BBC debate was a cross between Songs of Praise and Over the Rainbow

Charlie Brooker

If the leadership debates were supermarkets – which they're not – ITV's would be Tesco, Sky's would be Morrisons, and the BBC's offering would be Waitrose. The ITV debate felt like a 1990s gameshow whose rules required Alastair Stewart to bellow "Mr Clegg!", "Mr Brown!" or "Mr Cameron!" every thirty seconds; the Sky studio was a poky black cave cluttered with discarded British Airways tail fins and dwarfed by an immense Sky logo. With its mix of cavernous space and high-tech backdrops, the BBC debate resembled a cross between Songs of Praise and current Saturday night talent-show splurge Over the Rainbow: I half expected the loser to hand his shoes to Dimbleby at the end before jetting off into the sky on a rocket-powered podium.

The chief topic was the economy, a subject upon which I have such a poor grasp that from my ignorant perspective all three men may as well have been debating the best way to kidnap a space wraith. Cameron proposed 'efficiency savings' which seemed to boil down to a war on unnecessary leaflets; Brown boomed that this would shrink the economy by £6bn and risk a double-dip recession. Clegg didn't care what happened as long as it was fair. He proposed some kind of cross-party economic fairness committee which, as secret fellowships go, sounds about as much fun as a cardboard-licking party.

Clegg was big on fairness generally. Fairness and difference. He used so many distancing tactics – references to "these two", phrases like "there they go again", constant calls to "get beyond political point-scoring" – he may as well have thrown in a "hark at these arseholes" at the end for good measure. It's a tactic that largely works: he sometimes came across as a slightly exasperated translator sadly explaining to his fellow earthmen in the audience that these two visiting Gallifreyan dignitaries were well-meaning but essentially wrong.

Brown's ears are amazing. I think they're made out of sausages. And he still can't smile properly, which is hardly surprisinggiven his ongoing luck allergy. Following the overblown 'bigotgate' media piss-fight, which saw him force-fed fistfuls of shame, it was vaguely impressive to see him standing at a podium instead of screaming on a ledge. Just as Cameron likes to shoehorn the "change" meme into every sentence (or rather did, before Cleggmania flared up), so Brown mentioned "the same old Conservative Party" so many times he began to sound like a novelty anti-Tory talking keyring.

According to some polls, Cameron won, or at the very least tied with Clegg. Which is odd, because to my biased eyes, he looked hilariously worried whenever the others were talking. He often wore a face like the Fat Controller trying to wee through a Hula Hoop without splashing the sides, in fact. Perhaps that's just the expression he pulls when he's concentrating, in which case it's fair to say he'd be the first prime minister in history who could look inadvertently funny while pushing the nuclear button.

Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmNpEdSq ... re=related

Election 2010: Which leader's public persona do you prefer?

Charlie Brooker

One of the most fascinating sights I've witnessed thus far during the coverage of the 2010 election campaign is Gordon Brown's visit to a branch of Tesco in Hastings on 16 April, which was broadcast live and uninterrupted for about five minutes on Sky News.

"Hello, good to see you," says Gordon, shaking someone's hand. "It's great to be here," he continues, waving at a well-wisher. He looks around. "This is a good store, isn't it?" he enquires of no one in particular. He spots a young boy. "How old are you?" he asks. The boy is eight. "That's a good age," Gordon concludes. "Which football team do you support?"

As he continues walking through the supermarket, the pictures carry on moving, but the sound appears to be stuck on a loop, because Gordon's repeating the same words. "Hello, good to see you." "It's great to be here." "This is a good store, isn't it?" "How old are you?" "That's a good age." "Which football team do you support?" The same handful of phrases, over and over again, for five minutes.

When you watch the footage repeatedly, as I have, distinct patterns start to emerge. Throughout the visit, Brown looks marginally less comfortable than a horse crossing a rope bridge, and his internal dialogue tree is starkly visible. Whenever he meets a boy of eight years old or older, for instance, Gordon briefly asks which football team they support, then chuckles, whatever the answer, before moving on to say "Hello, good to see you" to someone else. That's the way he's been programmed. (He occasionally breaks up his repetitive mantra with brief statements of the obvious: at one point, he glances at a shelf full of produce and says, "There's a lot of produce here." It almost makes you wish he was being shown around an orgy instead. Almost.)

The footage is funny, yet somehow heartbreaking. Brown looks clumsy, ungainly and chronically unsure how to behave around everyday shoppers. He reminds me of me. I can scarcely look people in the eye in supermarkets either. But I've learned to survive in demanding public situations – such as standing in front of an audience of expectant strangers – by adopting a babbling, deliberately awkward, vaguely nihilistic persona that is 50% me and 50% comic construct.

It's a shield of radioactive [LIFTED] that hopefully provides just enough entertainment value to stop the crowd physically attacking me, and just enough psychological distance to stop me crumpling to the floor and ripping my own face off at the sheer uncomfortable weirdness of it all.

Thing is, this performance wouldn't withstand five minutes of serious scrutiny. I could open a supermarket, no problem, but sit me opposite a combative Jeremy Paxman and I'd have a massive nervous breakdown within five minutes. With Brown, it's the other way around. In the supermarket, he looked so anxious I half-expected him to climb inside a freezer compartment and refuse to come out until everyone else had left. In his interview with Paxman, held in the wake of the preposterous Bigotgate storm and a widely criticised final debate, he was frighteningly confident. At times, he even seemed to be enjoying himself. Technical in the social situation, sociable in the technical situation? That's the hallmark of a nerd. And most nerds are simply too gawky – gawky, not aloof – to connect with the general public.

So he's not endearing. The press held up Brown's Bigotgate outburst as evidence that he's two-faced and contemptuous of everyday people, especially those who mention immigration, a subject so taboo in modern Britain that even fearless defenders of free speech such as the Mail and the Express only dare mention it in hushed capitals tucked away on the front page of every edition.

Two-faced contempt is the basic mode of operation for many newspapers: mindwarping [LIFTED] filled with selective reporting and audacious bias. The popular press is a shrill, idiotic, bullying echo chamber; a hopelessly poisoned Petri dish in which our politicians seem resigned to grow. Little wonder they develop glaringly artificial public guises. Picking a modern leader boils down to a question of which false persona you prefer. At least Brown's is almost admirably crap. It's easy to see through it and catch hints of something awkwardly, weakly human beneath.

Clegg's persona is roughly 50% daytime soap, 40% human, and 10% statesman. Cameron is 100% something. He isn't even a man; more a texture-mapped character model. There's a different kind of software at work here, some advanced alien technology projecting a passable simulation of affability; a straight-to-DVD retread of the Blair ascendancy re-enacted by androids. Like an ostensibly realistic human character in a state-of-the-art CGI cartoon, he's almost convincing – assuming you can ignore the shrieking, cavernous lack of anything approaching a soul. Which you can't.

I see the sheen, the electronic calm, those tiny, expressionless eyes . . . I glimpse the outlines of the cloaking device and I instinctively recoil, like a baby tasting mould. Don't get me wrong. I don't see a power-crazed despot either. I almost wish I did. Instead, I see an avatar. A simulated man with a simulated face. A humanoid. A replicant. An Auton. A construct. A Carlton PR man who's arrived to run the country, and currently stands before us, blinking patiently, blank yet alert, quietly awaiting commencement of phase two. At which point, presumably, his real face may finally become visible.

Cameron is 100% something. He isn't even a man; more a texture-mapped character model. There's a different kind of software at work here, some advanced alien technology projecting a passable simulation of affability; a straight-to-DVD retread of the Blair ascendancy re-enacted by androids. Like an ostensibly realistic human character in a state-of-the-art CGI cartoon, he's almost convincing – assuming you can ignore the shrieking, cavernous lack of anything approaching a soul. Which you can't.

At this point it's either going to be a hung parliament or a Tory win.
I'd say it's worth voting Tory to avoid a hung parliament. Having one of those wouldn't do the country any good at all!

You could argue having a Tory majority government might be worse than a hung parliament...

I would rather a hung parliament where nothing too stupid gets done.

Where nothing gets done at all more like.

Where nothing gets done at all more like. Scheming politicians double dealing and back stabbing rather than representing us, which is what they're there to do.

Where nothing gets done at all more like. Scheming politicians double dealing and back stabbing rather than representing us, which is what they're there to do.

At this point it's either going to be a hung parliament or a Tory win.
I'd say it's worth voting Tory to avoid a hung parliament. Having one of those wouldn't do the country any good at all!

One of the most nonsensical things I've heard TBH.

A hung parliament and a coalition may be just what the system needs at the moment, especially if it means a change to a Parliamentary system that can see a majority government stand with less than half of the population wishing to see them there.

I remember the last Tory Government, 50p an hour wages and riots. There's no way I would vote Tory just to avoid a situation that people have an irrational fear about.

Edit: And while we're on it I'm sick of Cameron going on about 'broken' Britain, most of it's not so sod off. As for this continuous want for everybody to have a 'choice', no, I want to choose which MPs govern and then I want them to make sure all schools, hospitals, police forces etc are of an equally high standard throughout the country.

His 'choice' implies allowing substandard services in order for that 'choice' to exist.