Final Election Debate - Cameron blows it

The media analysis seems to be that Cameron had a good innings in last night's final debate. But on my blog I have no problem going against the media grain :)

Cameron has lost most in these debates. Although he did press home some good points last night his real enemy - Clegg - came through pretty much unscathed. And it's Clegg that the Tories need to fear most, for he could destroy them.



Why? Because a hung Parliament, or a minority Government that needs the Lib Dems, will probably result in far-reaching electoral reform which could shut the Conservatives out of office forever. The price of any deal withe the Lib Dems will be electoral reform. This naturally disadvantages the Conservatives. Despite the protests to the contrary of Labour and the Lib Dems, this is the most likely outcome of a hung parliament. The Conservatives, if they fail to win an outright majority, will never agree to a system that will deny them a majority. First-past-the-post suits the Tories.

Proportional Representation, or a transferable voting system of any kind will almost certainly result in a Lib-Lab coalition, or some sort of accommodation between Britain's two main left-of-centre parties, forever. Labour is a busted flush, and everyone knows that. They have no chance of winning an outright majority on May 6th. So the battle is between a Conservative majority or Nick Clegg as a kingmaker. The latter option would mean an impossible choice for the Conservatives: govern with the Lib Dems and accept the dismantling of first-past-the-post, or watch Clegg cut a deal with Labour and resign themselves to opposition.

So that's the strategic dilemma that Cameron is faced with. Seen through this prism, the debate looks different.

Brown and Cameron were foolish to even agree to these debates. Debating and public speaking are Brown's weakest points. He was bound to come off worst against his younger, slicker rivals. Mrs Thatcher was wise, and knew it was a risk that wasn't worth taking. Cameron has also miscalculated because Clegg has been given equal footing in front of the viewing public. (Of course the 3 of them debate all the time at Prime Minister's Questions, but only political junkies follow that. More's the pity.)

So Cameron gave Clegg an 'in' to let him steal his Obama-esque mantle of 'change' and present himself as the anti-political politician: the outsider, the alternative. Clegg grabbed his chance to talk about 'the two old parties', 'the old system', etc etc. More informed viewers know it's nonsense because the Lib Dems are part and parcel of the system and have also been caught in the expenses scandal and taking donations from dubious sources.

No matter. Cameron failed last night on two counts: he wavered as he held the stake above Gordon Brown's vampire heart, failing to adminster the coup de grace and finish him off. And he failed to cut down Clegg.

Cameron started off badly. Almost from his opening line. He said that the economy was 'in a rut'. In a rut? When your car doesn't start you're in a rut. When you've accidentally deleted an important text message you might feel you're in a bit of a 'rut'. I can't believe he was so timid. He could have said that Gordon Brown has destroyed the savings, jobs and hopes of millions of us and the economy is facing an apocalyptic meltdown. 'Apocalyptic meltdown' sounds a bit stronger than 'rut', don't you think?

But Cameron seemed scared to say anything like that. I don't like these debates because they are sterile, formulaic and fixed and the questions are rehearsed. No room for audience come-back, no allowance made for the host to ask his own questions. Even a Question Time format would have been better than this. The debates reduce politics to soundbites, even more than it currently is. That's a great shame, and pushes us further towards the infantilisation of political debate. X-Factor politics, in fact. It's bloody awful. But since this is what we've got, soundbites are what we have to examine.

"They've had 13 years," Cameron said with exasperation, several times. It was a strong and effective soundbite, it struck home a simple point and stuck in the memory. But I felt it was too little, too late. He should have said this right through the campaign and certainly from the first debate. Clegg had a stronger theme that with constant repetiton struck a chord with a numbed electorate: "the 2 old parties". There were variations of this last night: "there they go again", "we need a different way", "the same old thing". Never mind that these are vacuous, meaningless statements that advance no argument. These stupid 'debates' (actually they're not debates in any meaningful sense) are all about these soundbites. The sad fact is that lots of people don't follow politics closely enough and they rely on these cliches to decide how to vote.

Brown actually did quite well last night, I thought. But it's way, way too late. He has learnt as the debates have gone on. Lesson number one is that you need a theme and you need to repeat it endlessly - I could have told him that :). So he came out with "it's the same old Tory party". The subject was the inheritance cut for the richest 3,000 in the country. Clegg joined Brown to gang up on Cameron over this.

Cameron made the point that everyone, rich and poor, wants to hand their inheritance to their children. He could have just told the truth about his policy and said that he believes that trying to keep millionaires like Richard Branson in the country is good for the UK because for the price of a bit of inheritance tax they might continue to keep thousands of jobs, investment and industry in the UK instead of shipping out. But he sense that the public mood is not for helping rich people any more, so decided not to defend it and talked instead about the 'desperation' of Brown. Vacuous but effective.

Brief diversion: Personally I think that inheritance cuts are not the reason that Richard Branson stays in the UK; decisions are more complex and are based around the business climate, the skills and flexibility of the workforce and the opportunities for marketing and selling. So this inheritance cut for the rich is daft, and seems unfair.

Cameron failed to kill off Brown because he didn't find a soundbite to negate Brown's taunts about not matching Labour's spending on education, the police etc. An effective riposte would have been : "Gordon Brown has bankrupted us", or "Because of Gordon Brown there's no money left". Just focus on a theme, get a soundbite and repeat. Sad, but true.

The most effective riposte would have been to highlight the failures of Labour's record. It's so easy that it baffles me why Cameron didn't do it. Here's an easy one on education: OFSTED's report last year stated that 1 in 3 state schools in 'inadequate'. So anything Brown says on education could be countered with "Under Labour you child has a 1 in 3 chance of getting an inadequate education. Do they deserve a second chance?"

The thing is, most people quite rightly think that Labour doesn't deserve a second chance. They just aren't sure that Cameron is the best alternative.

Cameron failed utterly to conduct what looked to me like a simple task and tell Britain that Gordon Brown when Chancellor orchestrated the regime of deregulation that led to the banking crisis, allowed the housing bubble to inflate to unsustainable levels, let credit card companies suck people into debt, sold our gold, raided the pensions and therefore (soundbit alert!) doesn't deserve another go. Incredibly, he hardly mentioned any of that in any  of the debates. It was the simplest of tasks and he blew it. Not only that, but he failed to destroy the mortal threat to his flank in the shape of Clegg.

On presentation and soundbites, Clegg did so much better than his rivals in all 3 debates. The gloss has begun to rub off him though and he didn't run away with it last night. When Cameron became Tory leader someone said that his greatest enemy was time. In other words as people get used to him they become more cynical and he becomes less 'alternative' and more 'establishment'. So it has been with Clegg, but on a smaller scale.

Cameron tried to nail Clegg on his pro-Euro credentials, pointing out the obvious fact that if were in the Euro like Greece, Portugal, Ireland etc we couldn't let the pound devalue and help ourselves. Clegg countered smartly with a promise of a referendum. Good move: when your opponent swings at you, use his own policies against him! Clegg's offer to have a meeting of some sort after the election, where the shadow chancellors have a chat and decide what to do was cheeky and presumptuous. Cameron and Brown sniffily ignored it, but as a debating device it pulled off a neat trick of making him appear reasonable and above the fray. The 'outsider' card again.

It seemed clear to me that Clegg had done the most homework, so I believe he 'won' last night. However you define 'winning'. All 3 agreed to shake up banking regulation and tax, orin  Cameron's more anodyne words 'levy', the banks.

Brown had a 'same old Tories' theme that I mentioned earlier. And he also cleverly went on the offensive against Cameron pointing out that when the crisis hit he took the right decisions in renationalising the banks and putting together a rescue package. He has been praised internationally for this and rightly so. It's his strongest card. The trouble is, as I've said before, when the arsonist turns up with a hosepipe it's hard to feel generous towards him. On substance Brown probably did best last night, arguing that the Tories plan to cut spending earlier would risk 'double dip' recession.

All three selectively quoted the IFS study which shows that none of them have come clean on their tax-and-spending plans and that all of them are hiding the true extent of the pain to come. Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, apparently thinks that because of this the next Government will be so unpopular they will be out of power for a generation. They may well be.

So overall:
Brown wins of substance, but he's dead in the water now.
Clegg wins on media performance and soundbite effectiveness.
Cameron is the big loser because he didn't win a clear victory, and only that will do now, simply because the Lib Dems are a more lethal threat to him than Labour.