The Live Leadership Debates

After three debates on three channels with three party leaders, has this historical first changed anything? Some may argue yes because it shows that the United Kingdom is heading towards a more democratic approach to elections where the audience made up from members of the public, (albeit a heavily controlled and medically sedated audience, who could resist flinging their own excrement at David Cameron to see if it bounced off his head made from 50% tyre rubber?), can ask the three main party leaders a range of questions where they can receive in-depth responses.

However some may argue no because although it’s a step in the right direction; it excludes all other parties that although small, people do still vote for them and therefore have the right to appear alongside the three main parties. Oh and because of the heavily rehearsed and controlled environment it’s essentially boring, predictable and uninformative.

I for one however, don’t really care about their policies. I mean, I do care, but that’s not the focus of this article for two reasons a) I’m a political vegetable with limited knowledge, so I wouldn’t be able to draw up any accurate conclusions b) I don’t support any single party, my brain is essentially grey human sludge waiting to be moulded. Maybe in the future my grey human sludge brain will be of more use to society. In this article I’m basically just going to talk about how they came across – sorry if you thought it was something better than that.

To avoid any kind of perceived favouritism, the position of each of the leaders changed in every program; this is apparently because standing on the right side gives off the impression of being right, or something like that. I don’t know why they weren’t allowed to sit down, it was very eerie watching them standing up for 90 minutes crossing their legs while looking around the room like a meditating Buddhist keeping one eye open to see if anyone is secretly recording a video of them to publish onto YouTube . None of them looked good to be honest – Gordon Brown looked like The Joker trying to complete a difficult Sudoku, David Cameron looked John Merrick wrapped in cling film, and Nick Clegg looked about as useful as the camera on the iPod Nano. However, I can’t talk because I resemble a caveman carved out of boiled ham.

The first debate was held by ITV; the set looked very small and the leaders were within touching distance, by the half way mark I half expected the lights to dim and for them to break into song before the audience voted one of them to sing a solo to Alastair Stewart as they tearfully faded off into the distance à la Over the Rainbow, (or Over the Rainbow Coalition in Gordon’s case), but that didn’t happen. I don’t think many people expected the outcome that Nick Clegg, the underdog, would end up literally creating a band wagon big enough for The Guardian to change their political opinion a week before polling day. This first debate put the Liberal Democrats into the spotlight, a tactic which didn’t work out for David Cameron when people said he didn’t live up to expectations. Oh and Gordon Brown turned up.

The second debate was held by Sky News, a move that worried viewers so much that most people tuned in preparing to see the ominous Sky News Logo projected onto every available surface including the logos that were physically there in the first place. This debate only got around 4m viewers, a drop of 5m from the ITV debate. Nick Clegg started to show signs that he was running out of steam after suddenly appearing in the spotlight, (again, not a sign of a sing off in sight). David Cameron apparently won this debate, much to the bemusement of basically everyone who watched because he didn’t do that well. Oh and Gordon Brown turned up.

The third and final debate was held on the BBC, the only television channel where expressing a political opinion on air is punishable by death, or punishable by being forced to watch an episode of The Life of Riley without being allowed to close your eyes and pretending you’re watching My Family instead. This debate was held in Birmingham University which made the likelihood of a sing off even less promising than it previously was. It was however a much better set than the pokey ones given to us by both ITV and Sky News. The viewing figures were a respectable 9m, about 9m of whom were probably tuning in to see if Gordon Brown would call an audience member a ‘scruffy cunt’ under his breath, unknowingly forgetting that he was live on air and looking directly at the camera.

Regarding my previous comments about the likelihood of a sing off, I’m almost certain that within the next decade we’re going to have a political Big Brother spin-off where prime ministerial candidates have to partake in a task where they create a viral video from bits of Family Guy in order to win the respect of the moronic masses because that’s where this doomed society is inevitably heading: we’re all stupid.

There you have it, the first historical set of leader debates summed up in a slightly humorous, ill educated and un-biased way. The entire point of these debates were to ultimately change the viewer’s opinions on who to vote for. However it only made me think of one thing: if I were to turn this on and David Cameron had failed to turn up, I’d easily mistake it for a repeat of Brokeback Mountain with more sodomy.

Steven, Administrator.