Bastani: time for an answer

Submitted by SJW on 4 July, 2018 - 12:44 Author: By Rhodri Evans

Aaron Bastani of Novara Media had — after much to-ing and fro-ing — agreed to debate Brexit with us at Ideas for Freedom 2018, our summer school on 23-24 June.

He didn’t show. The session proceeded with only an anti-Brexit, pro-free-movement platform speaker.
Bastani has not responded to our queries about the no-show.

It can’t be that he is too fumble-handed to cope with email and other electronic messages. On his Twitter page he boasts that he has a “PhD in political communications” (presumably, at that university, “giving straight answers to questions” is considered so advanced that it kicks in only at post-doctoral level).

It can’t be that he thinks Brexit too unimportant to debate. His Twitter page is full of tweets about Brexit.

The tweets do not tackle the question directly, but instead attack Labour right-wingers who use Brexit as a stick to beat Corbyn, and insinuate that left-wingers who back free movement are really at one with those right-wingers. But they are about Brexit. This turnaround is worse than the last time Bastani bailed out of a debate with us on Brexit, at a fringe meeting at the NUT teachers’ union conference in 2016 shortly before the referendum. Then, at least, he told us (a few hours) in advance that he was bailing out, and gave an explanation.

He had changed his mind, no longer backed Leave, and would now vote Remain. Since then his position has changed several times, but bafflingly.

Debates about Brexit are lamentably few. No political position can gather conviction and momentum until it is tempered in the fires of confrontation with opposing arguments.

We want our anti-Brexit supporters and readers to hear the case for left-wing support (or semi-support, or quarter-support, whatever) for Brexit. Bastani, if he’s serious, should want his position tested in debate too.

So we renew the challenge we threw down in Solidarity of 30 May: “Bastani, why won’t you debate Brexit?”

The best place for a debate now would be on a Novara Media broadcast.

Or some Labour left groups in London are discussing plans for live debates. Or both.

Time for an answer!

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