Nick Clegg vs Nigel Farage

William Edwards writes for us about Nick Clegg vs Nigel Farage

Britain isn’t jumping on the Faragebarge out of Europe just yet.

Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage battled it out against one another in two live debates, on the issue of Europe, one streamed live on the LBC website and the other shown on the BBC. Farage being the one in favour of Britain’s departure from the European Union, and Clegg the man of in. Party politics were largely kept of out of the debates, it was very much all about Europe and both fought on the basis of either being in or being out. Polls asking who performed best stated that Farage had won, and (as much as it pains me to say it) he did. After the first debates a poll showed that 57% thought that Farage had won, whereas 38% thought that Clegg had one. The poll after the second debate was even more promising for Farage, the YouGov poll gave him 68% and Clegg 27%. He did perform, key word here being perform, better than the Deputy Prime Minister. The public love a good performance, take Boris Johnson as a prime example, so it’s really worrying when a man of very dangerous views get in a position to perform.

 

The UKIP leader, and self proclaimed ‘man of the people’ had nothing to lose, much like Clegg in 2010, so he went out and said what he very well pleased. This just so happens to be mainly non-sense. Farage masked fabricated figures with really well worded rhetoric, he attacked the government and used the word system. People are going to lap up any anti-government rhetoric during a period of austerity, and saying he’s against an out dated system is another example of how using buzz words got him some applause. Clegg on the other hand went for the same approach he took when he was debating during the lead up to the 2010 general election. He used the ‘ah yes, I understand’, ‘A good point you’ve raised there’, ‘I’m your friend’ approach which worked wonders in 2010 when the Liberal Democrats weren’t in a government and apart of the so called ‘system’. No matter how many perfectly valid and concise facts Clegg used, he wasn’t making any jokes, so the public weren’t interested. There were however, moments where Farage showed weakness, in one instance in particular. The public should have immediately turned on him at this point. In the first debate he was asked where he got his figures from on how much the UK pays into the EU, to which his reply was; ‘This is my party’s estimate.’ This basically means, ‘We made them up.’He said it while looking at the floor and shuffling his papers, that should have been indication enough that he’d been called out on his bullshit. He should have also gotten a lot more criticism for his remarks about Putin and the Russian annexation of Crimea.

 

The whole debate was a lot like watching your teacher argue with the class clown. The majority of the class are on the clown’s side because he’s busting out the jokes and the rhetoric, he’s making the class laugh. The teacher’s obviously right, but the kids are loving him/her get ripped into. This is where the silver lining lies. Yes the public feel as if Nigel won the debate, he made them laugh for an hour or so, but the public also know that Nick’s right. Britain is stronger in Europe, Britain does have more ‘clout’ (as Clegg loves to put it) when we’re part of the world’s biggest economy. Say what you want about Nick Clegg, you’ve got to give him the time of day to standing up to this tidal wave of Euroscepticism. He’s put his poll rating’s on the line just to get the facts across that the UK is better off in Europe. Realistically Clegg was never going to win against Farage, and this is coming from someone who fully supports the Liberal Democrat leader, he even said it himself that he didn’t think he’d win. However at least he went up there and put the Europhilic message across because no-one else is doing it at the moment. David Cameron wouldn’t have done it, he’s split by his party. Ed Milliband doesn’t seem to have any opinion on Europe, his idea to counter Euroscepticism is to ban Farage from being in televised debates.

 

Nigel Farage may have won the debates, but as many people might remember, so did Clegg in 2010.  Cleggmania has long since blown over, and so will this hysteria surrounding Farage. For now, the only party Challenging UKIP are the Liberal Democrats, the Greens are having a go with a, in fairness, quite good video. However, the only realistic opposition is the Lib Dems. Once the Tories figure out where they stand, and get across to voters that they’re the party most likely to give the public a referendum on Europe straight away they’ll claw back a lot of their lost voters. Plus Labour haven’t got a clue what to do with Europe, so the chance is they’ll keep the UK in the EU. In the mean time however, with a good campaign from British Influence and the British public itself also realising that Britain is better off in Europe I don’t think ‘we’ll be pulling up the draw bridge’, ‘turning out backs on our neighbours’, or any other phrases Clegg used in the debates.