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General Election 24

Politics

13 June 2024

10 min read

‘Let your yeah be yeah’: when style supplants substance

The frustrating language of politics.

Roger Standing

Roger is a Baptist minister, author and Senior Research Fellow at Spurgeon’s College in London.

Campaign slogans.

Newzeepk, X.

You know what it’s like. A catchy piece of music is going round and round in your head. You can’t stop it. You don’t know where it came from. And, if you did originally like it, you find yourself quickly going off it.

Some call it ‘sticky music’, while others have labelled the phenomenon as ‘stuck song syndrome’. I prefer the more evocative ‘earworm’ as it ably expresses the experience of something both invasive and undesirable.

On this occasion the tune was accompanied by its refrain, ‘Let your yeah be yeah, and your no be no, now’. Round and round and round it went. It’s not a song I know well, and I couldn’t even remember who sang it.

Thankfully a quick google identified it as a top 10 single from 1971 by the Jamaican reggae trio, The Pioneers. Unfortunately, discovering that did not make it go away.

It was not rocket science to understand what was going on inside my head. It was the first week after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak had called the election and the campaigning had begun in earnest.

Now it’s not that my instant reaction was to do a ‘Brenda from Bristol’. Brenda, you will remember, became an internet sensation in 2017 for her memorable outburst when Teresa May called a snap election. She exclaimed, ‘You must be joking, not another one!’ No, I’m to be found more at the aficionado end of the political spectrum.

Still, I have been finding myself increasingly exasperated over recent years. I don’t think my irritation is just about getting older and becoming more grumpy. But I do find myself frustrated by what politicians do with language and the words they choose to use. I’m annoyed by the strategies they adopt as they justify themselves and the rhetorical devices they surreptitiously employ to bolster an argument.

Inside I find a deep longing for people to say what they mean and mean what they say. Is it too much to ask? Of course, there’s the root in my psyche, ‘let your yeah be yeah, and your no be no, now’.

It’s not that this is some kind of naïve desire for politics to become what it never can be - some kind of genteel, educated, middle-class debating society.

The very nature of democracy has passionate argument at its very heart. We don’t wrangle over what we agree on and hold in common. Democracy obliges our leaders to be in a mindset of perpetual persuasion towards us.

No, for me, the nub of the problem is when emotive words are chosen to make a point that the substance of an argument can’t. Or, when rhetorical sleight of hand is deployed on an unsuspecting audience, much like the misdirection of a magician in creating the illusion of magic.

Style supplants content and soundbites replace substance that has depth and an evidential basis.

This is nothing new. It has been a part of our public life in the West since the classical era of Aristotle, Plato and Cicero. It was the English rhetorician Ralph Lever who, in the sixteenth century, attempted to translate the key concepts of Aristotelian logic into English in his The Arte of Reason, rightly termed, Witcraft. That is, ‘witcraft’ – the art, skill or craft of the mind, NOT ‘witchcraft’: though some might see that as an apt descriptor of the dark arts that classical rhetoric can enable.

Aristotle, however, was clear in his understanding that the function of rhetorical skills was not to persuade in and of themselves, but rather to make available the means of persuasion. The substance of an argument was always to be more important than the manner in which it was communicated.

It is hardly a revelation that the world of contemporary comms has been birthed in a brave new world of technology. As the American media theorist and cultural critic Neil Postman pointed out, the advent of TV introduced entertainment as the defining principle of communication and what it takes to hold our attention.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business was Postman’s 1985 era-defining commentary of how things have changed. Gone are the 2-hour long political ‘stump’ speeches and hour-long church sermons. Style supplants content and soundbites replace substance that has depth and an evidential basis.

The speed of the internet, the ubiquity of social media and the omniscience of the algorithms have only served to distil and intensify the phenomena that Postman was concerned about. That recent history has witnessed the success that has accompanied the media experience and understanding of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump, only serves to underline the prescience of Postman’s observations.

The ability to cut through the surrounding cacophony, engage an audience and then hold their attention long enough to communicate something of value is challenging to the nth degree. This has merely served to ramp up the intensity, exaggeration and immediacy of political speech. To impact us it must evoke an emotional response. In this anxiety and fear are the most effective drivers.

Former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson was quite clear in his assessment that ‘a week is a long time in politics’. We might now consider a day, or even an hour, to be the operative chronological measure. The news cycle can turn very quickly indeed.

Yet the underlying dynamics of communication remain. Rhetoric remains supreme. Political machines have become the masters of ‘spin’ and of the art of gaming the opportunities, language and positioning presented by contemporary media.

As voters we should always be highly sensitive to what’s being communicated when a speaker talks about ‘us and them’, ‘ours and theirs’, ‘we and they’.

All this is in a context in which it is estimated that those in middle age have consumed an average of 30-40,000 hours of TV and some 250,000 advertisements. Britain is a media savvy society. Yet for all of this sophistication in media consumption, I remain fearful of how aware my fellow citizens are of the techniques that inform contemporary political messaging.

The former Speaker of the House of Representatives in the United States, Newt Gingrich, provides a helpful case study. Back in 1994 he produced a notorious memo to Republican candidates for Congress entitled ‘Language: A Key Mechanism of Control’.

Following extensive testing in focus groups and scrutiny by PR specialists he highlighted around 200 words for Republicans to memorise and use. There were positive words to associate with their own programme and negative ones to use against their opponents.

The positive words he advocated included:

opportunity… control… truth… moral… courage… reform… prosperity… children… family… we/us/our… liberty… principle(d)… success… empower(ment)… peace… rights… choice/choose… fair…

By contrast, when addressing their opponents:

decay… failure … collapse(ing)… crisis… urgent(cy)… destructive… sick… pathetic… lie… they/them… betray… consequences… hypocrisy… threaten… waste… corruption… incompetent… taxes… disgrace… cynicism… machine…

Careful choice of words can then be layered with other strategies to construct a highly sophisticated political message.

At a most basic level come the ever popular ‘guilt by association’ and its twin sibling ‘virtue by connexion’. Are migrants portrayed as ‘sponging off the benefits system’ or ‘filling recruitment shortfalls in the NHS, social care and industry’? Is British culture under threat of being overwhelmed or enriched by cultural diversity?

Integral to this use of language are the various methods of ‘virtue signalling’ to a particular audience and the infamous ‘dog-whistle’ subjects and phrases to call them to heel. Tropes and labelling also play their part. On labelling, the nineteenth century statesman John Morley powerfully denigrated the practice by suggesting that it saved ‘talkative people the trouble of thinking’.

As voters we should always be highly sensitive to what’s being communicated when a speaker talks about ‘us and them’, ‘ours and theirs’, ‘we and they’. By implication who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’? We should be aware too when more general arguments are made that leave us, as listeners, to fill in the blanks. This hidden rhetorical manoeuvre gets us ‘onside’ by leading us to intuitively believe that the speaker agrees with us. Along the way they haven’t defined what ‘responsible government’, or ‘critical priorities’ or ‘British values’ actually are. Instead, they have left for us to supply our own definition, ensuring our agreement and support.

To these can be added the ever more common practice of ‘gaslighting’, where information or events are manipulated to get people to doubt their own judgment, perception and sense of reality. And then there’s my favourite that the Urban Dictionary defines as a ‘Schrodinger’s douchebag’. Especially popular among populist politicians, this is where an outrageous statement is made and the speaker waits for the audience to respond. Only retrospectively do they declare whether they meant what they said or were only ‘just joking’.

It's perhaps no surprise that Rhetorical Political Analysis is actually a thing. Academics study it and political journalists use it to sniff out any hint of obfuscation. Depressingly, in the media, this frequently descends into an unholy game of ‘bait and trap’. Politicians, for their part, then become much more guarded as they seek to side-step a ‘gotcha’ move, whether merited or not.

… the truth will set you free’, he said. Free from the ducking and diving around our half-truths and fabrications.

So where does that leave the aspiration of ‘Let your yeah be yeah, and your no be no, now’? It may be surprising to some that The Pioneers’ song about a troubled love affair is directly quoting Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. But Jesus’ focus is not about romance here.

What he is talking about is truthfulness, authenticity and integrity. Say what you mean and mean what you say. For Jesus, truth and truthfulness was at the very centre of his own identity. Indeed, in Christian theology Jesus is the ‘word made flesh’, the ‘exact representation’ of who God is and what he is like. Jesus then advocates what he embodies: an alignment and integration of who we are, with what we say and what we do.

This has to be the foundation for authenticity and integrity. These are the very principles that are so highly prized in the political arena, and yet so quickly abandoned in the maelstrom of the conflicting demands of public life.

Jesus advocated living a truthful life, not least because of its liberating outcomes, ‘… the truth will set you free’, he said. Free from the ducking and diving around our half-truths and fabrications. Free from the fear of being found out or the implications of the ever-deepening holes to be dug. Free to be ourselves and have all the bits of our lives fit together as one.

This has to be the principle to live by, the standard to benchmark, the way of life to aspire to. It’s no coincidence that integrity and honesty are two of the seven Nolan principles that inform the UK government’s Committee on Standards in Public Life.

But the fact is we know the world to be a complicated place. We are not always the people we long to be. In the church’s liturgy the prayer of confession calls out our challenges. We miss the mark ‘through negligence, through weakness, [and] through our own deliberate fault.’

The reality is that, while we aspire to be the best that we can be, we also need to be alive to alternative realities. Our political processes can throw up flawed actors, bad actors and nefarious actors. They present very differently, yet we must always read through what is being communicated to access what is being said.

Life is complicated. There are many different ways to legitimately tackle the issues that we face as a country. Always there are trade-offs. Frequently the future turns out to be different to what has been predicted. Ultimately there are too many variables.

The 2024 General Election has proven to be refreshingly different. Neither Rishi Sunak nor Keir Starmer are as natural or charismatic in front of a camera as some of their predecessors.

It rained on the Prime Minister when he announced the election without an umbrella and the day after took him to the Belfast shipyard where the Titanic was built. Such gaffes are reassuringly human. Labour’s tragically cack-handed approach to Diane Abbott and whether she could stand for election as MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington where she faithfully served for 37 years is in a similar vein.

Yet, through it all it is worth noting Laura Kuenssberg’s comments for the BBC.

Both leaders inspire unusual loyalty among their teams. They are often praised by those who work with them as being warmer than they appear on camera: staffers describe them as decent family men, who take their jobs incredibly seriously and work incredibly hard.

I find this remarkably encouraging. In the meantime, that song keeps going round in my head.

‘Let your yeah be yeah, and your no be no, now’.

Please make it stop.

Article

Comment

Feminism

Leading

23 October 2024

5 min read

Can Kemi really have it all?

For female experiences to mean something, we need to be part of something bigger.

Sian Brookes

Sian Brookes is studying for a Doctorate at Aberdeen University. Her research focuses on developing a theological understanding of old age. She studied English and Theology at Cambridge University.

A woman works at a laptop on a desk surrounded by picture frame.

Kemi Badenoch campaigning.

Kemibadenoch.org.uk

The recent comments made about Kemi Badenoch being unfit for leadership due to a ‘preoccupation’ with her children were hardly a surprise. Kemi Badenoch is both a mother and a woman vying to be in a position of power. Since the beginning of time women have been mothers, but women haven’t always been in positions of power. It is unsurprising that some people might have problems adjusting to the change. But it isn’t just Robert Jenrick who finds this adjustment difficult. In my experience, most women find it hard too. Becoming a mother is a beautiful but body-breaking, exhaustion-inducing and identity-questioning process. And that is just in the first few months. Add to that the expectations of also having successful careers as well, and it is no wonder we find it hard.

Kemi Badenoch’s response, naturally and rightly, was to show how capable she is to lead the Tory party alongside her maternal responsibilities, whilst challenging the view that just because she is a woman she is more responsible for her kids than a man with similar age kids would be. But her lack of acknowledgement of the hardship involved in being a mother and having a successful career does leave an awkward silence around what is a very real ongoing imbalance in many relationships when it comes to holding the fair share of parental, household and professional responsibilities.

This relentless pursuit of the ability of mothers to do everything else as well says something about what we expect from women in our society. We need to prove that it is possible to be a woman and do all the things men have traditionally done. Yet sometimes I do wonder if we make it harder for ourselves. Is it our own expectations which make this thing called being a woman much harder than it needs to be?

Perhaps she is valuable not because of what she does or the choices she makes and what that says about the feminist cause, but because her worth lies elsewhere.

I’ve been blessed with the task of raising three boys, but I think about my friends who are raising little girls and the hopes they have for them. The hopes that they will grow to defy the expectations placed on them because they are female; to counter the oppression put upon them by breaking through the ceilings that may be built over them by others, to become whatever they want to be; engineers, consultant doctors, CEOs, even builders or plumbers if they so desire.

At the same time, (if the girls want them), they are expected to build families and loving safe homes. All of the things our mothers hoped for us and their mothers before them hoped for their own daughters.

Yet now, alongside those hopes for domestic fulfilment, so many other expectations have been added. Of course, the obvious solution to this, as Kemi has argued, is for men and women to share the load on both sides – to build the home and work life in a way that benefits both in the partnership. But the fact remains that relatively speedily in the course of historical development, we have come to a position where we are all expecting to have it all, all the time. And especially for our girls – we want them to be strong, powerful, successful, fruitful and productive all at once.

Now, this is not to say that we should revert to a time when only women ran the household and only men inhabited the professional domain. But sometimes perhaps it’s OK for a woman just to be a mum, if that is what she wants. She doesn’t have to also show the world she can be everything else as well. Some would criticise that decision as selling out on the relentless need to fight for equality with men. But not everything a woman does has to demonstrate some ideological end in fighting for equality, as though that is what gives her value as a woman. Perhaps she is valuable not because of what she does or the choices she makes and what that says about the feminist cause, but because her worth lies elsewhere.

Whatever we do, we do it to witness to a love, a truth which goes beyond whatever we can give to the world.

Many of the friends I spoke of earlier who have those little girls chose to have their daughters baptised as babies. This act of infant baptism puts the stake in the ground for the belief that before they could do anything, before they could prove their worth as a female member of society demonstrating all that power, strength, purpose and ability to right all the wrongs of the past, they were loved beyond measure, without condition.

Precisely as a girl, and before they grow to be a woman, maybe a mother, and then potentially the leader of a political party, they are a child of a God who values them not because of what they have done or will do, but because they are His child. At the same time, this doesn’t mean we sit back and do nothing – it’s central to the Christian faith to fight injustice and overturn oppressive powers, but this is never achieved by human action alone as though the weight of the world falls on our shoulders, it is done by bearing witness to a God who has a better plan for the world and for society than we could ever dream or imagine. It is only when we realise this that the burden might be lifted from all the women fighting for all the things we are supposed to fight for.

Of my three closest friends in the church, one is (currently) a stay-at-home mum, one a doctor, one a vicar. As for myself, I am studying for a PhD in theology. We also all spend a lot of time looking after children, cooking and doing the dishes (as do our husbands). And yet, when we reflect together, these choices feel less statements of how we might be empowered or not as women, but more the result of a belief that whatever we do, we do it to witness to a love, a truth which goes beyond whatever we can give to the world. And so, we can each celebrate what we “do” because in each offering of ours can be found meaning, purpose and life beyond our own abilities, even our own individual actions. Perhaps, this is better than any kind of feminism you find around these days, because it allows us each to do the small thing in front of us without loading more on ourselves than we can bear alone. Only together, and only in knowing we are part of something bigger than ourselves, can our variety of female experiences mean something. In this way of living, being a woman feels very free indeed.