Last night’s 7-way debate was a disaster. Rishi Sunak’s PR team produced another disaster. Jack Grealish’s Euros football plans have become a disaster. Will someone please get something right? Apart from Jack Grealish. He didn’t really do well and the England team will hope to not miss him when the Euros kick off soon.
Firstly, we didn’t do another debate reflections special because it was always going to be a disaster. Firstly, a 7-way debate?! Whose idea was that? You can’t get a message out nor can you really have a debate or flesh out the arguments between 7 different political parties. Voters are going to be confused and will look to either the clapping from the audience or from a speech that for some reason doesn’t get interrupted. Other than that you will glaze over the spectacle for most of the time. We got about 15 minutes before we gave up. But a 7-way debate was a terrible idea, especially as there were a couple of parties in there that were purely regional. Add into that mix that 3 parties are currently polling well under 5 percent nationally (though 2 are only regional) and what you get is a really confusing mess, which is what it turned out to be.
The Tories and Labour were fronted up by the deputy leader for Labour and the Tory cabinet minister with the title ‘Leader of the House of Commons’ which is a pretty meaningless title by comparison to other offices of state. So neither leaders of the two big parties were there. Angela Rayner has a lot more personality than the human equivalent of the shopping channel at 3am Kir Starmer. Penny Mourdant has an ex-military background and seemed much more sincere than Sunak and is probably going to be the next leader of the Tory party; and that’s what she spent most of the night trying to do; make her pitch to be leader. Nigel Farage made his appearance which seemed ever so lonely for him as the other 6 parties basically sang from the same social democrat handbook, and an audience that clapped like wind-up-toys whenever anyone said something to denigrate him. The Liberal Democrat deputy leader, Daisy Cooper, was there and though what she said was pretty dull and pretty much the same as Labour she communicated well and was immensely stern without being threatening. She’d be a better leader than Ed Davey…perhaps she was also doing a Penny Mourdant.
And then there were the rest. The Greens Co-Leader was there and the question is why. Polling at 5.8% she sounded as if she was the leader of a party at around 20%. Having flatlined in the polls since mid-June 2022 the Greens are set to lose their MP in Brighton and they have been a bit of a busted flush. They have no national pull and save the mouth-frothing extinction rebellion protesters their attractiveness is just not cutting through. So last night she spent most of it figuratively elbowing everyone in the ribs. The Green Party is an international hard-left party that comes and goes and barely makes a sound. This is not to denigrate them but why they were there in the first place was confusing.
The SNP and Plaid Cymru made up some kind of representation of the devolved nations, aside from Northern Ireland which was sad. The SNP leader in Westminster spoke up a lot, barely mentioning Scottish Independence (or rather SEPERATISM as Scotland is all but independent) and hamstrung by the knowledge that he was not speaking to a massive majority of those in attendance or watching. Plaid Cymru made so little sense in why they were there. They poll in the single digits in Wales and yet somehow they were allowed to attend this debate. And yet, there they were.
The problem outlined above was so painful to see. Aside from the bickering between Labour and the Tories, and even that wasn’t convincing, 6 of the 7 representatives basically said the same thing:
Immigration is great
More spending on public services
More spending on the NHS
Brexit was either a terrible mistake or needed damage limitation
Enlarging the size of the state
Using the state to try to grow the economy
The debate made it seem as if social democracy is all the rage in the UK, where survey after survey shows 85% of the British public are socially conservative and economically centrist, but becoming increasingly skeptical on the state to solve economic problems. The 6 parties, and a majority of the audience (laughably independently chosen via Savanta polling…pull the other one) basically revolved around the same social liberal policies and the globalist liberal consensus and it became really boring really fast. Add in denigration of people concerned about the cultural state the UK is in and you have a political class that seemed to want to TELL people what to think, rather than REACTING to what they think. Nigel Farage was attacked by everyone when in reality he was saying something actually different. The ‘Overton Window’ (the subjects allowed to be discussed in public or seen as socially acceptable) would be minuscule if it weren’t for Nigel giving at least a different idea. “More money” the 6 representatives would shout. “The model doesn’t work” the lone voice would shout back. Voters would get nothing out of this save the delusion that social democracy is in some way a majority view; it’s not - probably 18-20% of the country supports the view.
The host channel, the BBC, did not cover itself in glory. Though the host was actually very good in most cases and fair to all she was greatly let down by the production and choices by the state broadcaster. 7 was far too many. You could make the case for 4, 5 at a real push but the Greens and Plaid were just far too much. Even the SNP seemed like an odd choice to include but their big representation in Parliament does lend them at least a thought. The audience was partisan which was disappointing. The questions were predictable but good because they are the issues of the day: the economy, health, immigration and law and order. The programme wasn’t good though. It was thin; was that deliberate?
What would the voters get out of it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. 6 of the 7 parties said the same thing and Nigel was made to look like the odd one out. It was artificial. It was stale. It was forced. There were no policies to dig down into; it was rhetoric from start to finish. Angela Rayner had been told to reign it in in terms of her passion which was a shame. Penny Mourdant looked too much as if she was preoccupied with stabbing her leader in the back. The Greens were just shouty and a bit like a toddler trying to prove they belonged in an adult-only party. The Lib Dems were fine but drowned out of the debate as they agreed with everyone else on everything. Plaid just took pot shots at Nigel and gave boring platitudes. The SNP did what they always do; blame the Tories for everything even devolved matters, and the Reform leader spent a lot of time trying to break up the consensus chat which seemed to revolve around minuscule detail of a social democrat solution the other parties all came to together.
Who won? According to a Telegraph poll Nigel Farage did by a scale of 50%, with Mourdant coming second - not unsurprising as its the Telegraph. In exit polls by others Nigel Farage won with 25%, Penny Mourdant on 19% in second. It proves that to the viewers social democracy is not popular and a fresh new idea was desired. Whether this boosts the Reform party ahead of the Tories next week is another thing, but Reform came out the best in this. The Lib Dems might see a little bump in their poll ratings after a not-too-bad showing. Angela Rayner and the Labour Party will be disappointed. Penny Mourdant will be secretly smiling that her route to leader of the Tory party will have been made slightly easier now.
One thing that did circulate around the debate last night that was dealt with pretty soon into the programme was the Prime Minister’s choice to leave the D-Day celebrations early; missing out on the commemoration of the US landings on Omaha and Utah beach. It was discovered that the Prime Minister didn’t even want to go to the entire commemoration service of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, wanting instead to focus on the election. There is talk that this will blow over; but it won’t. This is the Gordon Brown ‘bigoted woman’ moment. This is the Ed Miliband ‘Ed Stone’ moment. This will sink Sunak’s personal campaign, and with it the extinguishing of the last embers of the Tory campaign. Sunak has lost the patriotic vote. He has lost the majority of 50-60 year olds to Reform. He has lost what was left of the Red Wall voters. It is a disaster that will not go away for the rest of the campaign. Whatever positive momentum he might have gained after the Sunak v Starmer debate earlier this week has gone. The optics were terrible. Who is advising him? They should be sacked. He is being led so, so badly.
This weekend the Reform Party will sleep soundly. The Tories will see defections planned for Monday. Labour are quietly hoping no one notices them stay ahead in the polls. The Lib Dems might raise an eyebrow. 3 and a half weeks to go…and aside from a Labour victory at this point anything can happen.
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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