Is slavery the future?

The debates between three party leaders in the UK general election all seem to have been quite tedious affairs. I saw some of the first debate, none of the second and all of the third. One thing which struck me was how incredibly quiet the audience were. It was almost as if they had been sedated. Apart from a small number of obviously pre-approved questions there was not a squeak out of them. No clapping or booing or groaning, or any sign of expressiveness at all. The audience was so non-participative that they could have been dispensed with entirely, and each leader simply delivered a lecture directly to the TV cameras. I was wondering whether anyone in the audience would dare to break the wall of silence, like the boy in the story of the emperor's new clothes, but nobody did.

This is in contrast to the kind of political debate which is usually to be expected, as in shows like Question Time, where there is often some interaction between the questioner in the audience and the panel of politicians and audible expressions of approval or disapproval from the audience are common. My guess is that especially after Gordon Brown's gaffe the politicians want to insulate themselves as far as possible from ordinary voters, who can not always be guaranteed of being "on message", and instead stick with groups of party supporters, sedated audiences (presumably not permitted to speak spontaneously without pre-approval of their questions) or official media commentators.

As far as I know there has been no mention of the Digital Economy Bill, which could end up having an impact upon many people over the next few years. Attempts by thousands of concerned voters to make this into an election issue worthy of discussion in the leadership debates seem to have utterly failed. The politicians were also completely evasive about the nature of the austerity measures which we're lead to believe are imminently to arrive on the post-election landscape. It remains inconclusive which public services we can expect to disappear and which will stay. Possibly this might be a deliberate strategy in order to avoid alienating any sections of society who might be dependent upon services which are at risk, especially since the election result could be a close one and antagonising any minority group could tip the scales in marginal constituencies.

One thing which I found slightly concerning, not least because it might apply to myself at some point in future, is the nature of the workfare-like scheme which all the leaders seem to be proposing. Gordon Brown stated in the last of the three debates that "the unemployed will be forced to work", but nobody in the audience picked up on this to get him to clarify what he meant by the remark - presumably they weren't permitted to do so. Does this mean that people will be forced to work for below minimum wage? Where will these jobs come from? If they're government created make-work jobs building bridges to nowhere, how will these be paid for in a situation where government spending needs to be reigned in rather than expanded? The worst possible interpretation would be that anyone who is unlucky enough to become unemployed loses their fundamental human rights and either becomes a slave labourer or faces starvation. I hope that's not what they're proposing, and even if it where such an arrangement wouldn't make sense anyway, since slaves are neither consumers nor efficient producers and hence don't contribute much to the economy. If anything slave labour would undermine the economy, resulting in wage deflation (why pay someone to work when you can have a slave work for nothing?) and stifling the possibility of growth in provision of goods and services.

Another thing which seems by now to be abundantly clear is that this is almost certainly the end of the road for the whole "new Labour" project which began with Tony Blair in 1997. People probably voted Labour back in 2005 because despite the growing catalogue of lies, wars and broken promises the economy had remained relatively stable, characterised by what Brown (as chancellor) described as "modest year-on-year growth". When Blair stood down he described Gordon Brown as "the best chancellor in 100 years", but the events of the last three years have shown that Brown's apparent competence for managing the economy truly was a mirage. Worse, his sale of the national gold reserves and disdain for regulation of the financial markets may have actively exacerbated the problems which caused the recession, allowing fraudsters and ponzi schemers free reign and putting Britain in a worse financial predicament than otherwise might have been the case.

The new found enthusiasm for the Liberal Democrats (aka "Cleggmania") I think originates because within the last 30 years there has been both a long period of conservative government and now also a long period of Labour. Both of those administrations were pretty rotten, so anyone who is old enough to remember them with any degree of clarity may be tempted to vote for something which hasn't been tried within recent history.

Also, this was billed as a "web 2.0 election", but so far there has been not much evidence of the internet significantly shaping the debate. From a media standpoint, apart from TV being broadcast via iPlayer, this seems like a very old-fashioned kind of campaign.