Posted by Dr Simon Parker
The final prime ministerial debate took place in the impressive surroundings of Birmingham University’s Great Hall—although the carefully chosen local audience did not appear to contain any students or lecturing staff. Was this a portend of what the next government had in store for UK higher education I wondered?
Certainly the message from all three of the party leaders as they debated the economy was unless you work in a school, a hospital or a police station don’t assume you will have a public sector job in five years time. Further, if you are lucky enough to keep your job forget any thoughts that your salary may keep pace with inflation or that you will be able to retire when you expected to on the pension you were promised.
This was not going to be a cheery “things can only get better” debate but rather—“if you elect him or him things can only get worse”. On the “sick men of Europe” Cameron went straight for the Lib-Lab solar plexus —“Let me tell you one thing I wouldn't do: with Greece so much in the news, I can guarantee you that I would never join the euro, and I'd keep the pound as our currency”, carefully avoiding mention of the fact that Germany’s Euro-based economy was the only one with deep enough pockets to bail-out the Greeks while the Bank of England is nervously gripping the threadbare towel of its AAA rating.
Earlier in the week “the much respected” Institute for Fiscal Studies (it says here in the BBC’s editorial guidelines) announced that all three political parties were not telling voters how they intended to tackle the vast continent of debt they had not pledged to cut or offset through tax raises. As elephants in the living room go—this was a pretty large one—ranging from 75% of the ‘elephant, what elephant?’ component of the Liberal Democrat manifesto to just over 80% of Tory plans to nearer 90% in the case of Labour.
One of the serious flaws of the partitocratic prime ministerial debate format is that highly experienced interviewers—and they come no more experienced than David Dimbleby—cannot disrupt the conspiracy of silence/audience dumb show that these spectacles have become (although Dimbleby did attempt to ‘clarify’ a non answered question that he was clearly irked the leaders had managed to duck). Had the leaders faced a genuine interlocutor rather than each other’s mild rebukes, the elephant denying non-recognition pact might have been broken by the following aperçu from the IFS:
Labour & Liberal Democrat plans imply tightest sustained squeeze since April 1976 to March 1980 and spending cuts as deep as Conservative plans imply not delivered over any sustained period since Second World War.
Brown’s “shock, horror” warnings that the Tories will take £6 billion out of the economy this year was calculated to distract attention from the fact that Labour plans to take as much as £52.4 billion “out of the economy” in the next five years, the Lib Dems plan to cut £46.5 billion and the Tories an eye-watering £63.7 billion. Neither Clegg nor Brown took the opportunity to point out that Cameron plans to pay for every 4 out of 5 pounds worth of debt in spending cuts and only 1 in 5 through increased taxation. This will impact massively and disproportionately on the poor, people on benefits and those employed by the public sector and those who are reliant on public services. As the IFS pointed out, when Ken Clarke was Chancellor in 1993 the Tories pledged a cuts to tax raising ratio of 1:1, Labour’s will be 2:1 and the LibDems eventually 2.5:1.
In pointing out that the banks will benefit from a 3p (one assumes in the pound) cut in corporation tax and that millionaires will disproportionately benefit from increasing the threshold on inheritance tax, Brown attempted to paint a picture of the Cameronites as “the same old Tories”. The best Brown could come up with is “I think this is unfair”, while Nick Clegg offered to switch taxes from the rich to the less well off so that more money could go back into the pocket of the questioner—a woman called Adina who lamented the fact that in her view Brown’s government is taking more and more from the average worker's payslip.
Clegg suggested that the way that we might get out of this mess was to all grab a paddle and to stop rowing in opposite directions, and as in Bristol, the yellow worm headed for the top of the screen at Nick’s suggestion of a Council for Financial Stability. The public like consensus-style emoting and are unimpressed by negative personal attacks that both Cameron and Brown engaged in—especially on the subject of immigration—where mention of the Clegg ‘amnesty’ has become a ritual opportunity to engage in a bit of populist group mugging of “soft touch” Nick.
“I agree with David on this”, intoned Brown in full anti-anti-bigot mode, “because I can't see how you send out anything other than the worst possible message if you give an amnesty to people who've come here illegally”. Suddenly wanting to stop any more foreign people living here or to complain about the jobs, houses, and benefits that the ones who were here (no doubt illegally) were denying “good families” like Mrs Duffy from Rochdale was not “ridculous” or “bigoted” but common sense.
Not to be outdone, Cameron warned that if the Liberals had their way the 600,000 people who were living here illegally “would be entitled to bring a relative each into our country”, as the ghost of Stechford could be heard faintly whispering, “Two and a half million votes David, two and a half million votes…”. To be fair Cameron did not promise to pull up the drawbridge to Fortress Britain, but he was determined to drop it only once a year and pull it up really quickly if that nice retired diplomat from Migration Watch tells us Britain is full. Clegg, despite being beaten-up by his adversaries was not prepared to join them by “agreeing with Gillian”. In a rare moment of eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, Clegg rounded on Cameron and insisted that the cap would not apply to the 80% of foreigners from the European Union, whom Mrs Duffy seemed to be most concerned about.
“Yes or no, do 80% of immigrants come from the European Union, which wouldn't be affected by your cap? Yes or no? Clegg demanded.
“It's affected by having transitional controls”, Cameron hit back, “I've answered your question. You should answer mine”. Er…well not quite, since transitional controls apply to candidate countries, not to ones already in the EU. Only UKIP and the BNP are offering withdrawal from the EU and even UKIP aren’t planning forcibly to repatriate the EU nationals who are already living here.
On the subject of jobs there was a general consensus that the loss of manufacturing was a major disaster for cities like Birmingham. Cameron stated that “in the last 13 years, we've lost 60,000 jobs in manufacturing”, and then said, “We've been losing manufacturing industry faster than the 1980s”, Perhaps he is too young to remember the first Thatcher government though he did admit—“It's been a complete tragedy.” We need to rebuild by, “…investing in our science base and making sure great universities like this are producing the scientists and entrepreneurs of the future”. Suddenly a ray of sunlight shone through the stained glass of the Great Hall, was this the knight in shining armour Britain’s universities had been praying for? Let’s check the manifesto shall we….here we are, it says the Conservatives will “Work to improve the way that universities are funded so that students get a fair deal, disadvantaged young people don’t miss out and researchers get the funding they need…” Marvellous! I now have the perfect line when my kids ask me for more pocket money—“I am working to improve the way your allowance is funded, but owing to the £67.5 billion cuts that we are going to have to make in the next five years you can’t have it just yet”.
All three leaders had rehearsed their lines well and disappointingly there were no more own goals. Just to be sure Dave, Nick and Gordon couldn’t rip their radio mikes off quick enough by the end of the show. According to various ‘instant polls’, Cameron had come across better than the other three but Clegg also clearly had another good night and managed to get several all important nods of approval during the occasional cut aways to the questioner. Brown on the other hand, came across as troubled and off his game, despite trying to win audience sympathy with the “as you saw yesterday, I don't get all of it right” quip. Even Mandelson in full 1,400 rpm spin mode in the post-debate interview looked tired and dispirited. Gordon Brown may know how to run an economy but he certainly doesn’t know how to run an election, whereas Cameron and an impressively slick Tory election machine clearly do. Lord Kinnock has smelt that kind of defeat before and has already admitted that the gig is up.
The great challenge for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats is whether they can persuade sufficient numbers of Labour voters to dump Gordon in the marginals in order to stop the Tories gaining an overall majority. Despite all the fanfares and hoo-hah, it seems that the prime ministerial debates have taken us back to exactly where the election started—Labour are the underdogs and are expected to lose, the Lib Dems will improve their share of the vote but will struggle to improve their share of the seats, and the Conservatives remain the party to beat with the prospect of more than half the House of Commons seats turning blue on May 7th moving towards near evens odds. It’s going to be a fascinating election night!
