April 15th is set to be an eventful day. It is, of course, Tax Day. It is also the day my daughter will turn two. Furthermore, in the United States, the Tea Party movement will host some of its largest events to date. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, it will be the day of the first-ever televised debates among candidates for Prime Minister - at least, that's what the media is reporting. The UK debates, they say, will largely resemble those of the United States.
But the truth of the matter is that the candidates have been debating regularly for years and that their debates have been covered by the BBC and sometimes even C-Span in a segment called "Prime Minister's Questions." These debates are not like our debates, where a media host asks pre-screened questions and everyone has a good idea of what will happen in advance. They are heated, argumentative debates between the Prime Minister and the Parliament.
The following excerpt from the February 24 PMQ shows the nature of these debates well:
Mr. Cameron: Just as we need openness in the health service, we need openness at the heart of Government. After the Chancellor's extraordinary statement last night, the Prime Minister said this morning on GMTV:
"I would never instruct anybody to do anything other than support my Chancellor".
Will he try to stand up with a straight face and tell us that that is true?
The Prime Minister: Not only is that correct, but this is the nearest that the right hon. Gentleman has ever got to talking about the economy in the past few months.
Mr. Cameron: If the Prime Minister wants to talk about the economy, we can talk about- [ Interruption. ]
Mr. Speaker: Order. Members must calm down. The Leader of the Opposition must be heard.
Mr. Cameron: We can talk about the Prime Minister trebling the deficit, about wrecking the pension system, about ruining the tax system and about bringing this country to its knees. Right now, six weeks before an election, with a record Budget deficit, at the end of a long recession, I want to ask why the Prime Minister and the Chancellor are at war with each other. This is what we are told- [ Interruption. ] If they get any closer, they will start kissing. We are told that Damian McBride, Gordon Brown's spin doctor, was "spreading poison against Darling" and that he "told every journalist who had access to a pencil that Alistair's interview was a disaster."
We are also told that there was the most poisonous briefing against him. Last night, the Chancellor said that after he had said what he had said, No. 10 Downing Street unleashed "the forces of hell". Why does the Prime Minister think that he said that?
The Prime Minister: I have already answered the right hon. Gentleman's question. I never instructed a briefing against the Chancellor.
When it comes to the question of the economy, which the right hon. Gentleman has raised, can he and his party now explain why they were for reducing the deficit, then against reducing the deficit and are now for reducing the deficit again? None of his policies stand up, and that is why there is never any substance from the Leader of the Opposition.
Mr. Cameron: It was this Prime Minister who put character at the heart of the election. It was this Prime Minister who asked to be judged on his moral compass. Why is it that the moral compass always points at someone else rather than at him?
This is a kind of debate that seems to have somehow disappeared from American politics. Our canned debates are no substitute. When people are angry or when they want upfront answers from their leaders, they deserve to be represented in these matters by their representatives. Cameron does a good job of this. Most of our politicians do not.
It is, I think, somewhat ironic that the leaders in the country the original tea partiers broke away from due to lack of representation, now sometimes do a better job of representing their people than ours. If ours did a better job of listening to the people, the modern day tea party probably would not exist. Yet, it does and it is growing. Therefore, I think that in matters of debate, our politicians should borrow a page out of our ally's book, rather than lending them one out of ours.
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