Election 2015: The BBC's opposition leaders debate sees Farage cornered by the Left and lash out at the audience

David Cameron's refusal to engage with debates has led to some very awkward arrangements, one of which was tonight's debate. The leaders of the opposition present - Ed Miliband for Labour, Nicola Sturgeon for the SNP, Leanne Wood for Plaid Cymru and Natalie Bennett for the Green Party - but not Nick Clegg for the Liberal Democrats, who by virtue of a deal between broadcasters and the Prime Minister ends up left out (BBC, 2015).

With no place in the previous Prime Minister's debate, and no place at the opposition debate, its hard not to think that the Lib Dem have been unfairly excluded. Yet the debate itself was lopsided enough without another party of the Left or Centre taking to the stage.

With the leaders of four broadly progressive parties lining up against the leader of one Far-Right party, it was always going to feel like they were ganging up on UKIP's Nigel Farage. Farage was clearly feeling cornered - going so far as insult the entire audience and the BBC for being too Left-Wing.

The fact is though that the parties on the stage, not only the independently selected audience, were fairly representative of national polling - 13% for the Far-Right UKIP, 39%+ for the Centre-Left parties, a difference of at the least 3-1, before you even add on the numbers for the SNP and Plaid Cymru.

That was reflected throughout the debate. Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood and Natalie Bennett regularly ganged up on both Nigel Farage and Ed Miliband - challenging the Far-Right anti-immigration narrative of Farage on one side and calling for Miliband to join their anti-austerity progressive movement on the other.

That three-way alliance seemed to be a clear precursor of what Sturgeon hinted about at one stage: a Progressive Alliance bloc in the next parliament formed by MPs from the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party (Mason, 2015). On the present polling that would mean a 57 seat bloc pressuring for Left-Wing anti-austerity policies.

Once more, there was less discovered by the debate than many would have hoped. However, it did provide a platform for a challenge to Farage and UKIP's anti-immigration, anti-EU, narrative that has been contested far too little over the last five years. And, once again, it showed the UK's voters that there are alternatives, and that multi-party politics is a very real possibility. Those, at least, are some positive in favour of the debate format.

References

'BBC Election Debate'; on the BBC; from Sky News on YouTube; 16 April 2015.

'BBC debate: Miliband and Sturgeon clash over post-election deal'; on the BBC; 15 April 2015.

Rowena Mason's 'Green party held talks on alliance with SNP and Plaid Cymru – Caroline Lucas'; in The Guardian; 6 March 2015.