Personally I can't see what the
big attraction was about the televised debates back in 2010, other than to
definitively prove that style won out over substance in the case of Nick Clegg,
which is surprising when you consider how things have subsequently turned out
for the Lib Dems ever since that particular high point for the supposed third
party of British politics.
I have to say that I have better
things to do with my life than to sit there watching three, four, five, six, or
even seven generally overpaid, overrated and out of touch party leaders try and
outdo one another in front of the television cameras, as well as the
purportedly live mixed audience that will no doubt have been specially bussed
in by the various broadcasters. Well no thanks, if I wanted to watch an
entirely artificial stage-managed political stitch-up on my telly then it's
easier and quicker to view any of the weekly episode of the parliamentary Punch
& Judy show that is PMQ's.
If I want to see David Cameron
being personally disparaging to his political opponents, or to see him prove
beyond doubt that he has a superiority complex, that he's arrogant, out of
touch and desperate to have his colleagues approval, then you can see that any
Wednesday lunchtime on the BBC. Any party leader that requires his brown-nosing
backbenchers to offer up a highly questionable statistic about how well their
individual constituency is performing, just so Mr Cameron can bask in the faux
success of his governments economic policies, is probably not worth listening
to anyway. After all, without the supportive audience he regularly turns to and
addresses in the House of Commons, he's almost certainly not as clever, as
funny, or as concise, as he no doubt thinks he is.
Then of course we'll have Mr
Miliband, the PM's usual political sparring partner, along with his pointy
index fingers, which should really be classed as a lethal weapon, because one
day he going to take somebody's eye out with them. It's clear that he's an
intellectual, although maybe he's too clever for his own good, to the extent
that he doesn't seem to do so well when he's being barracked, or talked over,
which shouldn't really be a major problem, as he seems quite happy to repeat
himself and his points, again and again and again! Quite whether his own unique
brand of statesmanship and gravitas will work in a television studio, where
he'll be surrounded by hostile opponents and strangers remains to be seen, but
so long as he doesn't come across as being a bit of a "Beaker" and
isn't asked to eat anything live on stage then he will probably survive the
ordeal.
The third and final
"major" political figure in front of the cameras will of course be
Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats and Mr Cameron's Deputy Prime
Minister. The broadcasters continue to refer to them as a "major"
party ostensibly because they have fifty-odd MPs, garnered from the 2010
election when everyone "agreed" with Nick and he was mildly popular
with significant swathes of the electorate. But that was before the Lib Dems
put price over principle; and decided that personal access to ministerial
offices and limousines was far more important that keeping any of their major
manifesto pledges. Nick rather reminds me of the young and beautiful homecoming
queen who thought it was a good idea to use her good looks to make money and to
advance her career, but after five years then found herself in the most squalid
of circumstances and with the most tarnished of reputations. No doubt though,
Nick is still hoping that a little bit of lippy, a new hairdo, fresh underwear
and come-take-me approach to either Labour or Conservatives will help
re-establish their reputation as the fresh faced young girl of British
politics.
Next; and entirely dependent on
what particular criteria you choose to use when measuring political importance,
there is either UKIP or the Green Party, both of which David Cameron has
decided are "minor" parties, simply because it makes him feel better
to believe so. As things stand at present we're asked to accept that the Greens
are the fourth largest party, by virtue of their party membership, but that
they don't automatically count dead or departed members, that they haven't made
their subscriptions particularly cheap and that they're not currently achieving
around 8% in most public opinion polls. They have one MP in the House of
Commons, three MEPs in the European Parliament, they achieved a quarter of
UKIP's vote in the last European Elections, control one of the worst performing
councils in the country and have 172 local councillors.
However, all such things aside,
now that Mr Cameron has spat his gold-plated dummy out and has got his way, the
inclusion of the Greens into the leaders debate should certainly makes things
interesting, if only for the variations of the speakers accents. No doubt the
supporters of wide open borders will point to the sheer presence of Australian
born Natalie Bennett as to why having no meaningful immigration controls is such
a positive thing; and indeed is something that Ms Bennett herself is an
advocate of. Unfortunately, anyone that might be hoping that the inclusion of
the Green Party into the leaders debate might offer an alternative, reasonable,
well thought out, or even partially costed set of policies for the future of
our country might well be disappointed, as the running of Brighton & Hove
council will testify to.
Quite why Nigel Farage is even
bothering to participate in what is certain to be a fairly shambolic, tribal
and misrepresentative affair is beyond me really. Bearing in mind that the
media generally are unsympathetic to anyone other than the three mainstream
legacy parties, it is difficult to imagine where the upside is for UKIP, whose
message will doubtless get lost or diluted in the various verbal exchanges that
are bound to result from seven or eight people all trying to trade insults,
party representations and policy clarifications at the same time. Given their
previous history, it is hard to imagine that the broadcasters won't, either
deliberately or inadvertently, give extra airtime to the likes of David Cameron
and Ed Miliband, not because they have anything more important or intelligent
to say, but simply because they are the Labour and Conservative party leaders,
so therefore most likely to be the next Prime Minister of the UK.
Even though Mr Farage might be
successful in a straightforward television interview, or even in his one-to-one
debates with Nick Clegg, television appearances can often be a double edged
sword, depending on whose taking part, whose asking the questions, whose
allocating the time to each participant and what part the actual audience plays
in the proceedings. On the basis of only seven or eight party leaders attending
the proposed televised debates, it has been calculated that each participant
will only get about thirteen minutes of airtime throughout the entire program,
which would be great if there were no challenges, interruptions, nobody taking
more time than they're entitled to, but what are the odds on that happening? In
the event that Nigel Farage was given less time, or asked fewer questions than
any of the other main party leaders, wouldn't that have the effect of making
him and his party more peripheral and therefore less important? Where's the
party's electoral advantage in that?
Even today, we have had more
regional political leaders threatening possible legal action over not being
invited to participate in the planned leaders debate, with both Nigel Dodds of
the Democratic Unionist Party and George Galloway of the Respect Party arguing
that they too should be included, along with the likes of Sinn Fein and any
number of other smaller parties. What began as an act of selfish political
pique by David Cameron has now developed into a mockery of the democratic
process, ostensibly because Conservative Prime Minister has been advised by his
political strategists that he just might win an electoral majority without
having to run the risks associated with having to publicly debate Ed Miliband,
Nick Clegg and more importantly Nigel Farage, in a far less secure and
controlled environment than he usually finds in the House of Commons.
Where typically during Prime
Minister's Questions Mr Cameron can lie, prevaricate and even deliberately
misrepresent without any sort of immediate rebuttal or redress, in a televised
debate he would then be open to counter; and for a political coward like David
Cameron, he would much rather be thought a liar than proved to be one in front
of millions of potential British voters. How else could one explain his obvious
reluctance to take on the challenge of facing his main political opponents, in
a medium that Mr Cameron is said to be so at home in, especially as he is said
to have honed his much talked about communication skills in a professional
business environment as a Public Relations executive?
The very idea that Mr Cameron's
insistence on the Green Party's participation in the debates is to enable the
democratic process to be more widely available to everyone is risible, as is
his assertion that UKIP is a minority party, unless of course he's willing to
publicly admit that in European terms at least the Conservative Party is even
more minor than Nigel Farage's? The truth is of course that Mr Cameron wants to
deprive UKIP of the electoral status that it deserves and has earned, as the
third mainstream party of British politics; and in order to do that he is
maliciously using the perceived popularity of the Green Party to underpin his
own highly tenuous political argument and to preserve his own current electoral
polling position. There is nothing democratic, fair or equitable about Mr
Cameron's argument, unless of course you regard narrow political self interest
as being democratic, fair or equitable?
One can only hope therefore that
in order to bring the very idea of this sorry shambles to a speedy end that one
or more of the various regional political parties are forced to seek a legal
redress to their potential exclusion from the leaders debates, thereby bringing
an end to the entire concept before it becomes any more of a soap opera than it
is already!
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