Hustings #4

Tweet Last night was the fourth round of hustings in the constituency. With another four booked - three of them next week - it means we're about half way through that element of the campaign. Last night's event was in Narberth, organised by Friends of the Earth, and concentrating on matters environmental (although the Lib Dem did at one point launch into a complicated lecture on global economics. Didn't really go down too well, I must say.).

John Gossage, the Lib Dem, produced another surprise as well - it was the first time I'd understood that they are now in favour of replacing Trident with a new generation of nuclear weapons, only not on a 'like for like basis'. No, I don't understand what that actually means either, but apparently it's what Clegg said in THAT debate - which I didn't watch. Better things to do with my time at the moment.

There was another surprise to see Simon Hart, the Tory, nodding vigorously in apparent agreement with me when I talked about us needing to allocate resources on the basis of co-operation and agreement rather than competition, and for more equal access to resources across the world. It's so far removed from core Conservative philosophy that I could only conclude that he didn't really understand what I was saying. Hopefully, most of the audience did.

Simon somehow omitted to mention one key aspect of his party's energy policy - the one Cameron announced last week of building a new generation of coal-fired power stations. I wondered why, but didn't find the right opportunity to challenge him on that. He surely wasn't choosing his message to try and match the audience?

Overall, it was a good session - and I was pleased to be able to draw some very clear lines between Plaid on the one hand and the three London parties on the other. They all seemed to be saying much the same thing on most issues. And that's something which THOSE debates are apparently sadly missing as a result of the exclusion of Plaid and others. There's just no real challenge to the cosy London consensus. It's a stitch-up which is encouraging people to treat the election as an air-brushed beauty contest, rather than a serious debate about all our futures.