It's interesting to pick up on the attention given to who will stand where, in tonights "leaders debate". I've heard that Cameron will be in the middle, which many thought worked to Cable's advantage in the Chancellors dummy run. Here's a question: if we think voters are so fickle, moronic, and instinctive that *who's standing where* makes any difference, why should we have any confidence in their judgment?
If we all know voters are easily influenced via framing effects and other heuristics, doesn't that undermine and contradict ones confidence in democracy?
I'll be exploring these themes for Reuters as I live blog the debate tonight. This really is a historic moment in British politics and I'm excited. I'll provide a URL before we go live
Update: here we go.
Debrief: So what did we learn? Firstly, the set looked like a cheap daytime quiz show. I'm hopeful that Sky will be able to make it look a bit more like Star Trek. If any American's tuned in seeing out first stab at Presidential-style debate, they'd have deemed it "charming".
The consensus view seems to be that Clegg emerged as the strongest speaker, but this just undermines how bizarre the whole thing is. When he said "the more they argue the more they sound the same" (which seems to be the money quote) I had been thinking that about all of them. How Clegg can come across as a different sort of politician, representing the sensible middle ground, is genuinely beyond me.
Most importantly, there was virtually no discussion of any substance. When Labour claim that Brown had more "substance" they mean that his personality conveyed more seriousness. Which isn't the same thing at all. And this makes Clegg's purported victory all the more perplexing - on issues such as immigration, drug addiction, and the war in Afghanistan, *none* of them even remotely touched upon the liberal solutions. They all tried to outdo each other on populist, authoritarian lines. How can someone calling themselves a "liberal" possibly take comfort from that?
The real victors in this was the mainstream media. If you look at the amount of press attention you can see that these debates are a very effective way for the BBC, The Guardian, Sky, etc to utilise the internet. The gizmos such as "worms", the instant polling etc are all new technologies that reinforce the dominance of the media as focal point (if not gatekeepers). Obviously I was live blogging for Reuters, but my impression was that most bloggers were utilising mainstream sites rather than competing with them directly.
I'm already bored of this campaign, and hope the public tires quickly so that widespread apathy returns. The most dangerous thing for this country is the mobilisation of the politically and economically uninformed to vote. But just note that almost all of the commentary on the debates focuses on issues of style - Clegg's hand in the pocket, Brown's creepy smile, Cameron's public-school bully persona. I've not seen anyone, anywhere use the debate to discuss issues that actually matter, such as whether the war in Afghanistan is right, why £6bn is peanuts, what type of health care system would be best for the British people. All 3 of them were identical on the issues of intellectual importance, and merely provided the chattering classes with gratuitous coverage to dissect each day until the next one.
I actually feel a twinge of sympathy for the honest parliamentary candidates of all stripes, who had to sit through that realising that Nick Clegg's decision to put his hand in his pocket will have more impact than their own political experience, or the local issues that we want MP's to actually deal with.
Maybe, hopefully, the general public are as apathetic as I am and all we're seeing is a media bubble basking in their own sense of self-importance. I just fear that some people finished up watching Coronation Street and are now tempted to vote for "the one with the nice tie" or "the one stood in the middle" or "the one who remembered the names of the people asking the questions", instead of the person who's spent several years campaigning to prevent the closure of their local A&E.
This event didn't boost political engagement, it trivialized it.
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