Family gatherings can be fraught at the best of times. Sprinkle some politics into the mix of cheese, wine and sprouts and you're all set for a day or two of festive fun. Your Christmas dinner table could be carved down ideological lines as fractious as Conservatives versus Labour or unionist versus nationalist. And then there's Brexit.
The UK voted to leave the EU in June 2016. It still hasn't happened. Yet. During this time divisions have deepened and a yawning intergenerational divide pits zoomers against boomers. But while Brexit is a minefield, you don’t need to avoid talking about it entirely. Here is how you can tiptoe around this explosive topic while doing your best to maintain the Christmas spirit.
Listen first
When it comes to debating with sherry-swigging relatives on Christmas day, the most important thing might be to hold your tongue. “What we say to people is to listen first and speak second,” says Mike Talbot, CEO of UK Mediation, an organisation that teaches conflict resolution through mediation. “The principle is, seek first to understand then to be understood.”
Talbot says this applies even in an argument with your neighbour across the fence about their insufferable late-night guitar playing. It’s important to let the other person speak first, in order to fully understand their position. “If you're around the dinner table, and relatives that you haven't seen since last Christmas start sounding off about Brexit, just hear them first. And then you can put your own views across,” Talbot advises.
There is another advantage to at least appearing to listen to your relatives, however hazy the eggnog miasma and debilitating the food coma. “If I think you haven't heard or listened to me, then what I'll do is put my points across again, more loudly and more insistently,” says Talbot. If this endures, eventually the conversation will devolve into two people talking over each other.
In the real world, this struggle for conversational dominance can even manifest in the physical responses – where people might invade each other’s personal space and get more aggressive. “On some level we're trying to make ourselves bigger, louder and more conspicuous,” explains Talbot.
One way to avoid this, and signal that you are in fact listening avidly to your drunken loved one is to slow the discussion down, taking time to pause after they speak, to absorb their message, and to let them see that you’re absorbing it.
Pausing also gives ourselves a chance to cool down, to de-escalate the emotions we and our interlocutor might be feeling. Approaching any discussion in a state of heightened emotional arousal makes it harder to be reasonable and logical.
Try to be nuanced
For people who are well-versed in conflict mediation, it’s received wisdom that there are two words that you should always avoid and never say: “always” and “never”.
“'Always' and 'never' are very blaming, and more personal than they need to be,” says Talbot. They’re also dismissive, and more likely to be factually incorrect.
In this political climate, it might well be getting more difficult to incorporate shades of grey, particularly when the political class seems also intent on flouting the need for nuance.
“Does Boris Johnson have nuance? Does Jacob Rees-Mogg have nuance? It's gone,” says Talbot. “It's about these very binary partisan and populist ways of arguing that seem to have become the new normal. Saying always and never – it's going to get a cheer out of your supporters.”
If someone employs this kind of rhetoric, you can gently challenge it. When someone claims a black-and-white position, you can ask whether something is truly always or never the case.
Polarisation also happens through stereotypes. We’re all familiar with the Brexit ones: Leave voters as embittered working class Tories; Remainers as liberal London elites. But chatting to family might help loosen those preconceptions. “To modify them, it’s when we have exposure to other people's stories – to the narratives of other groups that we don't know anything about. That really breaks through the stereotypes,” says Caroline Vaile Wright, director of research and special projects at the American Psychological Association.
Own what you say
If you present your ideas simply as your ideas rather than some Kantian inviolable truth, it’s far less likely to rumple feathers. For example, you could say, “I think that the UK leaving the EU will be bad news for business,” rather than saying it will be bad news for business. This softens the statement, and reduces the likelihood that someone will respond with a counterargument about why you’re wrong.
“When you're giving opinions or making a statement is there are three modes,” says Talbot. “The first is ‘I think’. The second is ‘I feel’. And the third is ‘I imagine’.” He advises taking a momentary pause pre-verbalisation to consider which one of these best characterises what you’re about to say. “If you get that right, it's going to be less contentious and less likely to inflame the argument.”
The flip-side is also avoiding the accusatory sounding "You" – as in "you do this", or "you think that". That immediately puts people on the defensive.
Don’t try to change people’s minds
Sometimes people will approach discussions like these with a spirit of one-upmanship. If you want to preserve some element of festive cheer, you have to resist this. “You want to think about what your goal is in this conversation,” says Wright. “If you're trying to change the other person's mind, then you're not going to be very effective, right?”
Flying in with the assumption that you can change people’s minds is blinkered. For a topic that has dominated the British political discourse for the last three years, it’s likely that most people have formed a somewhat educated opinion on it. It’s also an opinion that’s had the opportunity to ossify over three long, bitter years. It’s also one that’s probably been challenged before, meaning people will likely have quickfire responses to your objections.
“People can change their mind, but generally not in one conversation,” says Wright. “However, you could approach it in a mindset of ‘this might be a discussion that continues’.”
Avoid getting personal
One of the quickest ways of igniting a flare-up is to get personal about your debating partner.
“Take Donald Trump: if anybody criticises him, he doesn't look at the argument of the thing that's being argued about. He personalises it straight away and will attack the person who's making the criticism,” says Talbot. While that technique might make him feel better, it is certainly not conducive to a jolly Yuletide convo.
It goes without saying that it is advisable to steer away from insulting terms like “stupid”, even if you’re saying it about a belief, and not a person. Using more convoluted versions of the same insinuation, such as whispering that “Only an idiot would think that”, does not really work either. Talbot says that is simply a “more middle class way” of meting out the same offence.
Above all, keep in mind that politics is always somewhat personal. People absorb their political views into their identity – meaning that even if you might think you’re attacking a point of view, the other person could well interpret your critique as a direct attack on them.
Accept differences
So, the weather outside is frightful, the fire is so delightful, and you are still duking it out with your aunt over the merits of a customs union. You have been listening, and attempting to understand why someone feels differently from you. You have been calmly laying out your perspective. But at the end of the day, some differences are irreconcilable. Knowing when to simply nod, sip some mulled wine, and smile, or reach for the good old “Let’s agree to disagree”, is tantamount to maintaining the peace.
“You have to realise when the conversation is no longer productive,” says Wright. “And then make a decision to walk away – to say, ‘I'm going to stop this here’.”
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
