TV debates: Electoral death or televised dishonour
David Cameron knows the risks, and calculates that the priority now is ensuring his own survival
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Your support makes all the difference.At the G8 summit in Northern Ireland two years ago, David Cameron took a 6am “wild swim” in the open waters of Lough Erne in a show of machismo that made his dinner guest Vladimir Putin look like a tentative head-above-water breast-stroker in the local council baths.
At the G8 summit in Northern Ireland two years ago, David Cameron took a 6am “wild swim” in the open waters of Lough Erne in a show of machismo that made his dinner guest Vladimir Putin look like a tentative head-above-water breast-stroker in the local council baths.
The Prime Minister, as you may recall, also loves doing a cross-country race through a freezing and muddy Cotswolds stream in the middle of winter. To put it plainly, Cameron is not a wimp. So to say he is chickening out of the election TV debates isn’t right: he’s not scared – it’s worse than that, his refusal to take part in anything but a seven-way contest weeks before the election is the worst kind of contemptuous, dishonourable and unsportsmanlike behaviour, and I think voters can see through it.
True, the description Ed Miliband gave last week of the PM hiding behind a sofa in Downing Street was amusing. Yes: where the 2010 election was, for the Tories, all about the Big Society, their 2015 campaign is all about the Big Sofa, concealing a cowering Cameron. But Nick Clegg’s analogy was more accurate: Cameron is the aristocrat sitting in the library at Downton Abbey, whisky in hand, loftily trying to dictate the terms.
Cameron’s reasons for not wanting to play fair aren’t cowardice, then, but because he thinks that to take part in three debates during the proper short election campaign (rather than one at the end of this month), including a crucial head-to-head with Miliband one week before polling day, will damage his chances of remaining in No 10. Perhaps he is uncomfortable with confronting the electorate, through a sort of national 22 million-strong episode of Gogglebox, with the fact that the David Cameron of 2010 – all greenest government ever, Big Society, not banging on about Europe – wasn’t real. Perhaps he knows that he’s getting an easy ride from 85 per cent of the national media who portray Miliband as either dangerous or a joke, and that having a head-to-head with the Labour leader for a full hour-and-a-half would level the playing field.
Cameron says that he debates Miliband every week at Prime Minister’s Questions, but of course that’s not the same, with its staccato question-and-answer format and jeering from backbenchers. Those allies of Cameron who say this row is just a Westminster village story are wrong, because prime-time TV is the most nationally accessible and, therefore, democratic forum outside of polling stations on 7 May. Those same allies who spend all the time saying how disastrous Miliband is should just let the debate happen, and if the Labour leader is so awful, their man should triumph. The line from Downing Street about how this process is running out of time, therefore there can be only one debate, is dodgy too: is it not strange that the man who wants to remain prime minister doesn’t have time to present his credentials to the nation a week before polling day?
Cameron knows the risks, and calculates that the priority now is ensuring his own survival. Yet he should also know that he is answerable to us, the voters. Without a proper TV debate between the only two men who can be prime minister in two months’ time, there is no real accountability, no real scrutiny and, on Cameron’s part, no honour.
Free school mess
Cameron has pledged a host of new free schools if his party is re-elected into government. As I’ve always said, I’m in favour of free schools – but only where there is demand. In fact, local parents and councillors in my area in East Dulwich, south London, are campaigning for a new free secondary school.
This area, where the birth rate is soaring, has a number of primary schools but no secondary school – which means teenagers have to travel a few miles every day for their education. A site has been identified, on the old Dulwich Hospital grounds, and is perfect for this new secondary. Two existing institutions – Haberdashers’ Aske’s and the Charter School – are interested in creating the new free secondary school. So far, so hopeful.
Yet the Harris Federation, which runs primary and secondary academies in south London, wants the site for its new primary academy. The problem is, this new Harris primary is supposed to be in Nunhead, a few miles down the road, where local parents are desperate for places. The second problem is that Michael Gove, before he left the Department for Education, made clear in writing he wanted the site to go to Harris, whose chairman happens to be the Conservative peer and donor Lord Harris of Peckham.
According to local MP Tessa Jowell, who is campaigning for the hospital site to be a secondary, there will be a surplus of primary places in East Dulwich by 2016. We don’t need another primary, but we desperately need a secondary school. Doesn’t this example show the mess the free school system is in?
Labour and the pop video
The return to the UK of comedian Tracey Ullman reminds me of the great 1980s pop moment when her music video for “My Guy’s Mad At Me”, which got to number 23 in the charts in 1984, featured the then Labour leader Neil Kinnock. I wonder whether Ullman’s return from a successful career in the US means she could be persuaded to release an updated version? And, if so, will the current Labour leader be featuring in the video? Given how Kinnock’s electoral fortunes went, I guess the answer to this question is no.
Natalie Bennett looks familiar
While we’re on the subject of female comedians, I can’t help but think of Victoria Wood whenever I see Natalie Bennett, the Green Party leader. Bennett is not known for her smooth delivery, however, unlike Wood, who won The Great Comic Relief Bake Off last week. Wood wrote and sang the brilliant “The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let’s Do It)”. The best line comes at the end when she says “Beat me on the bottom with a Woman’s Weekly” to which I could add “as long as it’s fully recyclable”.
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