Tory leadership: No real winners in BBC’s terrible TV debate

Waiting to watch the start of the Big Debate – the BBC’s five-way leadership programme – meant I saw the last five minutes of Eastenders for the first time in many years. Nothing much has changed, and it continues to end on a cliffhanger where Phil Mitchell is about to receive bad news from a blonde.

Speaking of blondes, this was of course Boris’s first big outing and he didn’t blow it. In fact, he looked rather bored.

But although the entire hour long debate did not contain as much drama as the last five minutes of Eastenders, the show did resemble the soap in one uncomfortable respect.

You felt as though you were eavesdropping on a dysfunctional Tory family argument being presided over by a well-intentioned but out of her depth aunty Emily.

But first things first. Cometh the hour, cometh the chair. And Rory Stewart failed the big test in how to sit on his. Surprisingly too, considering his many walkabouts and frantic social media, Rory did not come across well on the TV set without an audience to milk directly.

Nor did his attempts at being clever with his wall and door metaphors surrounding the Withdrawal Agreement, pointing out many times that the door to Brexit was through parliament, when answering a question about a no-deal scenario. As sharp as ever, Michael Gove, was quick to point out that MPs had banged their hands against that wall at least three times already. Ouch.

Rory’s attempt to be matey with Abdullah from Bristol by greeting him in Arabic was another bit of masquerading, particularly when he was sitting next to another Muslim from Bristol, Sajid Javid, who just happens to be a fellow leadership candidate. Sorry Rory, proving you can say “Salaam Alaikum” was simply embarrassing and showed you off as the school swot you have told us you were. And we know where he went to school before becoming a spy and going to Iraq.

For me, there were no real winners in this soap opera, partly because the TV setting – more game-show than debate – was too staged. The questions were too stacked. And having the men all sitting on stools led to a little too much man spreading for comfort. That meant there was no real discussion about anything meaty at all: a proper debate about tax, to answer the question asked by Mark from Norwich, would have been instructive. Johnson wasn’t even given the chance to explain that his proposed income tax cuts were not for the “wealthy” as so many are trying to pretend, but for middle, aspiring earners.

The problem was that aunty cut the speakers off – particularly on Boris – whenever they started to get grips with any of the issues. Next time around a Question Style more open hustings would be a far better forum for some serious debate.

There was one candidate who came across well, and that was Javid. The Home Secretary is learning to relax, to show more of his rather nice character. His comments that he doesn’t have the education of the other hopefuls – that he is more Homer Simpson than Cicero – is humbling but at least we are seeing a bit more of him. Agreeing to commit the new Cabinet to another inquiry into Islamophobia is a promise he may regret.

Otherwise, Jeremy Hunt was more lively than usual and his eyes less ferret-like. He has most to win in the next round as he will be wanting to woo those MPs who voted for Dominic Raab but will most likely be backing Boris Johnson. Michael Gove, usually such a brilliant orator in the House of Commons, did not come up to scratch, talking and praising himself too much. I lost count of the times he said when talking about climate change et al, that as Environment Secretary he had the best job in the world. So why does he want to be PM? Search me.

By contrast, the elephant in the room, Boris, kept himself to himself and was by far the quietest of the lot. Some might say too quiet. The question asked by Abdullah from Bristol – about  whether “words matter” – was a clear reference to Johnson’s article in which he described women wearing burqas as looking like letterboxes. Yet Johnson did not even point out that his entire article was written in defence of women wearing burqas, an article he wrote last August arguing that the Danes were wrong in wanting to ban burqas. His piece had been in defence of women wearing what they wanted. So why didn’t Johnson use this opportunity to set the record straight?

Maybe he knew that no one would want to listen to the context. So you can see exactly why he’s been trying to avoid these televised debates which do anything but encourage debate.