Debates must always take place between people with opposing views or we are all left stupid

Two old white men chatting about whether racism exists is not really a debate

Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Ed Miliband and Leanne Wood at one of the televised Leaders Debates last year (Getty)

Ihave been debating the meaning of the word “debate”, this last week. Dictionaries say “a formal discussion in which opposing arguments are put forward”, but many debates in the media are nothing of the sort. I hear the participants congratulating themselves on what an important debate they’re having, or complaining loudly that nobody is debating a particular topic, but, often, no opposing view is allowed. Am I missing something? Is it because I didn’t go to Oxford?

Take Chris Patten, the chancellor of the UK’s second-best university, who appeared on the Today programme on Wednesday to call repeatedly for “debate” and “discussion” and complain that “free enquiry and debate [are] being denied”. He was referring to a campaign to remove a statue of Cecil Rhodes from the façade of Oriel College, and claimed that opponents of the statue were refusing to “face up to facts in history which they don’t like and talk about them and debate them”.

I have complained before about BBC “balance”, which assumes that if 99 per cent of experts agree on an issue then the balanced thing to do is to dredge up Nigel Lawson to insist that they’re all making a big fuss about nothing. But if any subject deserves a balanced debate then the existence of a monument to an infamous racist is it. How was it, then, that Patten spoke unopposed, barely even by interviewer John Humphrys who joined him in sniggering at the idea of “safe spaces” in universities? Gentlemen, two old white men chatting about whether racism exists is NOT REALLY A DEBATE!

Channel 4, meanwhile, showcased the kind of “debate” in which you find a well-informed expert on a subject and pitch them against someone who thinks the subject should be something else entirely. To discuss the Government’s Transgender Equality Inquiry report, Channel 4 News invited Jack Monroe, who knows a lot about it, and Dr Julia Long, who thinks the most important thing about transgender people is the threat she claims they pose to “women fleeing men’s violence”. Monroe made an eloquent fist of explaining that this is nonsense – transwomen are a thousand times more threatened than threatening – but it left little time to talk about the landmark report. The same programme, in 2014, pitted musician Vicky Beeching against a US evangelist who accused her of “[giving] in to the lie that she is a homosexual”. She, too, had to waste most of the “debate” time defending her own right to exist.

Today redeemed itself on Thursday by interviewing PhD student Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh, who explained some of the context of the Rhodes issue. Including: “There were only 24 black British students accepted into the university undergraduate system this year.”

I really hope Lord Patten was listening. That’s why you should always debate with somebody with an opposing view: both debaters and audience just might learn something.

Twitter.com/@katyguest36912