Shambolic, devoid of decorum: an unfiltered Bi-annual politics debate

Comment Editors Deborah Solomon and Lara Bevan-Shiraz and Co-Editor-in-Chief Grace Holloway lift the lid on King’s College London Politics Society’s bi-annual debate, charting a night of chaos, heckling and port-fuelled theatrics that left serious argument struggling to be heard.

There’s a buzz in the auditorium as we take our seats. Debate night is known for its irreverent style – a stand-up show with a sports stalls audience. Hopefully, a bit of serious politics gets discussed, but the event is no stranger to Roar’s headlines and by the time mics were switched off, the buzz had ridden rollercoasters of agitation, laughter and disgust, eventually settling into a shocked murmur. 

The usual suspects were in attendance: Labour, Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, and the Green Party, to debate foreign policy, migration, the economy, and energy. Paper ballots were handed out to the audience, with 11 being spoiled, and the Liberal Democrats claiming victory with 80 votes, followed by the Greens at a strong 64, Labour at 59, and the Conservatives coming in last at 52. 

The sensationalism of the KCL Conservative Association (KCLCA) dominated, especially after the absence of an official representative last year, following their President’s dismissive misogyny in responding to an audience member during the prior academic year. Perhaps their unfiltered nature had something to do with the open bottle of port and near-empty wine glass stage-right?

A void of decorum best summarises the debate. Midway through, the debate was paused while a significant number of the audience were removed from the auditorium for drinking, while various empty bottles of port and wine were presented. This drastically changed the atmosphere of the debate, with cheers for the Conservative speakers – and one rather drunk ex-Labour Chair singing “Why are we waiting?” before being escorted out. 

An Unfiltered Start

The night began with opening statements from each party. The Conservatives started boldly, as always, focusing on being the party of “defending pride in one’s nation, one’s culture and one’s history.”

“I know what some of you are thinking: oh, no, the racists and sexists turned up tonight. But don’t you worry, we promise to behave ourselves, we aren’t drinking tonight.” – President of KCL Tories

The Greens, relishing in their recent membership success and a surge in the opinion polls, labelled themselves the only party with a “moral mission” and emphasised their faith in the leadership of Zack Polanski, which was met with great applause. 

“Facts not fantasy” were the words of the Lib Dem speaker, as he opened, targeting the “authoritarian” Labour and Conservative parties for failing to protect the most vulnerable, and criticising the “unrealistic” policies of the Greens. 

Labour channelled traditional party values of “for the many, not the few” but also began strongly on the attack in a hilarious and well-received manner:

“The Conservatives insist there is simply not enough money [for fair wages and heating homes], yet strangely the national bank account of the taxpayer springs open like Bonnie Blue on a Friday night, anytime somebody mentions private contracts, military hardware or the classic duck pond.” – Labour co-chair

Unpacking The Main Event:

Topic 1: The “central economic problem in the UK”:  Economy and wealth inequality must be “urgently addressed through taxation”

The Greens began the discussion largely agreeing with the prompt, citing a struggling NHS and exacerbated wealth gap as reasons why: “People cannot afford to live.” They pointed to current policy issues that harm marginalised groups rather than taxing the richest. 

“They [Labour] have continued the austerity policies of the Tory government, making hard decisions for people who have disabilities and pensioners.” – KCL Greens

Labour agreed that wealth inequality was an issue, one which skyrocketed under the coalition years and they praised the Labour government for taking the issue seriously: ending the non-don tax status, reforming capital gains tax and tackling inequality in society beyond taxation, such as Children’s breakfast clubs.

The Tories argued a “fundamental issue with the question is that it supposes wealth inequality is a central problem that can be addressed by taxation.” They argued that austerity measures saw “absolute poverty” and “inequality” fall, and against the “false premise” that state spending is good for struggling individuals. 

The Lib Dems supported what they called a “pragmatic approach” to tackling wealth inequality, stating that they “don’t really believe in a wealth tax” because it is “not a sensible economic policy”. They instead suggested, among other things, a temporary levy on banks and taxing luxury assets, especially private jets. 

And with that, ended the short-lived peaceful portion of the debate. From there, we descended into mildly ridiculous chaos and the first of many shouting matches. 

The Greens began the rebuttals by discussing the “obscenity of wealth inequality in this country” by attempting to illustrate how much a billion pounds is. The Tory president (Niwa) responded, “Typical Greens – useless.” This began the first of many dogpiles on the Greens, with other parties shouting over each other to attempt to question how the Greens would deal with offshoring assets in a wealth tax. 

When Florence (Greens) mentioned NHS spending, this woke the proverbial beasts. Labour and Tory representatives began yelling about the NHS, with Lib Dems failing to insert themselves and the Greens calling for order. 

The conversation moved off-topic, despite the Greens’ attempts, with Niwa instead shouting at the Greens, “You have a plastic water bottle, you can’t talk about the environment!” And adding finally, of course, for no reason that we could discern: “Brexit means Brexit.” 

The concluding rebuttals were drowned out by another shouting match and a chatty audience, with Labour pushing for Lib Dem accountability on the coalition years, much to the Lib Dems’ dissatisfaction. 

Topic 2: Has the UK’s approach to immigration been “too strict, too open or a realistic middle ground?” 

To absolutely no one’s surprise this was the most incendiary, rife topic with some of the most absurd and occasionally nuanced remarks of the evening. 

The Lib Dems opened on the “broken asylum system” caused by Tony Blair, Labour, Conservatives and Brexit, which failed to protect human rights and set up legal and safe routes for genuine refugees. They claimed Greens would “lose control of the border, making it harder to support our refugees.”

“Immigrants are not the problem. So don’t let Labour and the Tories riding on the coattails of Nigel Farage tell you otherwise.” – Lib Dems

Florence (Greens) spoke on personal experience from working in Calais. “Refugees have the right to claim asylum here and contribute so much to our community,” which was met with heavy applause. On legal immigration, they stated “it is not in our interest” to cap legal migrants, who they stated contribute heavily to the British economy. 

Labour, unlike the others, was frustratingly vague in its response, beginning with abstract points about not avoiding the  “big issue of immigration” and the need to “start addressing people’s concerns”. They highlighted Labour’s success in reducing net migration to half the figure in 2023, yet from there followed more abstract and wishy-washy mushings on setting up a system that is “humane”, yet “strategic”, yet “compassionate”, although the meaning of this was not made clear. 

“Immigrants have played an important part in our society. We can still say that and still appreciate that we have let net immigration get too high.” – Labour Co-Chair

The Conservatives, like Labour, avoided making any serious policy suggestions, instead offering platitudes on sovereignty, control, identity, “little platoons” and the always unforgettable “parish church.” They began with mention of net migration and small boats, yet in a moment of self-proclaimed honesty, admitted prior Conservative governments “failed to get a grip” by “treating Britain like an economic zone.” Their crystal clear “twofold” solution for immigration was to “regain sovereignty and control our borders”, which will allow us to “welcome people in under our terms.” 

Greens opened up the rebuttals, daringly asking the Tories point-blank if they don’t think immigrants contribute to the identity of the nation. The then-Tory president, of Nepalese descent, emphasised how he himself is an example of immigration and British identity intertwining: with his “forefathers [having] fought for God, King, Country since 1814” and the military honour won by his grandfather. Half the room began heckling indignantly while the other half cheered him on. 

The Tories pursued mentioning sexual assault cases allegedly committed by “these people on small boats”, which again evoked a split and raucous reaction from the room. The Greens’ response that this is “not a problem of immigration”, was met with a truly excellent rebuttal from the Tories: “It is.” The Lib Dem president chimed in, highlighting the Tories’ “scapegoating” of immigrants rather than focusing on other domestic causes of violence, such as football hooliganism, which was met with the loudest applause of the night. 

Not knowing when to quit, the Tories dug their grave by focusing on specific communities in the UK, with representative Hannah (VP) beginning a sentence with “73% of Somalis in the UK”, which was interrupted by a deafening volume of heckling. While another shouting match began on stage, an audience member began attempting to respond directly to the Conservative representative for her indicative comment on Somalia, which was interrupted by the Debates Officer, reminding the audience of the Safe Space Events policy.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I am SORRY, young lady, it doesn’t work if you don’t let me speak! That’s not a debate, that’s called a monologue.” – Heckler from the Audience

Hannah (Conservative) receded to, in her words, “respect the majority and be quiet.” Labour attempted to lead the discussion, yet Florence (Greens) cut in with “You said we’re an island of strangers”, receiving a supportive round of applause to which Labour conceded that this was “not language [he] would have used”, citing the language as “discriminatory”.

Another shouting match occurred on the back of this, with the Tories ending it by claiming the problems posed by immigration could be solved simply by increased “assimilation”, which was met with laughter and huffs of disbelief in the audience. They mentioned creating social programmes for people to learn English, to which Laura from Labour asked if Somalis were invited. 

Politics Society President, Will Andrews, mercifully interrupted yet another shouting match, with no clear arguments apart from the Conservatives’ traditional “noblesse oblige”. 

Topic 3: Is the UK’s drive to cleaner energy economically sustainable in its current form?

Labour started strong: “Not an economist, but I can use a calculator and common sense.” From the beginning, Labour representative Laura faced heckles from Conservative representatives, which she swiftly dealt with, cheered on by the crowd. Weaving serious policy into her colourful rhetoric, Labour stressed the links between net zero and long-term economic and material stability. 

“Let’s be realistic. The most costly thing we can do is nothing, because the climate crisis is already here. Every time it rains, half the country floods. Meanwhile, the same people saying we can’t afford net zero are all saying, ‘Oh, yeah, let’s drill more oil so we can give the profits to companies already richer than the Royal Family stamp collection.’” – Labour Co-Chair

Bluster filling in for policy, the Conservatives’ Hannah started with a Thatcherite hand grenade: “We do not hate coal miners, we hate the coal mining unions”, and promptly ended advocating for a “transition to nuclear energy funded by fossil fuels.”

By contrast, the Lib Dems were heads down, focused on policy: developing self-sufficiency to break our reliance on gas, building upon and optimising the current green energy infrastructure. 

Just as the Greens were about to take their turn, the debate was paused to eject some tipsy audience members. Tamsin (Greens) sought to turn the tables against Conservative assumptions, discounting fossil fuel energies as feasible options and dismissing those sticking to oil and gas as “clinging onto a fantasy”. For the Greens, green energy is key to our national security and international autonomy. 

Labour’s stats and policy-driven intervention were interrupted by the Conservatives’ disputable remarks about receiving millions of donations from oil and gas companies, to which Seth from Labour quickly threw it back with a “How many do you get?” Such active disinformation raises questions surrounding the ethics of the debate model. 

The Greens cut through the noise, bringing the debate back away from theatrics and shouting matches: “The deadline is damage control now.” Yet the Conservatives quickly sought to derail, brashly calling Green councils “the most obstructive, difficult and mealy-mouthed” before time was called on the subject. 

Topic 4: We must increase defence spending to guarantee national security and regional peace

The Conservatives yet again “fundamentally” disagreed with the question, pointing to how higher defence spending should be used to “support our soldiers and the whole idea of community” through higher pay. 

The Lib Dems attacked Labour’s policy as “increasing spending, but through cuts to foreign aid”. Sam suggested alternatives to rejoining the EU, requisitions of frozen Russian assets, and creating a Europe-wide armament bank to “collectively build a stronger military force that Putin won’t want to mess with.”

“The Green stance when it comes to defence is frankly immature.” “Turning our back on NATO, giving up nuclear weapons, is absurd.” – Lib Dem President

The Greens pushed back against this “misrepresentation” and called for increasing foreign aid rather than “bloating our military budget”, taking the long-term view regarding the political instability of future and current climate conflicts. 

Labour defined itself as a party of “public defence”, having been in charge when the U.K. joined NATO in 1949, whilst deriding the Greens’ aversion to nuclear warfare as pipe-dreaming and reminding the audience of the Tories’ “massive underfunding” of the army. 

The open debate saw the Greens as the target of a collective pile-on. In this, the Tories dominated, aided by two lapel mics against the Labour and Lib Dems’ shared mics, which progressively disappeared off stage like the ill-fated cast of Agatha Christie’s ‘And Then There Were None’. 

A get out of jail free card that the traditional parties were only too happy to cash in on, the Lib Dems accused the Greens of “living in fairyland” and Labour’s slogan “you don’t like talking about defence”, yet this jarred given the Greens were actually “talking about defence” by looking at root causes rather than band-aid solutions, and accepting the “pragmatic reality” of NATO, yet couldn’t get a word in edgeways.

When finally given a 20-second uninterrupted window, the Greens’ Florence outlined a clear causal link: “If you end up hooked on oligarchically controlled Russian oil, then you have very little s**t to throw at Russia when they invade Ukraine.” 

An abrupt ending 

An absence from the traditional debate format was the closing statements; instead, the debate concluded rather abruptly after the major atmosphere change following the pause. 

A quick Q&A took place. Roar‘s Comment Editor, Deborah Solomon, asked how each party would respond to the anti-establishment elephant in the room: Reform UK. The Greens answered with “Two words: Zack Polanski”, emphasising his eco-populism that shares a similar anti-establishment sentiment to Reform. 

Labour responded with the government’s initiatives to improve standards of living, while the Lib Dems referenced their by-election successes and the hope for their local support to be translated nationally. Reform from the perspective of the Conservatives is a “single issue party”, and they are more focused on challenging the Lib Dems.  

An audience member asked for the speakers’ “personal and party stances on the Gaza issue?” Both Lib Dems and Greens publicly declared the actions a “genocide” while Labour speaker Seth noted it is “one of the worst things I’ve ever seen”, yet was “not too bothered” by the party politics of it all. 

The Conservative response was interesting. Niwa gave his personal view that “Zionism is a flawed ideology,” and continued to stress that his Catholic background impacts his views on Israel, which differ from the party. “I think that it should be the original British mandate of Palestine.” 

A night to remember

Overall, the debate resembled a noisy, well-dressed circus more so than it did an intelligent and diversified analysis of the major political questions of today. The Politics Society must be credited for their herculean efforts to rein in both the audience and, most especially, the frequently unruly debaters. 

The Conservatives were the most blatantly disrespectful, with Hannah at one point applying lipstick whilst another debater spoke, both reps mimed crying at the audience at another point, constantly rolled their eyes, and communicated with audience members out of turn. Their only moment of good sportsmanship was when Niwa handed another debater his mic, as the other debater’s was not working; however, this didn’t offset their dominance throughout with two lapel microphones. 

It seems the Lib Dems won because they did a good job of articulating their fairly well-reasoned and sound policies, but importantly, because they were one of the only parties consistently allowed to finish their sentences. 

The Greens were the only party making a conscious effort to be courteous and maintain order, despite their attacks from all sides. Their relatively new status as a political party on campus, alleged naïvité and idealism, and eco-forward policies were the repeated targets of rebuttals and taunts from the other parties, in an attempt to shield any points and questions asked by the Green reps and avoid responsibility for their parties’ actions wherever possible. The Green speakers did engage and defend themselves, but unfortunately, it was difficult to hear them over the six other voices that would overpower their two.

It is also a shame that Laura (Labour) and Florence (Green) didn’t have more opportunities to speak, given that Laura’s direct humour and Florence’s straight talking had initially gelled well with the audience. Labour and the Lib Dems were, for the most part, polite and, like the Greens, only interrupted others in a way that did not seem out of place in a debate. 

One audience member put it simply: “This debate is a sham. Such a sham.” The evening was certainly entertaining by every measure, but as a debate, subpar. The only standout contributors to this event were not the participants but rather the hosts, who had their work cut out for them but managed to keep the event on course, despite others’ repeated attempts at derailing it. A night to remember, to be sure, but definitely a debate that, to misquote Florence, will require some tinkering about the edges to improve.