Just add it to Zeno’s collection of paradoxes. Just as a runner has an infinite number of halfway points in his path so cannot therefore be said to ever reach the finishing line, so the TV election debates must have an infinite number of diminishing returns such that there can never be none. This at least must provide some reassurance for the broadcasters who can console themselves with the knowledge there must be at least one person somewhere who finds the debate worthwhile. It just doesn’t feel that way. The apathy and indifference is stifling.
But for reasons best known to themselves, the TV channels cannot get enough of the debates. Even when there’s wall-to-wall football on at the same time. When Netflix, Amazon and Apple are pumping out more new series than anyone can watch. So you can’t help wondering who these debates are actually for. Other than to make the TV execs and the anchors feel important. All hoping for that one gotcha! moment that could change the election. The gotcha! moment that never comes.
As for the politicians from the main parties, they are in a catch-22. Much as they would like to tell the broadcasters to sod off – that the more the public see of them the more disenchanted they become – they daren’t say no. Because to do so would present an open goal to all the others. They would look chicken.
Meanwhile the smaller parties leap at every opportunity. To remind themselves that they exist, as much as anything. Any airtime is better than none. Not that it makes any difference. So far no debate has shifted the polls at all. The public appear to have made up their mind already. Yet the show must go on, so the same politicians travel around the country, symbiotically linked, to wherever the TV cameras happen to be that day.
On Tuesday we were at a Channel 4 event in Colchester for a debate nominally about immigration and policing. Important subjects, you might have thought. Only the prime minister wasn’t there. The Tories have worked out he’s a vote loser. So how about the home secretary? This was his turf. Only, Jimmy Dimly had a subsequent engagement washing his hair.
It’s come to something that the person the Conservatives would ideally have liked to have had representing them was Boris Johnson. In desperation, campaign leaflets are being printed with his endorsement. The bloke who was kicked out for lying two years ago. A national disgrace. It really is that bad at CCHQ.
Instead we had to make do with the junior minister Chris Philp. The nonentity’s nonentity. Whose only virtue is that he will believe anything that he’s told to believe. A man who describes himself as a serial entrepreneur. Serial because so many of his companies have gone bankrupt. The ideal man for a crisis. Still, call it a last hurrah, because the Philpster is on course to lose his Croydon seat. As ever, though, he will be the last to know. In a year’s time he will still be wondering why his Westminster security pass no longer works.
No Keir Starmer either. But Labour at least put up a shadow cabinet minister in Nick Thomas-Symonds. Nor was Nigel Farage in view. Richard Tice had insisted he be allowed to do one debate in return for bankrolling Reform. Dicky appeared quite pleased with himself – his default expressions – as he is now Reform’s shadow chancellor after his car-crash performance presenting a series of imaginary numbers at the manifesto launch on Monday. Stephen Flynn had also taken the night off to let his Scottish National party deputy leader, Keith Brown, feel the pain. The Liberal Democrats’ Daisy Cooper, the Greens’ Carla Denyer and Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru are ever-presents.
The less said about the debate itself the better. Its one highlight was the closing credits. A relief for everyone. Not least the contestants. Sorry. The politicians. From about 10 minutes in they all started to look somewhat bewildered. Wondering what on earth they were doing appearing in a debate that only those too out of it to turn over would be watching. When even politicians – usually oblivious to normal levels of conscious behaviour – are having an existential crisis then you know you have hit skid row. What we were getting was performative futility.
To be fair, the host, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, did try to inject some energy into the proceedings. A hint of jeopardy. And maybe under other circumstances it might have worked, but this election is a sterile zone. Everyone – even the Tories – has given up. Labour are going to win and no one can be arsed any longer to even challenge their right to be the next government. Nor is there a feeling of exhilaration about the coming change. Just a sense of resigned inevitability. All the joy has been sucked out of the country by the Tories.
The first half hour was spent on law and order. And everyone said exactly what you would expect them to. Crime was a bad thing. Violent crime was an even worse thing. Violence against women and girls the worst. Labour, the Tories and Reform wanted longer sentences. The others something more nuanced. And obviously everyone picked on the Philpster. Mainly because he’s so obnoxious. There again, he adopted a curious pose with his head tilted to one side for added sincerity. He tried to claim that crime was going down while in the same breath having a go at Sadiq Khan for letting crime increase. I guess he’s just not that bright.
Things perked up slightly in the second half – if a corpse could be said to perk up – as we moved on to immigration. Here Dicky Tice thought he was on home turf, only he hadn’t counted on his own shortcomings. He just has no charisma and no credibility. Trying to persuade people he could manage the problem on the very day when it emerged his own party had failed to vet the vetting company which was checking out its candidates was a delicious irony. That is £144,000 Reform would never see again. Dicky seemed amazed that so many of the people he attracted were racists or closet Hitler fans. Still, it gave us a laugh.
So to the final scorecard with no one having persuaded anyone of anything. The Philpster came last because he was laughed at. Denyer, Cooper, ap Iorwerth, Brown and Thomas-Symonds all got the odd round of applause. The people of Colchester weren’t as bigoted as Dicky and the Philpster had hoped. Only two days till the next debate. Television has eaten itself.
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• This article was amended on 19 June 2024 to add some clarification about Zeno’s paradoxes.
