Farage/Clegg could be immigration, not Europe, debate
Nigel Farage, I hear, kept the pre-debate prep light and took himself off for a good lunch. Nick Clegg’s team are tight-lipped about his preparations.
The deputy prime minister will want to project himself as not so much pro-European as pro-British, a patriotic and economically self-interested position for Britain to take. Nigel Farage will want to take the argument to immigration and keep it there as much as possible. He’ll say that with economic difficulties in the eurozone still continuing, the biggest wave of EU immigration is still to come.
Nick Clegg will want to project himself as principled, someone who doesn’t shy away from a thorny issue like Europe, countering the image of a man who sells his principles for a place at the cabinet table. Nigel Farage will portray Nick Clegg as the establishment figure, utterly disconnected from real people’s lives.
Nigel Farage is hoping to shore up his own support and even build on it. He thinks he’s fishing in Labour vote waters and pulling in people who don’t normally vote at all. Nick Clegg is hoping to pick up support in 25 per cent of voters who are, according to some polls, very pro-European.
They are not fishing in each other’s waters. The Lib Dems have since 2010 lost their claim to the “protest/plague on all their houses” vote and have to look elsewhere, scraping back support that deserted them after 2010, maybe even pulling in some pro-European Tories. They’re fighting to hold on to any seats in the European Parliament elections, fighting to get noticed in the Ukip/Con, Lab/Con story narratives of the May elections.
In an odd sense they are not battling with each other. Each is using the other as an animated prop to reach voters the other one has no possible interest in.
YouGov is producing an instant “who won the debate?” poll for the Sun. It’s hard to imagine that will do anything other than give the Ukip leader a massive lead. Hard to imagine though how Nick Clegg would’ve got noticed if he hadn’t gone out there defending Europe in a political field where few do.
The big danger for Nick Clegg is that he flounders in front of the Farage onslaught, not least on immigration. The big danger for Nigel Farage is that lunch goes on too long and he misses the debate.
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