Posted by Dr Simon Parker
If the theme of the first prime ministerial debate had been ‘I agree with Nick’, the story of Thursday night’s encounter in Bristol and indeed the entire week’s campaigning since Clegg’s first triumphant performance in Manchester was ‘Let’s Get Clegg!’. That morning’s Daily Telegraph claimed that payments to support a research assistant when Nick Clegg was Home Affairs spokesman had been paid into his private account by three registered Liberal Democrat donors was a taste of the beastings that Clegg can expect from now until polling day. While the Daily Mail dedicated its entire front-page to Clegg’s “Nazi Slur on Britain”. “I have gone from Churchill to Nazi in less than a week”, complained the leader of Britain’s “Yellow Peril”. An ironic comment given that the great war hero warned voters that voting Labour in 1945 would be equivalent to voting for the Gestapo. Plus ça change…
No stranger to damaging stories involving donations and loans from wealthy friends, Lord Mandelson entered the studios of Radio 4 to decry the ‘disgusting’ attacks on Mr Clegg orchestrated by the Conservatives’ answer to Alastair Campbell – former News of the World editor Andy Coulson. Mandelson was at pains to point out that he abhorred everything that the Liberal Democrats stood for and that Mr Clegg was a very bad thing, but smearing one’s political opponents was not what British democracy was all about. Semi-colon, dash, open square bracket, close square bracket as my Twitterati friends might say.
4.1 million viewers (more than 5 million less than last week) tuned in to watch Sky News anchor Adam Boulton referee what promised to be a far more heated contre temps than round one. And so it proved—‘Get real, get real’ jibed Mr Brown at Clegg’s plans to postpone spending an alleged £100 billion on a replacement for Trident. Citizen Dave got irate at some Labour “scare-mongering” about making the elderly pay for prescription charges. “Will he withdraw the leaflets?” Cameron angrily intoned. “What about the eyes, the eyes aren’t in the manifesto”, retorted Brown. Teeth, pills and glasses have been a staple currency of British politics ever since Aneurin Bevan resigned from the Cabinet over the introduction of charges for dentures and specs—but at least as Tony Benn memorably remarked the “pershhonalities” were now fighting on the “isshues”.
How we pay for the need of the elderly is always a key “isshue” for although they may not tweet, the over sixties vote at four times the rate of the young (didn’t Marx once write something about the tradition of all dead generations weighing like a nightmare on the brains of the living?). So as well as promising to maintain the free bus pass and TV licence, Cameron pledged to allow elderly householders the right to stay in their own homes and their descendents the right to inherit them. This will come as welcome news to the Shadow Chancellor whose own personal inheritance could cover one sixth of Osborne’s planned emergency budget cuts.
The opening discussion on Europe took a predictable course—Gordon and Nick are broadly in favour of ‘Europe’. David and his party are generally against, but they don’t want to leave. Nick wants to hold a referendum so that we can all leave, but he would like us to be a lot more European. Gordon thinks that referendums on European membership are a bad thing but a good thing if they allow the Alternative Vote system (assuming it results in the election of more Labour MPs). At the end of the day, as Nick Clegg reminded a rather worried looking Eurosceptic builder from Bristol, membership of the EU is basically a choice between straight bananas or more paedophiles.
A question not unrelated to the visit of Pope Ratzinger and the Catholic Church’s beleaguered attempts to ‘move on’ from the abuse of children in its care. All three men welcomed Benedict XVI’s visit and condemned the Church’s policies on homosexuality, embryo research, and contraception in almost equal measure. The one rare point of consensus in the evening was when Gordon Brown said that it is a very good thing that we no longer treat gay people as if they should have less rights than straight people. The other two leaders nodded their heads in approval. This in itself was a remarkable moment. Who would have thought, even 10 years ago, that the three parties representing over 90% of the popular vote would have unanimously agreed on reproductive rights and gay equality?
The consensus was short lived, however, when as if in homage to Mr Cameron’s 40 year old black seafarer from Portsmouth, Sky News found a woman who had herself been an immigrant 11 years ago but thought perhaps there were too many people like her here now. Cue a series of near identical responses to last week. Clegg wants border police and exit controls. Gordon Brown promised to get rid of foreign chefs and ‘surplus’ overseas students (as the comedian Mark Steel would say – nasty foreign students coming over here, propping up our underfinanced universities, paying money to British landlords, and buying goods in British shops—who needs them?). Both Dave and Gordon rounded on Nick for declaring an amnesty for clandestine migrants who had been here for many years who could be paying taxes to the Treasury instead of extortion to criminal gangs. Brown thought this would act as an incentive to more illegal immigration, Clegg challenged Brown to say what he would do with the estimated 1 million already here. Brown’s answer appeared to be “deport them all”. “But you don’t know where they live”, retorted Clegg, uncharitably. Brown’s rueful smile suggested that with the aid of Google Street Maps and a network of drones, the UK Border Agency was working on a solution to that very problem.
The most interesting part of the evening, however, was when a questioner asked whether the candidates would welcome a hung parliament. Cameron, who had prefaced many of his remarks with “If I were to be the next Prime Minister…” did not quite threaten the fiscal Armageddon and plagues of locusts that Ken Clarke assured us would follow anything less than a thumping Tory majority, but he joined with Gordon in insisting that when it comes to Westminster government—one is company and two’s a crowd.
The more sociable Mr Clegg offered the hand of friendship to both sides, in the knowledge that political cooperation is not seen as such a bugbear by most voters, and indeed focus group viewers were ‘dialling up’ as the Lib Dem leader espoused the benefits of a ‘war council’ to tackle the financial crisis and to continue with Labour’s inter-party working group on care for the elderly (which will double as the House of Lords reform committee). But the hard-to-get Mr Cameron was having none of it—on the subject of keeping Trident and nuclear power, he didn’t agree with Nick he agreed with Gordon. Clegg’s new found political friendships appear to have faded quicker than a cloud of volcanic ash.
Given his much more assured performance on Thursday night, Labour will be hoping that by jabbing one-twos at his opponents, Brown will have established the Tories as too much of an economic risk and the Lib Dems as too much of a security liability. Conservative supporters can take heart from the fact that their leader came across as much more prime ministerial than in the first debate, and more sure of his ground—especially on national insurance as ‘a tax on jobs’. The Lib Dems knew that this debate was all about consolidating last week’s dramatic poll gains, convincing the public that it is now a genuine three horse race, and that Clegg has the leadership qualities and electoral support needed to be a potential prime minister. It is because Clegg has managed to sustain his initial pace that the election race is still wide-open, and why the final debate next Thursday looks set to play a decisive role in the outcome of the general election.
