The last TV 'debate' (April 30 - BBC) between the three main Westminster party leaders before Britain's May 7 General Election saw Cameron, Miliband and Clegg answering questions from a selected and combative audience from the northern English city of Leeds. Each leader, individually and in turn, had 28 minutes to distill their their slogans and soundbites into some sort of honest, fresh-sounding answers.
Surprisingly, Cameron did better than might have been expected. He dropped the 'I'm the only statesman here' pose and came in fighting. And his questioners, mostly on Labour's side, were relatively polite. While the north of England is not good territory for Cameron, the carefully politically balanced audience, meant that some of Yorkshire's otherwise isolated Tories could have a good old dig into the 'bolshevik backstabber', and they snarled and denounced the earnest Miliband, which meant he stayed firmly on the back foot during his session. As for Clegg, after a few denunciations for his U turn over tuition fees from the audience, there did not seem to be much interest.
In other words we were back to the traditional Tory 'stand on your own two feet' versus Labour 'stand up for working people' rhetoric. The game plan (only the three Westminster tyros present) animated the excitable audience. That, and the undoubted poisoned well that is modern politics and politicians, provided an accessible, even comfortable platform for lots of the questioners.
Leave aside how four million plus voters who will be voting for explicitly anti-austerity parties were not represented, except in a few questions about deals and coalitions and entirely negatively in all of the answers. Forget the drastic implications of a first past-the-post voting system, designed to deliver strong, one-party rule, now failing completely in two elections in a row; - in the narrowed down theatre of operations the BBC had acquiesced to, it was Miliband who fared worse. He was brought low when a febrile Tory called him a liar after he said that the last Labour Government had not overspent. Miliband's answer produced a little howl of disbelief from the audience and invective from another Tory. Then Miliband tried to deal with the claim that other countries, Australia and Canada for example, had not suffered from the 2008 crash like Britain. It must, said the now ranting Tory, be the previous Labour Government's debts. For an instant Miliband grasped for the truth. He said that the UK's financial services industry had been a specifically British problem, and then, as though shocked by his own bravery, he slid away and waffled on about the value of rennovated schools and the (disastrous) PFI hospitals built by Labour's spending.
This artificial and arcane encounter in Leeds tells us little about the big new political processes underway in Britain's election. However, it is worth going back to Miliband's particular nemesis. What could he have said to that audience and to the millions watching? The commentators, the pundits, the audience in Leeds all sensed it was a 'turn around' moment. Well, what if Miliband was not Miliband and his party was not what it has patently revealed itself to be; what might have been spelt out that could have shaken the Leeds audience and broken open the election for viewers - in the way that the momentum on the ground of the SNP, the Greens and Plaid already has begun to do?
This is what a different Miliband might have said:
'No. Labour did not overspend; whatever the ministerial twerp who wrote the letter ("there's no money left") being brandished by Cameron said. This particular 'joke' came from Tory Chancellor 'Reggie' Maudlin in the 1960s, who wrote the same thing for the new Labour Government then. It was as stupid as the first time round.
'The banks, hedge funds,tax haveneers and the super-rich crashed our western economy - not to the tune of tens of £billions that UK governments spend, but to the tune of hundreds of £billions. Why was Britain hit so hard? The City of London, including our big banks, organised most of the world's gambling, which soured, then caused the crash. The government had to buy huge chunks of the banks. There was no money left in the ATMs. The government had to print £billions, so industry and transport could still run. Both Labour and the Tories had allowed the City to get away with murder for decades. Then both parties, and the Liberals, were too scared to do anything else but keep it alive.
'The Coalition's austerity and the cuts Labour had started to make - as an answer to all this - were a disaster. Austerity was and remains a simple plan to make the overwhelming majority of the poor, those who need to work, those who need state help, most of us, pay for the crisis. UK living standards for the 99% have dropped and the chances for our young have got worse in the last five years with a promise of more, and worse, to come. Did you read the Sunday Times last Sunday? The rich list? I'll remind you of the Murdoch's Times headline.
"Super rich have doubled their wealth since economic crisis." The wrong people are paying for this disaster!
'You ask what can we do in this election? Simples. Labour are going to lead a Britain wide anti-austerity coalition, together with our SNP partners in Scotland, the Greens, Plaid Cymry and all those organisations and campaigns that have battling away for a different answer. We need to win Parliament on May 7. It will be the start we need to win the changes we require - for a different politics and a different economics. Those that made the crisis and who profit from the crisis will have had their day and will have to pay. And we are not alone. Across Europe we will find millions of friends and allies in our great enterprise.'
Perhaps wild applause?
The trouble with crises is that if you do not truly face them, then you become a part of them.
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