Castlefields outdoor arena. Natalie Bennett told the crowd that the sun was shining on their movement - in this case figuratively as well as literally, on a beautiful Sunday evening.

Stood on the stage in the sunshine, Charlotte Church told the crowd:

"They can hurl abuse at us and we will fight back. They can scare people into thinking one way, but we can educate people into thinking another. They can claim that protest doesn't work, but we can prove protest has worked, does work and will work for us now."

Owen Jones followed by saying that a broad movement was needed to achieve these things, organised from the bottom up. Mark Serwotka went much further, arguing that the trade unions needed to stand together, as the real opposition to the government, and close to outright called for general strikes.

The emphasis everywhere was on the power of the popular movement and not without good reason. Without the support of a broad social movement, the new campaign for an alternative cannot succeed. The new leader of the Labour Party cannot succeed.

On Saturday, Billy Bragg told the audience that he believed that the last election proved that the times are still in flux. That there is a world to win. But Bragg followed up with a word of caution. He said that the real enemy was cynicism - which needed to be replaced with hope and the belief that victory was possible.

If the People's Assembly and the trade unions are to build a bottom up movement and have a sustained impact, then Jeremy Corbyn - who addresses the Communications Workers' Union this evening in Manchester - will have an important role to play. Whatever lack of loyalty the parliamentary party has offered him as the new leader of the Labour, the wider social and trade union movements have adopted him as their figurehead.

But Corbyn needs to be wary. Alexis Tsipras has shown perils and difficulties of serving the people's idealism within the depressingly pragmatic political mainstream (Cohen, 2015). If Corbyn can be a lightening rod, the focal point and agent of the wider movements, he could be both the coordinator and the public spokesperson for the movements aims.

Yet, ultimately, it will require the sustained attention, energy and engagement of those taking part to overcome the austerity narrative, because a political party alone in the political sphere is not enough (Rogers, 2015). Only a sustained campaign - debating, educating and informing - can change public perceptions and give people a reason to believe in an alternative.