BY BRAD JAMES
The debates, or the prospect of them are shaping up to be more of a spectacle than the election which they precede. A change of government represents an opportunity to dispense with the Devil you know and give the you one don’t a whirl in office. ‘Red Ed’ is a Devil eager to win our votes after 5 years of a deep blue sea (of Tory contrived coalition). The prospect of change is welcomed by some and derided by others, but a vast difference has evolved after half a decade, for one thing, it’s getting crowded on that debate podium.
In Medieval tournaments, there was an event known as the melee. The melee consisted of an entire field of knights entering the combat arena and for each one to fight it out (not necessarily to the death, yet such an outcome wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility) until a sole combatant remained standing. The Presidential debates between incumbent and potential in America, are more like a primitive computer game of bat and ball, riposte and rhetoric the velocity of the pixels, imbuing the public mood on screen. Such polarisation will not do for us Brits however and we favour a bit more nuance to our political discourse. The three main party leaders – and their overtly English voters – were the candidates of choice. Our scope has widened in tune with dissatisfaction with the mainstream since then.
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UKIP leader Nigel Farage, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett, SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Welsh Assembly leader Leanne Wood have all been entered onto the roster to debate in the weeks coming up to the elections. Yet there is still vagueness about David Cameron committing himself to the debates – there has been scant mention of Irish parties like Sinn Fein either. Yet it is a step towards acknowledging that the landscape of British politics has altered, it was different five years ago too, although it is undeniable now.
Part of the adjustments to the political mire is a tweaking of the debate format itself. For example, the biggest of the debates will have the leader’s opening statements dispensed with, going straight to questions. Each leader will then have a minute to answer those questions, selected from a an audience balanced as best towards political equality as possible, the majority of those representing the myriad of left, right and centre leanings, with the remaining fifth of the audience comprising ‘undecided’ voters. All-in-all, the new frenetic pace of these debates will only permit time for four or five questions to be posited to the leaders, where they will be pitted against the clock as well as the electorate, before a general 15 minute debate follows.
The faster paced element of the debates is a lively ploy to demonstrate the alterations to political language and script over the growing years. Many sense that another Hung Parliament is in the offing and unlike 2010, the Liberal Democrats are in a far weaker bargaining position now. There is a far more fertile ground to sow the seeds for political alliance and for parties of a more suitable tone to one another to join (Labour/Green/SNP, Tory/UKIP). But there is also far greater opportunity to appeal to wider representation and prompting a return to a vast plethora of democracy, a destiny not envisioned but seemingly accidentally brought about as a residue of the Scottish Referendum. Polarisation is illuminating to a spectrum now. But what will we learn, if anything, from the debates? There are a number of elements, such as the fact that questions against a minute countdown could possibly ensure the dried up rhetoric will be whittled away like the petrified wood that it is and reach the pure heart of policy and ideology.
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The shortness of the time allotted may also underscore a fault in the debate too. It could permit a barrier to stand in the way of getting to the core of the true philosophy of the political parties and their leaders, thus confusing the electorate with too much choice. Clearly each of the leaders are going to do their utmost in the time they are bestowed to gift the public with their viewpoint, yet the gift of democracy is what needs to be presented to us via these debates. “The all-in debates will be lively,” one source has promised and it certainly may be the case, if 60 seconds are wielded correctly, they will hold the keys to power until the close of the decade.
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