Not having been to a hustings before, but being very tired of the tedious shouting matches of Any Questions on Radio 4, I was expecting more heat than light, but thankfully it didn't work out that way.
Bar two brief moments, there was little anger on display. The first of those moments came when an Australian (I think) attendee, in response to a question he’d asked ostensibly around support for working people, interjected to ask our sitting MP to talk about immigration - which was tersely and efficiently put down by the MP. The second was when the Reform candidate, while bemoaning the international responses to current conflicts (emphasis on the moaning part there), was heckled by an audience member asking if he’d get rid of NATO. In both cases, these flare-ups were quickly extinguished, and the bulk of the evening was conducted without rancour.
Also unlike similar set-ups on radio and television, the candidates didn't interrupt, jeer or otherwise interact much with each other. They did take account of what other candidates said, but mostly only positively to re-emphasise points, or for humorous effect. While that made the event rather bloodless, it also made it more of an edifying spectacle than it routinely is with broadcast questions-and-answers shows.
In terms of performances of the candidates, they all cleared the low-bar of sounding confident in front of an audience of uncertain political character, which wasn't a given as two of them were only in their early twenties. Needless to say, the long-sitting MP, Caroline Nokes, was comfortably the most competent in this department, with her many years of experience in, or at the edge of, government (including fighting her own party from time to time).
The weakest performance was from a “pro-life” independent candidate, who, somewhat to my surprise, got more of a positive hearing than I'd expected … having not factored-in the ecclesiastical nature of the audience. Having only a one-issue platform - and *what* an issue - she was pretty unconvincing, and had to demure on several questions where the connection to abortion was especially thin. She also claimed never to have heard the expression “levelling-up” putting her even more clearly in the out-of-touch category.
Another weak performance was from the Reform candidate. Many of his answers were just word salads made from oft-repeated populist ramblings. On a moment-to-moment basis they were coherent, but they didn't say anything substantive and often completely failed to answer the question put. But, despite coasting on thinly-veiled xenophobia and unfocused disgruntlement, he seemed to have an appreciative segment of the audience. (For an anti-immigration candidate he made the schoolboy gaffe of referring repeatedly to his extensive working abroad, something his ideology was very keen to stop other people doing - not that the essential hypocrisy of his position was understood by his supporters.)
Our Labour candidate gave a reasonable though unsparklingly performance, clearly due to her relative inexperience. In what looks like an unwinnable situation this time around, she'll hopefully at least cut her teeth on it.
The LibDem candidate - best-placed to challenge the sitting MP - gave a very competent performance that, for me at least, clearly made tactical voting an option for voters. That said, in response to a question about life experiences to learn from, he made a massive gaffe of oversharing a tale of falling for a mail-order Russian bride. He recovered, somewhat, by emphasising what he'd learned from the whole affair (namely: listen to people who tell you you're flagrantly being scammed), but it was a very strange moment in the room. He needs to dial that sort of unnecessary honesty right down.
There was a very good performance from the young Green candidate. Not exactly convincing to me, and he would have come unstuck if other candidates had a right-to-reply, but very spirited and potentially someone going somewhere down the line. And the only candidate to clearly challenge the sacred cow of Brexit, and also to rebut the claims of “wokery” in public life from the Reform candidate.
Finally, Caroline Nokes gave, as already mentioned, a solid and assured performance. As a Tory, my overlap with her politics is limited, but she's proven herself as a principled politician, and I can't but respect the way she's stood her ground against some of the worst impulses of her party. However, she did also give a terribly fawning answer around the leadership of Sunak that overlooked flaws in his record that, at times, aren't a million miles from his predecessors that she's clashed with. Nonetheless, she's the kind of politician that the Tory Party of recent decades needs to keep hold of, but I suspect she may be on her way out.
Overall, an interesting evening. Difficult to describe as enjoyable, but a more tolerable experience than I’d feared. Whether it worked to inform undecided voters I’m far less confident of. I suspect most people there were motivated by already strong political viewpoints, ones unlikely to be altered by how the evening played out.
Stray observations ...
- There wasn't any attempt to characterise the audience by a raising of hands, or determine whether anyone had their voting intentions changed by the event. Possibly efforts this way would have caused more trouble than they're worth, but it would still have been interesting to hear if anyone had been moved by the words of the candidates.
- I knew already from her talking about it in the media, but it was still something to see that Caroline Nokes has bodyguards attending events with her. It's a little sad that even quite good-natured public events like this one require this, but given attacks on MPs in recent years, it seems well-advised.
- In passing, as Ms. Nokes is my sitting MP, she's been in receipt of several missives from me down the years. I have to say that, while I haven't always agreed with her responses, I've always found her replies clear, thoughtful and honest (not to mention punctual). She's definitely what you want in an MP - it's just unfortunate she's representing a party that's so decisively lost its way.
