Tag: nick clegg

#oneaday, Day 95: Round 2! Fight!

Debating at the BA graveyard.

The second round of the Leaders’ Debate happened tonight on Sky News. This means we had an annoying news ticker running across the bottom of the screen all the way through, accompanied by occasional references to make us wish “God, I wish I was watching this in HD”. There is no need for HD in a Leaders’ Debate. Unless you really like watching people sweat.

It was what happened afterwards that was quite interesting, though. Sky immediately pronounced David Cameron the “winner” of the debate, according to the YouGov/Sun poll. Now, I’m immediately suspicious about this as the Sun is hardly the most objective point of reference when it comes to politics, particularly around election time. But my suspicions were further confirmed when, looking at various other polls on different websites, results varied enormously. One site put Nick Clegg at a 65% majority. Twitter was overwhelmingly pro-LibDem once again. Another site put the three potential leaders much closer to one another.

Conclusions to draw from this, then? Polls are utterly meaningless if there’s more than one asking the same question, because you’re going to get vastly different answers according to the audience. One could even question whether the election itself is truly representative of public opinion, given our typically low turnout at the polling station on the big day. And then there’s our bizarre “first past the post” system, which means that it’s actually extremely difficult for the LibDems to achieve a majority, even if most of the country were to turn yellow overnight. Political reform is high on the agenda for all three parties, and this is one thing I think will be looked at for next time around. Proportional representation is the buzzword. I remember reading about that during A-Level Sociology and while I can’t quite recall what it actually means right now (and, it being late, can’t quite be bothered to look it up), I’m pretty sure it’s rather more fair than the odd system we have right now.

The real winner of the debate, as already mentioned, was Twitter. Twitter, during any sort of “big” event (and I use the term loosely, since last year The Apprentice became a “big” event on Twitter) explodes with discussion and jokes. It’s where the “public” thing about Twitter really comes into its own. Anyone and everyone can post, and anyone and everyone can read what everyone else said. Everyone from my humble self to “them off the telly” like Charlie Brooker, Simon Pegg and numerous others were all at it. And while the volume of tweets was so high it was impossible to read them all and stay sane, it provided an interesting snapshot of how people were reacting to everything, on a real-time basis. Gaffes the politicians made were caught immediately – “every time I go to Afghanistan I get blown away” being my particular favourite – and several people took it upon themselves to count how many times they attempted a lame joke (often), a successful joke (rare) or a flirtation with an attractive audience member (a clear victory for Clegg).

The other entertaining thing about today was the front-page article from the Daily Mail accusing Clegg of a “Nazi” slur. The reason for this? This article from 2002 (yes, 2002), in which Clegg, then an MEP, hit out at the misplaced sense of British self-satisfaction, when Germany, having been beaten down from not one but two World Wars, had achieved rather more significant financial and cultural success than we have. I happen to agree with him. Does that mean I’m making Nazi slurs too? The Mail didn’t even seem particularly clear on what they were accusing him of. Given that they had to go back eight years to find anything even vaguely controversial to dig up, they’re clearly more than a bit desperate.

The LibDems have balls, I have to give them that. After the Mail‘s accusation, a political blog and a Lib Dem councillor allegedly seeded the Twitter hashtag #nickcleggsfault, where anyone and everyone would have the opportunity to blame Nick Clegg for something that clearly wasn’t his fault. It’s a joke that could have so easily backfired, but Twitter, itself overwhelmingly LibDem at present, took it to heart and has spent the whole day “blaming” Clegg for everything from the unpronouncable, unspellable Icelandic volcano that has brought so much irritation to air travellers, to John Romero’s Daikatana. (I may have had something to do with that last one.)

This is the first time the election has felt like it “mattered”. Thirteen years of Labour has turned a lot of people into cynics, which would explain the nation’s poor turnouts at the last few elections. But hopefully, with all the buzz surrounding this one thanks to Twitter, Facebook, blogs and other means of online social networking, this may well be a year we start to see some big changes in British politics. And, as lovely as those beautiful old buildings down in Westminster are, what goes on inside them is in serious need of a big kick in the arse.

It’s probably pretty clear from all this that I will be voting yellow all the way. I’m not saying you should, too. But you should at least vote. It would be heartening to know that the nation actually gives a shit about something more important than bloody football for once.

#oneaday, Day 88: The Leaders’ Debate

Our potential leaders had their first ever American-style televised debate tonight. And, for the most part, I think it was a resounding success as a format. There was every possibility that it would become car-crash television – ITV’s cheap, nasty sets that looked like they were recycled from a 1980s episode of The Krypton Factor didn’t help – but it wasn’t. I was only half-watching due to being over at a friend’s house, but the parts I saw looked pretty interesting.

Sure, the three party leaders continually came out with their favourite soundbites (so predictable were they, in fact, that Dave Turner came up with the Official Drinking Game of the Leaders’ Debate right here) but as an opportunity to see the three of them at work in a non-Parliamentary situation it was a good thing. Nick Clegg, in particular, who has been the butt of numerous comedians’ jokes for being the “third place” candidate, doomed to obscurity by not being leader of one of the “big two” parties, came across rather well. And opinion polls conducted after the programme aired suggested that well over 40% of viewers felt that Clegg “won” the debate. Of course, there are two more to go yet, and some have suggested that Cameron and Brown were too concerned with getting their claws into each other to consider Clegg a threat this time. Perhaps it will all change next time and be more of a fight for the LibDem leader. But, importantly, this debate showed that he is indeed a contender in the coming fight.

Twitter was fun to watch. The #leadersdebate hashtag had an entertaining mix of jokes but also some decent discussion and commentary, too. A large number of tweets seemed to be very positive towards the LibDems, too, so could this perhaps be taken as an indication that change is a-comin’? Or is it just a sign that most people on Twitter are LibDem supporters? Who knows.

One thing’s for sure: this election is actually going to be worth watching for once. Many of our politicians are stuffy, boring, corrupt arseholes and this fact normally switches me off entirely from the whole thing. But this time around, it’s going to be quite a fight for the top spot, I think. (He says, from his woefully ill-informed position.) It’s certainly not a foregone conclusion by any means, and many people are already talking about the possibility of a hung Parliament. I can’t even begin to imagine how they’ll get anything done if that happens, but I guess we’ll have to wait and see how things go.

And, you know, vote.