The BBC Election Debate

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As many of you will know, the UK is on the brink of a general election. Last night six of the eight political party leaders took part in a live televised debate on their policies. The Irish parties were excluded, while incredibly the current Prime Minister, Teresa May refused to participate, which many found disgusting. (myself included). This was funny, exciting and in many ways a source of hope. May’s call of a Premature election was done in the first place from the misguided arrogance of thinking she had a clear run at victory over weak opponents to gain a 7-8 year term of office and virtually dictatorial level of majority with no democratic opposition. Her calls for reintroducing fox hunting, the baleful understandably unpopular Dementia tax and then not going to the debate itself have butchered her standing in the polls. Jeremy Corbyn, her leading opponent (Labour Party) really does have a chance to take her down now. I loved the Twitter responses to her absence including various Where’s Wally pictures with ‘Where’s Teresa?” on them and a revision of one of Margaret Thatcher’s best known quotes, ‘The Lady’s not for turning up’. This was real political suicide. Her substitute, Amber Rudd stood there like a castle under siege especially given that May inflicted her with the job of understudy 48 hours after Rudd’s dad died. Her ‘judge us by our record’ comment got the best laugh of the night and he wasn’t even trying. Tim Farron (Liberal-Democrats) was trying if we count trying out material for the comedy clubs counts – he had some great one liners but little by way of policy. Nick Clegg had proved to be great with rhetoric only to throw everything aside for tory alliance – Farron is going to have a hard time getting himself trusted. Nutter Paul Nuttal representing the far right UKIP party was as embarrassing as expected – the dig from Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood (about him being the kind of guy who would expect a free marital divorce was spot on. Corbyn was careful, precise and very much in control, Caroline Lucas (Green Party), Wood & Angus Robertson (Scottish Nationalists) were all on good form too, but watching the Tories go down like the Titanic gave hope that we could well see them out of office in eight days time. Certainly hope so. Arthur Chappell