Television proves that a week is a long time

The assessment made more than 50 years ago in the early 1960s by then British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, that “a week is a long time in politics”, has been made truer than ever in the United Kingdom by the advent of the first television election debates between the leaders of the major parties. Within a week, predictions of the first hung parliament in almost 40 years turned into speculation about a possible outright win by the Conservative Party after the final of three television debates. But the impact of modern media was even wider.

Not only did Tories leader David Cameron emerge as the clear winner in opinion polls at the end of the third debate, but the big love affair between the electorate and the Liberal Democrat’s Nick Clegg was also reduced to a mere fling as he dropped back to the third position in the polls.

Incumbent Labour Party (LP) Prime Minister Gordon Brown did not only 'lose' the final debate, but probably finally sealed his own fate when he allowed himself to be tripped up by another piece of wireless modern technology. Not realising that a microphone he was wearing on his jacket was still turned on, he described a lifelong female LP supporter as “bigoted” as he got into his car after having a campaign chat with her – and the whole world was listening.

No form of focused research results could be found immediately, but there are already indications that for the first time, new electronic social networks have played a significant role during the campaigns of the various parties. For one, there has been substantial growth in the number of subscribers to Web “fan pages” of most of the parties since the start of the campaign about six weeks ago.

Exactly how it will finally play out later this week at the ballot box still remains tantalisingly unsure, but most experts seem to agree that voters have been influenced by the television debates.

The TV debates have brought politics to the fore, and got many more people interested in the issues of the day.

A report in the UK’s Evening Gazette, quoting political expert John Craig from Teesside University’s School of Social Sciences & Law, sums it up well. He believes that the debates have been good for Clegg, who emerged from the first debate an unlikely winner.

Craig said: “Two weeks later, the froth of the early polls has worn off, but the Liberal Democrats are still consistently polling ahead of Labour. If they poll ahead of Labour next Thursday, it will be the first time they will have done so in a general election since 1918.

“It’s hard to imagine they could be in this position without the debates – so it looks like these may be four-and-a-half hours of TV that will have changed the course of UK political history.”