How leaders shaped up in the race for Downing St
Chief reporter Martin Shipton gives his verdict on how the party leaders have performed during this bizarre General Election campaign
ONE of the paradoxes of the General Election campaign was that while in Wales we had a plethora of leaders to choose from – including at least two from each party but Plaid Cymru – the only two with a chance of being Prime Minister after the election didn’t debate with each other once.
Seeing Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn trying to knock spots off each other could have been entertaining as well as illuminating.
Critics of Mrs May made much of the fact that she wouldn’t participate, but it’s worth noting that TV leadership debates only happened for the first time in the UK in 2010. However, many voters have a legitimate expectation these days that would-be Prime Ministers should be prepared to debate the issues with each other. People want to see how they perform under pressure.
Theresa May’s advisers decided early on that it was not in the Conservative Party’s interest to join a debate with Jeremy Corbyn. She would have nothing to gain, and potentially everything to lose. They also calculated that while her opponents would accuse her of cowardice – and incidentally give fresh life to the Daily Mirror’s election chicken – most people wouldn’t see her refusal to join such a debate as a reason in itself to withhold their support.
But in an assessment of the effectiveness of Mrs May’s campaign, it can’t be ignored. The image offered to the electorate was that of a politician providing “strong and stable” leadership. The slogan concluded “in the national interest”, but would more aptly have read “at a time of national crisis”. That is what we face with the impending Brexit talks.
Mrs May has constantly sought to hammer home the message that she, rather than Jeremy Corbyn, is the right person to be leading Brexit negotiations on behalf of the UK.
Refusing to debate with the opponent you disparage is, though, hardly a measure of strong and stable leadership – a view that definitely gained some traction, even with Tory MPs.
Mrs May was also vulnerable to the charge that she was susceptible to U-turns. Her first was to call the election in the first place, having said many times that she would not do so. Cynics would forgive her on the basis that she changed her mind out of sheer opportunism.
Subsequently, she was forced to concede there would be a cap on the amount seized posthumously from an old person’s estate in respect of care charges – very shortly after the Tory manifesto said there would be no such cap on social care costs.
Mrs May was straying into dangerous territory for the Tories by proposing a number of measures that wouldn’t play well with pensioners, the strongest age group for her party. Other negative manifesto commitments were the end of the so-called triple lock protecting pension increases and the end of universal winter fuel payments for pensioners, unless they live in Scotland.
Were these proposals as crass as they seemed, or were they being put forward in the knowledge that her seemingly unassailable poll leads gave her cover? Political advisers can be damnably cynical.
Political leaders can have their image improved by coaching – ask Leanne Wood – but it’s difficult to enhance the performance of a politician who frankly isn’t up to it. Theresa May has been found wanting when interviewed by heavyweights like Andrew Neil and Andrew Marr.
Sir Lynton Crosby, the Conservatives’ spin guru, is obviously aware of her limitations, which is why for much of the campaign she could be found talking in clichés to Tory activists in enclosed venues from which the public was excluded.
Jeremy Corbyn began with the lowest expectations of any party leader in recent memory. He’s been compared with Michael Foot, although people forget that before the Falklands War Labour under Foot’s leadership was leading Margaret Thatcher’s Tories in the polls.
Since the trauma of Labour’s defeat in 2015, the party has done its best to make itself unelectable. There’s been a civil war between Labour MPs and the party’s members. Most MPs wouldn’t give Corbyn the time of day, let alone serve under him. The performance of some of his appointees has been shocking – it’s not sexist or racist to point the finger at Diane Abbott – but that of Corbyn himself has raised his standing in the eyes of many.
For many voters, all that was known about Corbyn before the election was what they had read about him: an IRA-supporting Communist who wanted to tax people through the roof. When such proposals did not appear in Labour’s manifesto – which contained some appealing promises – and Corbyn gave a better account of himself than MPs in his own party thought possible, his ratings began to rise, as did those of Labour.
It should also be remembered that he’s been an MP for 34 years, and that while he’s always been on the left-wing fringe of Labour and thus marginalised from the mainstream of the party, he is passionate about his beliefs and has had a long time to develop political communications skills. His style during the campaign has been the antithesis of May’s. After a lifetime spent attending trade union rallies and campaign meetings, a speech tour across Britain was hardly daunting for him. He’s not the greatest orator Britain has ever seen, but the sincerity of his beliefs was matched by the intensity of his delivery.
Despite that, the party was hobbled by the continuing perception of many working-class voters that his kind of internationalism was not for
them. That, coupled with the fact that many people prefer the way Conservatives handle the economy, and believe Mrs May will be able to negotiate the best possible Brexit deal.
Polls also suggest that Corbyn’s stance against nuclear weapons contributes to the perception of him as a weak leader. The majority remain convinced that nuclear weapons deter our enemies from attacking us. One wonders how many more terrorist outrages it will take to persuade them otherwise.
In Wales, of course, we have had two Labour campaigns, with Carwyn Jones leading Welsh Labour’s. This was a conscious decision by party strategists who believe his popularity helped Labour hang on to all but one of its Assembly seats last year. Jones is a confident performer in TV debates, and it’s difficult for domestic opponents to lay a finger on him. The party believes he was able to mitigate defections from voters who dislike Corbyn in some working-class communities.
Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood is also a polished TV debater, and has managed to secure something of a reputation as a politician who can, when it’s appropriate, use one-liners to put down an opponent. She did it with Nigel Farage in 2015, and managed it again with Paul Nuttall.
Ms Wood has the appeal of an authentic woman of the Valleys who is passionate about Wales, and who isn’t fazed by appearing alongside leaders of bigger parties.
The Welsh Conservatives didn’t have a distinctive campaign of their own, relying on the personality cult built up around Mrs May. Bizarrely, they fielded three different “leaders” to different TV programmes: Andrew RT Davies, Alun Cairns and Darren Millar. Many are suggesting Mr Davies’ days are numbered, but he maintains he is not a worried man.
The Liberal Democrats are defending just one seat in Wales – a fact that has probably spared us from too many visits by Tim Farron. Their Welsh leader, Mark Williams, appeared in the TV debates as a consensual defender of progressive values. Days later he was at the centre of a row about lying attack leaflets sent to voters in his constituency. Politics can be a strange business.