When the dust settles on the TV debates, Labour must expose the Tories and the Lib Dems

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Debate

By Matthew Dear

I write this half an hour after the PoliticalBetting / Angus Reid poll put the Tories on 32% (-6), the Lib Dems level with them on 32% (+10) and Labour on 24% (-4). In the BPIX / Mail on Sunday poll at the weekend, 32% was enough to give Britain’s perennial “third party” the lead, for the first time in decades – a phenomenon echoed the following day when YouGov gave them 33%, to the Tories’ 32%.

This volcanic surge in support doesn’t appear to be a blip. Fortunes in politics cannot be told even in the medium-term, but, presuming that this inflation of Lib Dem support – whether it be balloon or bubble – can be sustained until May 6th, there are likely to be two significant effects on politics in this country, and the way it is conducted.

1 – It will make calls for a change to the way we elect our MPs virtually irrefutable. The figures above would give the Lib Dems, the joint winners in polling terms, 140 seats, or not much over half the number – 266 seats – won by the Conservative Party with whom they would have shared a victory in the popular vote. Labour, despite plumbing new depths, would be 54 seats behind the Tories with 212 seats.

Whether it be the “instant run-off“, or AV, which I favour, maintaining as it does the link to constituents, or an altogether more proportional system, such a result would make it clear that, really, something has to give.

2 – Unavoidably, politics will become more about presentation than ever before. I’m not going to be so crass as to suggest that this is because people are too easily won over, or too stupid to consider policy – I categorically do not believe that to be true. But, since the US held its first presidential debate in 1960, can you even imagine a Calvin Coolidge entering the fray?

It’s just not an arena for the shy anymore, no matter how much of a genius or how compassionate they may be. I’ve I sometimes thought of Gordon Brown as a Calvin Coolidge figure, even before the debate. Some that I’ve spoken to have said that, cutting through the bluster of the format, they were more persuaded by his intellect than they ever have been before. Too many more, however, have fallen for the silver tongues of the Tories’ and Lib Dems’ Sales Directors.

The debates have got people talking about politics. I don’t think I’ve spoken to a soul since who didn’t have a view on them. This has got to be a good thing. Unfortunately, most of electoral politics’ new “fans” seem to favour the Lib Dems – rather like opting to take a ride on a shiny new tram, when you’ve only ever considered the bus or the train as viable options.

Their new found fame will open their policies up to greater scrutiny – but this (literally) can’t come fast enough. Thatcherite ideas about cutting your way to growth, “acting shamelessly and stirring endlessly“, and spending fortunes to only slightly relieve the tax burdens of the lower-middle class will appear to have massive popular support. If this happens, Labour activists must stick it to them, again and again, so that there are exposed for the power-crazed people that many of them are, and the manifesto they stand on as the impractical house of cards that it is.

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