Where Clegg may be taking us
Yesterday I managed to squeeze in a public meeting with local parliamentary candidates(Battersea) before running back home and watching the TV debate of the three party leaders.
The first part showed local politics at its best. Each candidate submitting himself (Labour’s Martin Linton and the Green’s Guy Evans) and herself ( Tory Jane Ellison and the Lib Dem’s Layla Moran) to questions from ordinary constituents which showed a keen sensitivity to local issues and a refreshing ability not to sound simply as party spokespeople.
In fact little of substance seem to separate the candidates on issues like local schools, transport, care for the elderly, and health services. It all needed to improve. And both the long serving local MP Linton, and Ellison, the person posing the biggest challenge , avoided personal scraps and seemed to share considerable mutual respect.
From consensual local politics to national media show, courtesy of Rupert Murdoch. Our politicians filmed by Sky TV and instantly polled by YouGov for The Sun- showing-surprise, surprise, that Cameron had emerged victorious- what a democratic treat!
One moment above all confirmed why I will NOT vote Tory. The sight of George Osborne describing Cameron as a man of passion and then congratulating Sky TV for putting on such a “great show”
By contrast, Gordon Brown came across as a man genuinely with a heart in the right place although he looked vulnerable on the subject of a campaign leaflet.
As for Clegg. A couple of observations. This is very definitely a much enlarged political presence from the one I remember just over a year ago in my final days working as a journalist in the House of Commons.
Clegg then was treated by Labour and Tory MP’s alike, like the classroom dunce, there to be mocked and taunted, and scarcely listened to. They are having to take him more seriously now. Why? Because he seems to have listened better than most other politicians to what ordinary people feel and think beyond Westminster. He has grown in front of the cameras. But he speaks like a grassroots politician, and is filling people with hope by telling us ‘we can’ in a language that sounds more credible than Cameron’s. To make a hung parliament sound like a potentially good outcome at the next election is a major political achievement. I sense a new dynamics emerging and it’s moving towards a necessary Lib-Dem/Labour coalition.
