Last night’s debate was a good watch, but – despite more passion and direct challege than we are used to in these debates – lacked a decisive blow by either candidate.
By turns competitive and consensual, in one way it was reminiscent not of last year’s leadership hustings – thank goodness – but of the 2010 general election debates. ‘I agree with him’ was a line deployed by both Corbyn and Smith on more than one occasion, particularly when talking about economic and industrial policy.
Yet it was sparky, spiky and – in the most part – well behaved and well marshalled by the excellent ITV Cymru host Cathrin Jones (who kept the debate flowing). The audience played their part too, with plenty of applause, cheers and even a standing ovation for both at the end of their closing pitches – although it is fair to say that Corbyn won that particular battle in the hall.
Ditching opening statements and encouraging the two to debate directly meant we saw them set out their stalls early. It was fair zipping along until the party’s website streaming went down. No worries, though – it was easy to fill in the blanks whilst scrabbling to turn on and tune into BBC News.
Already by the second question we had gone over the main themes. Absence of policy versus absence of unity. A failure to lead versus a good electoral track record. Power over protest versus a huge membership and strong mandate.
‘When we work together we do defeat the Tories,’ Corbyn insisted, highlighting successes since he took over in September last year, including winning the London mayoral election and four by-elections, as well as 22 parliamentary votes.
But Smith challenged this effectively, saying it was a ‘disgrace’ that Ukip had won seven seats in the Welsh assembly, that we were in third place in Scotland and that polls put the party 14 percentage points behind the government. ‘This isn’t success, Jeremy’ he added to cheers.’I want us to be radical – in government.’
Corbyn countered by attacking the parliamentary Labour party revolt. Smith agreed that a few members of parliament had behaved badly, but he addressed head-on a favourite theme of Corbyn’s supporters when he pointed to the scale of PLP discontent. Those 172 MPs are not ‘red Tories or Blairites…just Labour MPs’, he said, who want to see Labour in power.
Following passages where both out anti-austeritied each other, billions of investment tripping off their tongues, there came disagreement. On Trident, Corbyn got one of his biggest cheers for simply stating his position. Smith defended his own with equal passion, citing Bevan – his political hero – who, he said, understood that you needed a bargaining chip to be successful in negotiations. Scrapping Trident was a naïve gesture; the ‘awful, terrible truth’ was that the deterrent was needed to negotiate for multilateral disarmament.
And on Europe, Corbyn was pushed into issuing a mea culpa (literally) for not being clearer when he spoke the day after the European Union referendum about Article 50. Smith won support from the audience when he accused the Corbyn of a failure of leadership during the EU referendum campaign: ‘I don’t think you spoke with the passion that some of us in the Labour Party feel’ on the referendum, he said. Corbyn’s response to this criticism blamed in part the media’s focus on Tory infighting rather than Labour campaigning. This got short shrift – and a heckle – from the crowd.
Given the power of this exchange, it was a missed opportunity for Smith to ignore the £50bn Brexit hit to economy the Bank of England had announced earlier in the day. Watch out for this in future debates.
Ultimately Smith will be pleased he burnished his just-as-radical-as-you credentials, while stressing that only he could unite the party and win. More than once he pointed to the two million Labour voters would rather have Theresa May as prime minister – ‘a wake-up call to the party’.
He promised to deliver the most radical programme since the Labour administration of 1945. ‘I will take us back to government,’ he pledged in his closing statement.
We will find out after five more debates whether Labour members and supporters think this sort of mandate matters more than the one they gave Corbyn last year.
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Mike Katz is national vice-chair of the Jewish Labour movement and a former candidate for the London list. He tweets at @mikekatz
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