If anyone had hopes that the final leaders’ debate would provide answers to the huge issue of cutting the budget deficit, they would have been sorely disappointed. All three leaders ducked the issue.
Although they were asked to spell out the coming spending cuts, all stuck to a familiar script of evasion and bickering.
Nick Clegg highlighted tiny spending cuts in defence from and biometric passports which are nothing like the sort of scale of cuts he recognises are needed. He even damaged his part’s reputation for slightly greater candour on spending cuts by getting close to pledging to protect hospitals and schools from cuts in his opening statement.
Gordon Brown did not mention spending cuts at all in his first answer and repeatedly insisted that the £6bn of spending cuts the Conservatives propose for 2010-11 would threaten a double-dip recession, while the more than £12bn of tax increases in 2010-11 had no effect on the economy.
David Cameron gave the impression that the Conservatives had spelt out difficult choices ahead and then mentioned a pay freeze in the public sector, an area which saves about £3.5bn and to which all parties have signed up to something very similar. Of the rest of the £46bn or so spending cuts a Conservative chancellor would need to introduce for the next three years, we heard nothing.
According to the on-screen worm judging the popularity of each leader in real time, any talk of spending cuts went down badly with the public, so perhaps the politicians are less to blame than the public. But this argument only goes so far.
All three know that the politics and economics of the next Parliament will be dominated by cutting the deficit, raising taxes and reining in public spending. If not, there will be no alternative but a budgetary crisis.
Since there is no third way in the coming years, the politicians avoidance of the big issue will undermine the winners’ ability to govern effectively because the new government will lack a clear mandate for the necessary and difficult decisions.
There were many dubious claims in the debate and some of the debating points were bizarre, but no big gaffes.
Gordon Brown undermined his great achievement of making the Bank of England independent by claiming his policies would keep inflation and interest rates low. Many voters would have been forgiven for thinking that the current low interest rates were a sign of failure rather than success.
David Cameron’s appeal in his closing statement to help the poorest people in society is rather undermined by the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis that the Conservatives’ proposals are least redistributive of all the main parties.
And Nick Clegg, apart from creating the position of “vice chancellor” also repeatedly criticised the fairness of the UK tax system when all the evidence suggests it has become much more progressive over the past 13 years.
In years to come, the most memorable thing about the debate will almost certainly be that the politicians did not warn the public about the cuts and tax increases to come.
