Election Flu: Leaders’ Debate

Have you guys recovered from last night’s debate yet? I must say I rarely finish a TV show and fight the urge to pour myself a large glass of neat spirits. Still, it was interesting for a few reasons:

1. There were aspects of all seven leaders’ arguments I agreed with. No more zero hours contracts? Yes please. Higher minimum wage? Definitely. Quit privatising the NHS? Amen. A middle road between austerity and borrowing? Sounds like an okay compromise. I even agree that grammar schools should be more of a thing – provided, of course, that non-academic eduction is equally well-funded and respected (I know I bitched about my school last post, but ultimately it was a good choice for me. I’m just bitter and twisted about its internal politics).
2. There were aspects of all seven leaders’ arguments that made me want to hop on a train out of the country. ‘60% of people with HIV are foreigners’, are they Nigel? Well maybe if you don’t cut the foreign aid budget you and withdraw from international politics you might find that there are ways to curve the HIV pandemic.  Motherfucker. I’m also not convinced that it’s a smart idea to keep borrowing money even if it is supposedly to improve infrastructure… how hard can it be to make stuff without borrowing three trillion quid from an international fund? Seriously, if anyone knows, we need you.

   

3. Women are smarter than men. I was ready to loathe Nicola Sturgeon as Alex Salmond’s puppet, I had absolutely no idea who the Welsh lady was at the start and all I really knew about Natalie Bennett was that she forgot some stats on a radio show the other week. But in debating terms, they were polite, level headed and came across (let’s assume it was a front) as far less arrogant than the guys. Or maybe I’m projecting. Do you guys remember Harvey Milk? You won’t unless you’re, like, 40. He was, amongst other things, the first openly gay US politician. I have no idea how many gay people agreed with his politics (I don’t even know what they were) but he was somebody the LGBT movement could identify with. I’m not saying I’d vote for the Green Party just because it’s lead by a woman, but I felt more represented as a person by having three women on the stage than I did in 2010.
4. Naturally I’m quite socialist, yeah? I like civil rights and the environment and equal pay and the EU. But – and I dunno if you lot think this way – I will probably never vote Labour or Liberal Democrat. I grew up in a Labour-induced recession and the Lib Dems have done a brilliant job over the last five years of proving that they’re completely spineless. My gut feeling about the Greens is that they sound like my sort of party now but at a whiff of power they’d turn into the rest of them – hypocritical, arrogant and willing to say what people want to hear to win elections.

Doesn’t stop me wanting them to make good though. So, I’ve learnt that I will probably still vote independent unless I vote Green. What stuck in your mind? Apart from the thinly-veiled racism, Ed Miliband’s attempts to atone for the last Labour government and Clegg and Cameron pretending they never worked together?