posted 3rd February 2025
‘No one likes us, we don’t care,’ is, famously, the slogan of MIllwall supporters. They are unusual, though; most people don’t like being unpopular. Everyone wants to be liked. It’s a normal human instinct.
If you are in a position of leadership - whether as a prime minister or a president, the CEO of a business, or a campaigner for a particular measure - it matters whether or not your policies are liked. Every leader knows it is not enough to pick the right thing to do; you have to spend as much, if not more, time persuading people it is the right thing to do. If no one likes your law or initiative, you should care, because it will be far less likely to succeed.
But should debaters care about being popular? Or rather, whether the measures they are arguing for are popular? No, they shouldn’t. In the wonderful world of debating, all you have to do is prove that your measure is right. Right morally (the right thing to do) and right pragmatically (it works). You don’t have to show that people will like it. It just has to be right.
So, if you’re the proposition for the motion This house would reduce immigration, don’t waste time citing opinion polls showing that 70% of British people want immigration to be reduced; instead, show that reducing immigration will reduce pressure on public services. If you are the opposition, don’t talk about how the many immigrants working for the NHS would be upset by this policy; talk about how much immigrants contribute to the NHS, and how much the NHS would struggle if immigration were reduced.
Proving something is popular does not prove it is right; proving that something is unpopular does not prove that it is wrong. As we used to say to our daughter when she told us she didn’t like vegetables, you don’t have to like them, you just have to eat them.
