Andrew Tickell: We need a politics where we embrace disagreement

Having grabbed headlines with Naked ­Attraction – which is essentially Surprise Surprise without Cilla Black, where you judge the suitability of bachelor number three based on the attractiveness of his ­scrotum rather than his voice – it seems a small editorial hop for Channel 4 to round up a selection of the country’s pre-eminent hectoring tossers, pump them full of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds – and roll ­camera.

Tune in to watch a climate change denier and the Extinction Rebellion activist duke it out before they repair to a dream yurt as the psilocybin begins to play Rachmaninoff up and down the starry firmament. Join us next week, as two obnoxious ­millennials screech at one other about the pros and cons of cancel culture before scraping out their gourds together and experiencing the cosmic oneness which connects all sentient things.

You dread to think what’s coming ­later on in the season. A couple crawl into the ­kaleidoscope to resolve their ­differences over the Gender Recognition Act.

The show is basically a take on the odd-couple dating archetype, with polarised ­politics and a psychoactive fungus thrown in. Two exaggerated political positions are presented in the most angular and ­unattractive way conceivable. And then magic mushrooms make it better. Dramatic arc – conflict, toadstool, peace.

The experience left one participant ­wondering “why am I an arsehole?” – which is a question replete with the real ­potential for psychological growth. Ours would be a better world if more of us ­applied our minds to this question more often.

The Higher Ground concept is crying out for a parliamentary test. Would Sir Keir be more relatable with a couple of ecstasy tablets tucked down his thrapple before a House of Commons set-to? Would buttoned-up Rishi Sunak become more at ease with himself after a microdot or two of LSD? Lorna Slater and ­Alister Jack could ­resolve their differences over the ­Deposit

Return Scheme by smoking opium ­together. Given the ­psychedelic ­campervan headlines, Humza Yousaf must’ve earned himself a bit of peyote downtime. Knock the rough edges off Douglas Ross’s personality with a slug or two of ketamine – and the kinder, gentler politics surely can’t be too far away.

Considering that the parliamentary ­estate is formally awash with alcohol – and informally with much else that’s ­prohibited under the Misuse of Drugs Act if forensic analysis of Westminster’s water closets is to be believed – it’s a small miracle that Britain’s intoxication consensus hasn’t already achieved amity and concord in our public life.

The goal of the Channel 4 show is to demonstrate the positive potential of milder psychedelics on human ­wellbeing. “Studies have shown psychedelics can cause an increased feeling of social ­connection and emotional empathy, but can also cause paranoia and nausea”, the show’s captions caution.

Politics can certainly have similar ­psychoactive effects on those exposed to it – even in small doses. Bad trips aren’t unknown. But there have also been ­promising clinical trials, ­suggesting that the active compound in magic ­mushrooms can have useful applications in the ­treatment of anxiety and ­depression – and you can’t say that for British politics.

READ MORE: Alex Salmond's indyref talks put Scotland in 'dilemma', SNP MSP says

But the culturally interesting ­question is: why splice a potential treatment for ­depression with a treatment for what we’re obliged to call “our broken ­politics”? What’s the message of this ­programme really?

Consider another head-to-head. In the blue corner, we have the comfortable pro-Brexit boomer who thinks his own children are woke, workshy snowflakes. He didn’t pay for university but thinks his children should pay tuition fees. He bought his house – but has never paid any tax on the very significant unearned inflation in its value. He affects confusion about why his kids aren’t already on the property ladder, and insinuates it is some kind of personal failure, or can be ­attributed to uncontrolled immigration. He has the luxury of having “views” on social issues, involving parts of the ­community he almost never encounters face-to-face.

In the red corner, we have his capital-poor children who have lived through a series of financial crashes and one ­memorable pandemic. They are more poorly housed and more poorly employed than their parents, with wage ­stagnation, limited pensions provision, and less ­security across every part of their life. They are downwardly mobile – and have diverse problems with their father’s worldview which have nothing to do with taking too little mescaline.

This scenario is real, rooted in ­social and economic trade-offs. It is the ­consequence of our political and ­economic system ­creating winners and losers. Its record as a way of achieving higher consciousness of the shared destiny of mankind and the burning need for ­human solidarity isn’t exactly stellar.

The idea we need chemical ­intervention to achieve anything approaching a ­working, robust and tolerably ­empathetic democratic debate tells us something about how forlorn, individualistic – and basically pessimistic – contemporary ­politics now feels in the UK.

Unanchored in any structural ­analysis of what has gone wrong and why – and whose social and economic ­interests have and have not been served by ­recent ­dysfunctions – instead, we’re ­pretending that folk are mean about one ­another ­because they haven’t had enough ­hallucinogens in their life. We’re invited to think that people disagree about things in politics because they’re incapable of chemically unstimulated empathy.

“I need a bellyful of chemicals to love you” is a line you’re only likely to encounter in the lyrics of a lost Smiths album, or in court transcripts of prosecutions under the Domestic Abuse (Scotland) Act 2018.

Denigrating legitimate political conflict is standard operating procedure for a kind of Toryism, which is content to inflict its own ideological preferences on the country dressed up as common sense. Pretending there are no real political conflicts is a bit of a sideline of the Starmer project.

You don’t need to try any controlled substances to experience a fragmented sense of social reality which maps poorly onto your lived reality. Just open a newspaper. Turn on any news channel. Listen to the radio. I guarantee your windows of perception are going to be stretched, and the boundary lines between truth and ­fiction will quickly begin to bend and flow like one of Dali’s pocket watches left out in the sunshine.

READ MORE: Scottish Labour's Jackie Baillie made dame in King's honours list

In British politics, a range of dealers have blue pills to offer you. “Vote for us, as we’ll make this intrusive politics go away.” “Vote for us for sensible solutions, without political ideology.” “The adults are back in charge.” “A boring candidate for a boring job.”

These are all species of false promise. Sugar-free cola, alcohol-free beer, fat-free butter – I’d like to order the stimulation without the consequences please, waiter, I’d like to be drunk and sober all at once, to win without fighting and fight without friction. People look for chemical solutions to ageing – as if the problem is the elasticity of our collagen bundles rather than our attitude to wrinkles.

There’s a kind of learned powerless about this, treating every problem as if it is external to ourselves.

Fundamentally, politics creates ­winners and losers. It adjudicates on where ­social benefits and burdens fall.

We need to ­relearn a sense of agency, ­rooted in lived realities, unafraid of ­honest ­disagreement, brave enough to recognise honest people can honestly disagree. The fault isn’t in our stars – but in ourselves.

The last thing British politics needs is the injection of another soporific or the idea that political ­disagreement signifies empathy failure. The masses are sucking up enough opium as it is.