Oxford's oldest student newspaper

Independent since 1920

Seven spivs a’ spinning

It was almost all the colours of the rainbow, but not quite. Plaid and the SNP will need to migrate to orange and violet if we’re to see the full spectrum. But there was no pot of gold at the end of last night’s first and only leaders’ debate.

Another five years have passed and with them come the next set of party political broadcasts. As a young person, I very much appreciated ITV’s catchy title sequence. It was perhaps more interesting to watch than the beginning of the debate in which the tired party narratives were trotted out once again. Last night’s debate, appropriately set out like an episode of The Weakest Link, pitted seven parties against each other: Labour, the Conservatives, Greens, UKIP, SNP, Lib-Dems and even Plaid Cymru. The inclusion of the Welsh nationalist party perhaps comes as a surprise given that there were no Northern Irish parties present.

Questions focused on the NHS, education, housing, and, of course, immigration, which caused the biggest fracas between Nigel Farage, Leanne Wood and David Cameron (who for the most part hung back: some may regard this as Prime-Ministerial dignity, others as cowardice).

Most of the irritating points of any political debate remained. Very little was added to the discussion over the NHS. All parties have promised small increases in expenditure, but none will address the looming funding gap that the NHS will face in 2030. You can hardly blame them, it would be electoral suicide.

Farage, Miliband and Cameron (in behaviour reminiscent of his ‘Calm down, Dear’ gaff) frequently talked over or ignored the questioner, Julie Etchingham. And in the usual way direct questions were not answered. The guiltiest in this respect was Ed Miliband, who was asked a question about immigration and managed to work the question back to zero-hours contracts. When Cameron lobbed the uncomfortable “what about Mid-Staffs?” at Miliband, his mouth, which had been a major distraction all night (and not in a Tess of the D’Urbervilles kind of way) opened a little wider before he started answering a non-related question that hadn’t been asked. Milliband tended to rubbish the Conservatives rather than put his own policies forwards. That being said, the few ideas of his own he did put forward (raising the minimum wage to £8/hour and cutting the bedroom tax) were sound. And certainly, his concern about these issues came across as preferable to Cameron’s icy dismissal of the exploitation of zero-hours contracts.

[mm-hide-text]%%IMG_ORIGINAL%%11368%%[/mm-hide-text]

Competing figures are another pitfall inevitable in any political debate. Last night’s affair was no exception. Is the NHS undergoing “massive privatisation” or not? Have the government increased or decreased funding in education? It was difficult to know.

Clegg could never hope to replicate the “Cleggmania” of 2010. He is seen by many of the public as damaged goods after raising tuition fees. He had little to lose in this debate, which perhaps gave him a new sense of freedom. It was certainly refreshing to hear a pro-European, pro-immigration stance. Clegg was admirably unafraid to stand up to Farage in a political context where many are too closed-minded or too cowed by UKIP to speak up.

It’s true that the main party leaders, and even Nigel Farrage, had very little to gain from this debate. His deeply immoral political strategies were no longer shocking. UKIP has been given enough airtime now such that their policies lack the novelty they once had. Cameron and Milliband will be pleased that they made no serious gaffs, which was really the best outcome they could hope for. It was Plaid Cymru, the SNP and the Green Party who had the most to gain. Whilst Natalie Bennett seemed more genuine than the other politicians she mostly fell flat, and Leanne Wood only had a few strong moments. Of the three women, it was Nicola Sturgeon who had the gravitas and sound policies that won her many allies among the rest of the Left in the UK, perhaps gaining allies for a Labour-SNP coalition. She is, politically, a big fish.

The seven-way debate marks an incremental but significant change for UK party politics. I am far from agreeing with all the changes that the coalition government has implemented in the last few months, but perhaps one day we will look back at 2010 and the subsequent wider distribution of votes as a positive transition from two-party gridlock to a more pluralistic and healthy democracy.

Check out our other content

Most Popular Articles