Andrew Tickell: Process, process, process ... and debates about process

Dissolve your brain in the Swinzone, now in full Technicolour, functional frontal lobes optional. Watch amazed as Dominic Raab melts into a puddle of stressed collagen. Gaze dumbfounded as Barry Gardiner sharpens his steel quiff for battle. Squint in shock as the Prime Minister achieves one completely grammatical sentence. Gape in awe as Jammy Corbyn very slightly exceeds your low expectations. Rouse John Curtice from his Pacific Quay hammock: the rolling news is now rolling. The psephological terrapin is summoned. The psephological terrapin is called.

And so repeat. And repeat, and repeat. Process, process, process – this election campaign has been nothing but process. We can’t move for debates about debates, and interviews about interviews – and discussions about interviews and interviews about debates – all wrapped up in the usual partisan tinsel all loyal politicians and their media elves are expected to string around their parties during a campaign. By the time we get to the ballot box on December 12, we’ll feel like we’ve downed a punnet of brandy butter followed by a cheeky goose fat chaser – full and queasy, but unnourished.

It’s not just the media cycle. Notice that many and most of the parties’ headline-grabbing policies are all about processes too. This has felt like an election for the already-aligned, decided on the basis of differential turnout and the havers of those who find themselves stuck between entrenched positions.

The policy analysis has been scant. We’re not thumbing through the manifestos carefully. We’re not asking what a Tory government would actually do with the levers of power. We’re not seriously scrutinising Labour taxation policy. This is allegedly the “Brexit election”, but we’re not discussing the merits of leaving the EU. No real time has been spent on Boris Johnson’s accord with Brussels either.

Johnson is still kidding on that Brexit is an event rather than a process. “Let’s get Brexit done and focus on things that really matter,” he says. There’s nothing Tories do better than mobilising the cantankerous apathy of the public. And they often succeed. The public is, after all, often cantankerous and often apathetic. “Vote for us, and we’ll make all this tedious politics go away.” It’s the promise of happy numbness, the promise of escape.

By the same token, the demand for a second Brexit referendum has been accompanied by almost no discussion of what such a campaign would be for and how the argument may have changed since 2016. The UK may – finally – achieve its much-delayed departure from the EU if the Tories win a majority – but the idea this emancipates the nation from having to think about, invest in, squabble over and vote on our relations with the bloc to come is moonshine. But it is the promise of freedom which counts. Boris Johnson knows only too well that many of our fellow citizens want to be deceived. It doesn’t matter that this argument is in bad faith. It doesn’t matter it flies in the face of the instability of Tory governments we’ve all lived through. It’s what a chunk of the electorate wants to hear.

The same goes for Scotland. On independence, most of the discussion has focused on whether or not a second poll should take place rather than the case for or against self-determination. Jackson Carlaw’s headline ambition – “No to indyref2” – includes no structural analysis of the Union or its strengths and its weaknesses. Big Jock has nothing to say about how to re-hull the leaky ship of state. Repeat “we said no and we meant it” on loop if you like. Trot out Annie Wells as the face of Scotland’s intellectually incurious numpties voting for a quiet life.

Scottish Tories can rant about it, deny it, lament it – it won’t change a damn thing. Public opinion about whether this Union is worth the candle remains evenly balanced. You can’t build a union on the word “no”. You can’t integrate a divided country by saying “no”. Not discussing independence doesn’t achieve stability. It doesn’t mean, to conjure with an old Unionist phrase, you’ve “killed nationalism stone dead”. Ignoring a political cause doesn’t mean it has gone away. Nothing in the Tory campaign suggests they have any longer view.

This week, BBC1 published its Christmas Day schedule. With a few honourable exceptions, it’s wall to wall dross, from Mrs Brown’s Boys to Michael MacIntyre. I think I lost a pip or two of IQ just scanning it. This election campaign feels inspired by the same mediocrity. For journalists and politicians alike, this campaign has felt like an exercise in collective political escapism. Bored by Brexit, spurtled up into synthetic fury about non-stories and right-wing talking points, doubling down on my existing prejudices. After the turgid non-progress of politics in 2019 – it’s almost like the country voted itself a solid month of trash to take our minds off it all.

Watching this campaign has reminded me of the dead days between Christmas and New Year, when you pick at the carcass of your advent calendar, cough down the last of the Twiglets and find yourself wondering – through a fog of breakfast sherry – just how long a turkey really keeps in the fridge. We’ll all need a Rennie come Friday 13.

I know it sounds prim and rather worthy to suggest our public life might be improved by focusing on the issues rather than relentlessly seeing elections as a game of personalities and who-has-the-most-

effective-lie to tell. We’re comfortable with the idea that politicians are a suspect class – but as far as I’m concerned, the electorate also has a lot to answer for.

“They’re all basically the same” is a lazy pose too much of the public embraces instead of challenging their own cynicism, ignorance, indolence and apathy – and the role these vices play in enabling the self-serving careers of squirming little bags of appetites like the First Lord of the Treasury – and much of his Cabinet besides. You chose this, you own this. Elections should be a reminder that we get what we deserve.

In Glasgow Central this Thursday, I’ll be voting for Alison Thewliss. In its jagged boundaries, it is a curious seat. The constituency straddles both banks of the Clyde. It encompasses Govanhill and Pollokshields in the south side – but also Kelvingrove, Glasgow Cathedral, and Mackintosh’s smouldering art school north of the river. Thewliss is my kind of backbencher. She has that rarest of rare qualities among modern politicians – Thewliss has ideas. Contemplate her tenure since 2015. Unlike Boris Johnson, it is difficult to imagine a teenaged Alison telling her family she wanted to be “world king.” Unlike so many of her contemporaries – it’s clear Thewliss entered politics to do something rather than to be something.

Certainly, independence is part of that. But since 2015, Alison has proven that constitutional change doesn’t exhaust her political ideas. From period-poverty to the rape clause, Thewliss has shown concrete ideas about things she wants to achieve in the real world. She was talking about the grim tally of drugs deaths in Glasgow years ago, before many politicians were taking an interest, never mind pressing for reform. She isn’t a party drone. She doesn’t wait to be told what ideas and values she ought to hold. She doesn’t wait for the whip to crack or for the Communications Office to circulate the lines to take.

I don’t expect every politician to be able to set out a comprehensive theory of justice – but remarkably few politicians seem to have concrete ideas for how the law and policy of this country could and should be changed for the better. Alison has, to put it another way, the quality of moral seriousness. In contemplating your ballot paper on Thursday and deciding who to support, I’d encourage you to look for the same virtues. Our politics can only be better – and more practical – for it.