This could have been dull. In the days before the second, televised debate between Nigel Farage and Nick Clegg, Westminster chatter had already awarded all the points for excitement to the first round on radio a week ago, which provoked more of a sharp-eyed recalculation of the contenders than anyone had expected.
That was wrong. This BBC debate, chaired by David Dimbleby, was television at its best, showing more of both men than either can have wanted. The Ukip leader won—on energy and on a compelling delivery, with a precision to the timing of his phrases that is essential to any politician worth the name. It was the kind of highly emphasised conversation that stops short of visible stagecraft but still milks the audience for every last round of applause. Clegg was bland, diffident in repeating the phrases he had used successfully a week ago. He provided an unfortunate illustration that televisual features and a command of figures, supposedly two guarantors of modern success, can still lack anything that approaches political magic.
These two debates have also subtly changed the terms of the 13-month countdown to the general election. They have made Europe an essential, never mind legitimate, part of the battleground—and one which discomfits both Labour and Conservatives. It has also proved easier for the two leaders of the minor parties to put words, without embarrassment, to their vision of Britain at a time when its role in the world is rapidly changing. It is harder, but now essential, that the leaders of the two main parties do the same; if they duck that challenge, it may seem like a further subtle diminution of British identity, and while voters might not explicitly blame them for that silence, the polls are likely to reflect it.
Clegg moved early to score the point he had spent the week rehearsing, accusing Farage of being “Vladimir Putin’s friend”. It was a clear mistake by Farage to side with the Russian President, apparently merely on the grounds that Putin opposed the EU in Ukraine, and therefore, as an opponent of the EU himself, he had a lot in common with Vladimir. An ugly and silly mistake, which drove home the main charge against the Ukip leader—that he is shallow, and too fluent in the anti-EU arguments he has rehearsed for years to adapt or think about them in the light of new circumstances. But Clegg moved too quickly from Ukraine to Syria, seeking to tar Farage with support for Putin’s actions there. To members of the small tribe that lives entirely in the world of foreign affairs, this might seem a natural progression; to many listeners of the debate, it must have seemed an irritating diversion from the more obvious thrust.
Clegg won on that one but lost on points on trade, the area where he had been strongest last week. He sounded tired or tentative in repeating the retort—that if the UK left the EU, it would have to renegotiate trade treaties with 27 EU members and 50 other countries as well. He seems not to have absorbed the lesson which distinguishes instinctive politicians from great directors of think tanks (Ed Miliband at times has seemed to have the same failing)—that to get a message across, you have to say it not just once but a dozen times, with as much energy each time.
But Clegg made good points—even if bland delivery muted their bite—that Norway and Switzerland had all the constraints of following EU rules without the influence and representation that the UK now had. Yet he failed to make the most powerful point—that he, as part of the coalition government, might be in a position to offer a referendum that Farage, with no MPs, is absolutely not. Nor did he spell out why the EU needed all the powers he listed; he sounded, throughout, defensive. He tried hard to score points with his repeated accusation that Farage wanted to “turn back the clock”, but his charge that the Ukip leader was no supporter of working women or gays who want to marry would win points only among those who share his views; it was not pitched to convert others.
He made few inroads on his opponent’s increasingly surefooted performance as the man speaking out against the big guys. This was the real revelation of the evening—Farage letting rip with what could have seemed like wild firing at unseen targets on the horizon but amounted to a real repositioning—on an ill defined patch that you still have to call centre stage—as the anti-guy, anti-everything except the working British person.
These are the Farage phrases which were risky but came off. “Join the People’s Army.” “Let’s topple the establishment.” An attack on “the elite club of career politicians and big business.” And a call for the rest of the EU—especially those “in that idiotic Eurozone around the Mediterranean” to join Britain and leave. It could have sounded like flailing, escalating menace, the last round of verbal abuse at a bar before the punches start flying—but instead, delivered with a genial half-smile, it sounded like a rallying call. It is impossible to deny the political appeal of this even if you share none of the views.
The performance was everything in this debate. Farage’s delivery shouldn’t work. The eyebrows so arched they never settle, the asymmetrical top lip which curves forwards like a duck’s bill, the chin tucked so firmly in at moments of emphasis that its folds multiply, the greyish hair and well-worn look even though he is only a few years older than Clegg. But the effect is the opposite: warmth, charm, conviction, and a politician comfortable in his skin. In contrast, Clegg has attributes that should be priceless but seemed transformed into a political cost: a perpetually boyish look, albeit with a slightly testy expression, like Michael J Fox asked to repeat a scene before the cameras at the end of a long day because of a fault in the recording equipment.
None of this flattered David Dimbleby. Aiming to allocate seconds of airtime with perfect balance between the two, he still slipped into calling Clegg “Nick” and his rival “Mr Farage.” Except then he called him “Nick Farage”—which the Ukip leader gently and elegantly corrected, making Dimbleby, not himself, seem on the wrong side of history. The question Dimbleby interjected, “But the Norwegians do have freedom of movement—don’t they?” suggested a genuine, if distracting, desire to be taught the answer, but was a dangerous surrender of command by the chair.
The real losers, as in the first round, were Cameron and Miliband. Europe, immigration, and a referendum—all questions they really don’t want to answer—have now had two hours of national airtime, discussed by politicians who want nothing more than to delve into the detail and to treat them seriously, not brush them aside. And the leaders of the two minor parties, kept in the shadows for four years, have had the pressure of that performance to polish their best phrases, in a way that can only be done by the challenge of the event itself.
