The winning side treated bad public relations less as a failure of presentation than as a failure to listen, while its opponents often agreed on the diagnosis and rejected the premise. The result was a vote for Yes, but not a ringing endorsement of democratic messaging so much as a rebuke to politics that mistakes control for consent.
The floor’s most-respected Yes case put it starkly: “If you think we live in a democracy then you've already fallen for the propaganda”. Another highly rated voice said the UK was “not governable anymore”, describing scrutiny, media distraction and political fear as a system in which “not a single mistake can be made”.
The No case was not a defence of cheerful government spin. Its strongest voices argued that PR was beside the point: “The counter to disinformation isn’t PR, it’s clear, honest and factual communication backed by results”, while another said governments had been disliked because they had done “a pretty poor job of governing”. Yes voters heard closed ears; No voters heard an invitation to polish failure.
The two sides also talked past each other over propaganda itself. One Yes voter’s blunt standard was “the truth is the truth”, whereas a No argument said democracy already “forces politicians to over-focus on PR and spin” — making the problem not weak narrative control but too much of it.
For a self-selected online chamber, the verdict is unusually coherent in one respect: voters wanted less management of public opinion, not better management of it.
22 Opinions
In the interviews and debates, the MPs have a tendency to be ill informed, giving us false information, and opinions, mostly based on their experiences, or beliefs. This is not what I want, nor do the general public. We need and want, honesty, truth, provable truth.
They are bad at PR but I think we just have to live with it
Good or bad at public relations and they usually are bad but at the end of the day, the truth is the truth I just want the Government to say it how it is. If the problems are there, openness allows Government to deal with it.
The reason that successive governments have been viewed very negatively is because they've done a pretty poor job of governing. The idea that governments need better PR is a very strange one to me.
PR is irrelevant. Naive perhaps but we elect MPs as representatives some become Ministers & pretend to run things but really run by Civil Service & deep state entities. Politics generally involves multiple deceits. The press is not free it’s bought - more so since Covid & I think majority of Worlds press is owned by only 9 entities. No wonder the same nonsense is promulgated globally. We need honesty not ‘Campbell’ style lies. Problem is most Ministers are incompetent so lie.
So I do think democracies are bad at PR, but so what? I don’t really want PR (or spin) from my government, but we’re bombarded with it anyway. Thank goodness they’re bad it, makes it easier to see through. I answered No because I do think PR should be irrelevant to democracy. The counter to disinformation isn’t PR, it’s clear, honest and factual communication backed by results.
The question is slightly changed from what I originally meant to ask but this works as well. Thank you all for your feedback and participation!
No, because PR is irrelevant to healthy democracies. PR is only important to totalitarian societies such as the UK, which tries to scold and gaslight the public and arrest people for speech offences.
We live in a so called democracy where we are bombarded with state propaganda on a disgusting scale, a two tier totalitarian society where the electorate is totally ignored.
Yes, they have to deal with a free press, where bad news and outrage sell better than positive stories