Labour’s TV election debates negotiating team fought against that of the Conservatives to try to ensure that the first broadcast covered the economy, but is now content that it will be the basis of this Thursday’s programme. Party strategists judge that the economic crisis is the public’s central area of concern, and will be the focus of the final days of the campaign.
Asked about the order of the debates in an interview with the New Statesman, Labour national election co-ordinator, Douglas Alexander, reveals that he himself had concerns about the economy being held until last, but added that the Tories must now be “ruing the day” they agreed to the order of debate topics.
“In truth, almost the last thing negotiated between the parties was that the economy would be the final debate, and I had been concerned during the negotiations that we open the campaign with the economy,” he says. “In fact, we conceded that the economy would be the final debate at quite a late stage in the negotiations.
“But I think that will unquestionably now work to our benefit, and I think the Conservatives must be rueing the day that they argued that the economy should come last rather than first.”
Alexander says further of the Tory strategy: “I think they thought that opening on their claim of a broken society would be itself decisive, but a different story emerged: one is the finding out of David Cameron.
“He genuinely believed at the start of this campaign that he would be carried shoulder-high to Downing Street as the embodiment of the expression of the desire for change. But the British people decided that there was a different script. And what we’ve seen in both of the previous debates is a curious emptiness that the British public recognise and have responded against.”
Alexander, as well as being a cabinet minister, is one of the team assisting the Prime Minister in preparing for the debates, and in the past weeks both he and Alastair Campbell have played the role of David Cameron in practice sessions. On the Wednesday before debate one, Alexander briefed journalists that Clegg would win the headlines for producing the best performance. Before the second, he said the right-wing press would hail Cameron as the “comeback kid”.
Alexander now believes that in the crucial final days of this campaign, the final debate will help Brown and Labour get their message across on the economy: that “only Labour can be relied on to secure the recovery and avoid the double-dip recession threatened by the Tories’ agenda for immediate cuts”.
He expressed bemusement that the Conservatives had sought to downplay the significance of the debates following the first broadcast, in which Cameron was not seen to have shone. “The Tories after Cameron’s performance got themselves into the curious place of trying to downplay and diminish the significance of these debates: press officers announcing that 41 million Britons hadn’t watched the debate; Philip Hammond calling it a sixth-form debating society.
“I think anybody seriously worried about disengagement should celebrate the level of interest that these debates have generated. I spoke to one newspaper editor who told me that he had been attending a press awards event on the night of the second debate, and the surprise and pride with which he was receiving texts from his 14-year-old son telling him what was happening during the debate. As he said, ‘This is something new, that my son would be texting me and telling me what was happening.’
“So I think all of us should celebrate the interest and engagement that the debates have generated.”
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