The third option

Forty six years ago,in rejecting Labour leader Harold Wilsons call to a pre-election debate,Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home had objected to the Top of the Pops logic of public personality clashes. In 1987,Margaret Thatcher denied Neil Kinnock a television debate with the retort: Were not electing a president,were choosing a government. While both objections probably evoked Tory distrust of a circus,or weakness for propriety,she underlined the substance of what turns debate on the pre-poll TV debate in countries beholden to the Westminster system not an unfamiliar refrain from the naysayers in India. However,unlike India,in the UK,the third party downwards,political opinion counts for little.

Thus the significance of Thursdays TV debate among the big three in Manchester ironically,a mostly Tory initiative,which catapulted Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg to an equal space with PM Gordon Brown of Labour and Conservative David Cameron,and which he used intelligently,determinedly to not only introduce himself to a national audience but also put across the first genuine third option,in a break from the same old parties repeating the same old mistakes. Whether the near-consensus that he won this debate translates into an electoral rebirth for the LibDems may remain uncertain even after the remaining two. However,this first prime ministerial debate is more than a dent in the Labour-Tory duopoly. And undeniably,a nationwide TV broadcast had a lot to do with the Westminster outsider looking at least a likely kingmaker.

The debate was not the stale affair the tortuously negotiated rules an audience not allowed to clap,pre-determined questions were feared to make it. In fact,it quickly replicated the Commons floor,despite the missing gaffe or brutal attack. Not everybodys impressed though; certainly not those caring little about three Westminster politicians the nationalist parties of Scotland and Wales,for instance,awaiting TV debates in their respective home countries.