Politics

Nick Clegg 2, Nigel Farage, 1 David Cameron and Ed Miliband, both 0

The Liberal Democrat leader's grasp of the facts and political experience proved decisive, despite the allure of Farage's blokeish charm

March 26, 2014
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©Ian West/PA Wire/Press Association Images




Even before Nick or Nigel opened his mouth, the debate had looked like a good bet for each of them—an hour of self-promotion, with the stage cleared of the two main parties. The moment they started speaking, it looked even better.

First, they won points for courage, going where Cameron and Miliband demurred to go. And then, as Farage aptly said at one point, it was an advertisement for party unity; on Europe, both the Liberals and Ukip can boast internal agreement of a kind that Labour and Conservatives can only envy. As Farage said, while the Tories’ internal splits over Europe were well known, for Labour too “things are not as serene under the surface as they might seem.”

But most of all, it was a chance to display depth, detail and seriousness—something that most staged political debates, and the knockabout of the Commons, never do. After all, even where party leaders agree to a direct face-off, as in the sombre, televised encounters that are the countdown to the US presidential election, the subject usually ranges so widely that each can deliver only a soundbite, previously scripted and carefully polished offstage, with only a passing connection to the question. Here, the only terrain was the European Union, the sole question “in or out?” It helped both men, allowing them to develop their points in a manner that did, towards the end, become repetitive, but stopped short of tendentious, and amounted to the best public debate aired in Britain to date on this subject.

Nick won on points, in my reckoning, because of his command of detail. His figures were better, and he was able to poke fun at Nigel’s claim that there were 29m Romanians and Bulgarians able to come to Britain—pointing out that this figure was greater than the combined population of both countries. Farage’s improvised retort, that a couple of million had already pitched up in Italy, sounded lame, although he rallied to make the stronger point that he was talking about freedom of movement for 485m people.

Clegg also took apart Farage’s central claim that membership of the EU costs Britain £55m per day (UKip leaflets proclaiming this have already been printed, it seems). This did not include the rebate, funds to British farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy, nor the benefits from trade, he retorted. Clegg’s deployment of figures on trade was also more surefooted. He scored a win with his argument that if Britain withdrew from the EU, it would have to renegotiate not only 27 deals with other members of the EU, but 50 other bilateral deals to replace existing EU deals. Farage’s claim that Britain would surely be welcomed as a trading partner with Iceland or India sounded thin.

But Farage scored too, on charm, and a confidence in the appeal of his message that repeatedly lifts him—and him alone within his party—to easy command of the national stage. He deploys a blokeish charm knowingly, if he repeated once too often the line “I don’t agree with Nick”, which he had obviously been savouring in anticipation. But he also has the knack of scoring points without sounding ugly, as he did in teasing Clegg that he “and your gang, all the big corporates” had clamoured to join the euro. In response, Clegg, inevitably, sometimes sounded as if he would be more at home in Brussels, carefully easing the words “Lisbon Treaty” into one answer. Clegg’s retort during a scrap over the European Arrest Warrant—“I believe the police more than I believe Nigel Farage”—was frankly dangerous in its assumption that the audience would have the same reflex.

It was, overall, exactly what they had both hoped in accepting the invitation: a chance to advertise themselves for an hour. Radio flattered them both, making Clegg sound more interesting than his rather bland appearances on television and Farage, well, less interesting; on television, his high-colour, asymmetrical features distract attention from the real fluency of his words. Clegg answered better than he does in Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions the question that haunts him—of what he has been doing for four years. And Farage, able to leave behind for an hour the truth that he is the only commanding figure of his party, was able to debate the Deputy Prime Minister in front of "the British people". The losers were the two party leaders not there.