EU Referendum


That debate: "I see no quips"


04/04/2014



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I had a look round the media coverage of the EU debate and was singularly unimpressed. The wooden spoon though must go to Rod Liddle in the Spectator.

Noting that, between Farage and Clegg, the UKIP leader won by 69 to 31 percent, he ventured that this might be the top line of the story. But the BBC thought otherwise: the corporation showed Nick Clegg winning four-nil and the spoken introduction, at the top of the programme, simply stated that the debate had taken place.

Liddle then goes on to say that there are plenty of reasons for him not to vote UKIP but then adds that "Nigel Farage is genuinely seen, and perhaps rightfully seen, by the vast majority of British people beyond W12 (and N1) as being 'in touch' and speaking their language".

This is supposed to be not just regarding Europe, but also, he suspects, immigration and even the events in Ukraine. The BBC, Liddle concludes, "no more understands this than do the major parties".

But while Farage seems to have been adopted as the Westminster village pet, the chatterati no more understand what is happening outside their bubble than does the BBC.

In this context, what is beginning to intrigue is the lack of audience figures for the first debate. Normally, when you get audience peaks, broadcast companies rush out figures. Thus, when a particular episode of Coronation Street brought a major uplift in January, two days later the Mail was recording an increase from 8.6 million the previous week to 10.6 million for that episode.

Here we are though, well over a week after the first debate and information is very hard to find. I have one unofficial estimate of 1.75 million, which would be less than four percent of the electorate, while Nick Ferrari suggested 15 million, a number so ludicrously high that it would top the entire charts - for a channel that normally struggles to pull in 150,000 viewers for any one programme.

The point here is that probably only a tiny fraction of the electorate watched the debates, with even Peter Kelner estimating an audience of less than ten percent of the electorate. Thus, while the plaudits go to Farage, they come from only a very small proportion of the electorate which, even under normal conditions (according to YouGov), has not topped 13 percent for nearly a year.

That hardly accords with Liddle's idea of Farage being "in touch" with "the vast majority of British people beyond W12 (and N1)". Should he be right, more people would surely have been watching him on the TV, and far more would be rooting for him in the polls.

There again we might be being too hard on Liddle, when we should actually award the wooden spoon to his boss, Fraser Nelson. This stunningly perceptive commentator (known affectionately not as the "pet" but the Westminster Village Idiot), remarked at the close of Wednesday's debate:
So it's over – another hour of trading numbers, insults and stretching the truth until the elastic snaps. This reinforces my overall suspicion that these two are as unconvincing as each other. The represent incredible extremes – and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. The EU is neither a Giant Satan with blood on its hands, or a panacea that doesn't need to be reformed at all. The average voter will have tonight seen clown to the left of the screen, and a joker to the right. They will find themselves stuck in the middle with the Conservatives, who want reform and then propose an in-or-out referendum.
For sucking up to the lovely Mr Cameron, of course, Nelson gets full marks but, unlike his namesake who had a patch over one eye, this version seems to have covered both eyes and blocked his ears. Having seen a clown to the left and a joker to the right, though, perhaps what he really wanted to say was, "I see no quips".

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