MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: We deserve better than over

Release time：2024-06-03 19:19:34 Source：Culture Circuit news portal

There were only 20 days in 1959 between the dissolution of Parliament on September 18 and the General Election on October 8. This used to be typical. Nobody complained that it was too short.

How then did we end up with a campaign that already seems to have lasted about a year and still has more than a month to go? Surely, in an era of modern communications, elections should be getting shorter?

Candidates no longer have to battle their way down muddy lanes on horseback to reach the remote corners of rural constituencies. These days, a policy can be dreamed up (apparently) over breakfast and be on the national TV news – and all over the internet – by nightfall. And Sir Keir Starmer's transformation from steely Commander-in-Chief to browbeaten Captain Flip Flop in full retreat was almost as quick.

It is very hard to see why we cannot just get on with it a bit. Perhaps, if we did, those involved would take it all rather more seriously.

(Left to right) Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer and deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner, at the launch event for Labour's campaign bus at Uxbridge College, while on the General Election campaign trail on Saturday

It's extraordinary how little we have heard about the huge and difficult issues that will face whoever wins – fundamental NHS reform instead of gimmicks, the unsolved problem of social care, a believable policy on mass immigration, the need to strengthen our defences set against the need to get spending under control. 

This is partly because of the quiet disappearance in recent years of the daily party leaders' press conferences. These once exposed would-be premiers to sustained rigorous public inquisition by experienced and knowledgeable reporters.

It is easy to see why the spin doctors got rid of them, as they long ago eliminated treacherous, raucous public meetings at which ordinary citizens could heckle, or laugh at the wrong moment.

Rishi Sunak launches the Conservative campaign bus at Redcar Racecourse in the in the North East of England while on the General Election campaign trail on Saturday

We may get the occasional tough television interview if we are lucky, but the over-hyped leaders' TV debates are not as perilous as they ought to be.

The leaders themselves have all gone through exacting briefings and rehearsals in which their image masseurs will have told them how not to 'commit news' – that is, to say anything new or interesting.

Even so, it is vital to keep up the pressure, and hope for more upsets of the Diane Abbott kind, if only because they compel our political elite to abandon their cliche-ridden scripts and show us what they are really made of.

Honour our heroes

It is two decades since the then Labour government made a rather fine gesture, offering free passports to those of the wartime generation who still survived.

It was an imaginative way of commemorating the sacrifice of D-Day. It allowed many veterans to revisit, perhaps for the last time, the battlefields on which they risked everything, and where many comrades gave everything.

The idea is still excellent, and we think it should now be extended to that very select group of over-75s who have fought for this country in wars and conflicts since 1945.

We owe them far more than this, which we cannot repay. But this is something we can do, and so we should do it.

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