Saturday 18th April

What was strange about this one, and largely because of Cameron’s refusal to take part was that for once we had four left wing speakers – and Nigel Farage.  And the role of Centrist candidate fell squarely on Ed Milliband’s shoulders, a strange reversal of fortunes as he had to defend what the Right-wing press insist are far left policies from those even further to the left of him.   Farage disgraced himself even further by not only attacking immigrants and HIV patients but the BBC and even the audience itself.  Not that he will care a jot, he was (wink wink nudge nudge) appealing to the bigoted uneducated people he hopes agree with his racist views and will vote for him whatever.  And he may be right, of course.

We had the predictable love-hate-in, with Nicola Sturgeon taunting Ed with an anti-Tory Coalition.  Ed of course had to insist that he is aiming for a majority.  If he even hints at an accommodation of whatever nature with the SNP he has to admit defeat.  I thought he resisted her steely charms quite well, and gradually won over the audience.

What I thought was the strangest was the “worm”.  This is a slightly delayed record of people’s reactions; they press buttons 1 to 5 when they agree or disagree with the speakers comments. It is shown on screen as a wavering line going above or below a line, so the higher the worm goes it is supposed to reflect agreement.  The “wormers” were apparently a control panel of neutral or undecided voters.  But the “worm” was consistently responding positively to the left-wing opinions of the three women and Ed, and hardly ever responded, except negatively, to Nigel.  Does this indicate that actually the pubic are far more left-wing than political commentators and indeed the result of elections would indicate?  I still feel that Ed’s best policy would be to say that although Labour do plan to get rid of the deficit as soon as practicable they will do whatever it takes, including putting up taxes, to defend and support the NHS.  He would be crucified by the right-wing press undoubtedly; which is strange as they have only praised Cameron for saying he would give the NHS 8 billion (unfunded) extra a year.  By the way Ed won 37% of the poll of how the public thought the challengers fared in this debate.