I swore I wouldn’t do it.
But I hadn’t touched it for a while. I thought I could handle it.
I guess I thought: “What’s the harm in just five minutes?”
An hour later, I was agitated, hoarse-voiced and more than a little ashamed.
That’s right – I made the mistake of watching Question Time last night.
The evil genius of Question Time
I gave up watching Question Time a long time ago. There’s a classic Harry Enfield/Paul Whitehouse sketch that sums up why (their comedy can be hit and miss but this skit is spot on – if you haven’t watched it, you should).
I think the problem lies primarily with the format. It’s giving the illusion of debating complex, nuanced topics. You feel as though you should watch it if you want to be an ‘informed’ member of the public.
But really it’s just a mess of evidence-free assertions, class warfare, soundbites and smugness. It’s an Old Firm derby with a veneer of intellectual respectability.
It’s TV genius, of course. The Question Time-inspired desire to hurl the remote through the screen is one of those collective emotions that we can all identify with (I think – either that or I have unusually angry friends and family). No wonder it’s survived for so long.
Anyway – to be fair, I thought last night’s format for the ‘three leaders’ debate was actually a big improvement on the usual. For a start, having just one man on stage at a time meant they had to at least attempt to answer the questions. They could neither deflect attention, nor be interrupted.
And the audience itself could be challenged too. There was less opportunity for vacuous tribal accusations being allowed to stand because of the need to move on to the next question.
As for audience bias – on this occasion at least, everyone got a rough ride. (Though I’d say Nick Clegg got the worst of it. It’s as if the Lib Dems and their voters never wanted actual power.)
Heck, if it was like that every week I might even start watching it again. Though the blood pressure might not take it.
The most interesting thing to come out of the debates last night
Anyway, this isn’t a TV review. There was nothing groundbreaking last night. It’s pretty clear where the parties stand.
The Tories would clearly favour reducing taxes and cutting back on the size of the welfare state if they could afford to. Labour under Ed has equally clearly gone back to being intensely uncomfortable with people getting rich, and thinks that profit is at best a necessary evil, and at worst, economic rent stolen off the workers.
Perhaps what infuriates people more than anything else is that both sides try to conceal these basic impulses by lobbing various sweeteners and distractions into the mix.
But probably the most interesting – and only genuinely important – thing that came out last night was Ed Miliband’s extremely firm denial that he’d do any deal with the Scottish National Party.
He’s ruled out both a coalition and ‘confidence and supply’. In other words, if Ed’s in power, he’ll run a minority government, hoping that the SNP will back him on a vote-by-vote basis.
Politically, it makes perfect sense. Labour has lost in Scotland, and lost in stunning fashion. As far as I’m concerned, it serves them right for taking Scottish support for granted for decades. They cheerily cultivated the “anyone but Tory” Scottish mentality, and, now that they’re not the only realistic Tory alternative on the ballot paper, it’s bitten them on the backside.
Meanwhile, any hint of a deal with the SNP is politically toxic in the rest of the UK. Who wants a parliament where the deciding votes are all made by MPs who are hostile to Westminster?
So outright denial is the only option.
And Ed’s not daft. It does leave the SNP between a rock and a hard place. If they deny legitimacy to a minority Labour government, then they risk opening the door to a new election and a Conservative-led government. And of course, just like Labour, the SNP have set themselves up as the new “anyone but Tory” party in Scotland. That’s a brand they can’t risk contaminating.
But five years is a long time. Could a minority government, grudgingly backed by a single-issue party, really hang in there for the full term? What backdoor bribes would need to be offered? Regardless of what Ed promises, every key vote would need to at least consider the SNP reaction.
My gut feeling is that the first thing to vanish would be fiscal discipline. Neither party cares about it much, and economics is neither party’s strong point. At a time when the bond market is looking increasingly wobbly, that’s not an attractive prospect.
One thing’s for sure, this is shaping up to be the most important election in terms of its impact on your money in a very long time. That’s why we plan to keep MoneyWeek subscribers informed as soon as the results are in. If you haven’t checked it out yet, have a look here.