The debate

What stood out for me were the open goals that Cameron had:

1. Immigration, it is fine to say that Labour has done nothing to date, but that doesn't tell us why Labour will continue to do nothing. The reason Labour will do nothing is that they are intensely relaxed about numbers. They have spent decades denouncing as racist anyone who dared even get worried about immigration. Now they promise tough action? They are just scared of the voters. In five years time, if they win, they will be scared of the voters again. In between, they will return to form.

2. Immigration Two, it is falling because of the recession. Migration from some Eastern European countries makes less economic sense due to the recession. Insofar as Brown's policies have contributed to the recession, he has helped reduce immigration.

3. Immigration Three, if anything LibDems are more relaxed about immigration. They don't have so many urban working class voters to be scared of.

4. Waste - did anyone hear Clegg deny that there was lots of waste that could be saved. And did anyone hear Clegg talk of the awful waste in the MOD as he listed the admiral/ship ratio? Did anyone hear Cameron put together the two? Did anyone hear Cameron say, "Quite right, so why do you oppose cutting this waste for a year - and you'd find it more than just the MOD? No, you didn't hear Cameron go off script to ram this inconsistent piece of opportunism down Clegg's throat.

There is no point having a reputation as a slick performer and then being a wooden perforer.

Comedians learn thousands of jokes so they can spontaneously respond to all sorts of suggestions. Cameron clearly had things he wanted to say and was desparate to say them as often as possible at any opportunity, including some very strained ones.

So, this leads me to the greatest criticism. "Jobs tax, jobs tax, jobs tax." We have rightly had the better of that debate, but you cannot link it to everything. The NHS waste, managers and cancer drugs bit is diluted not assisted by throwing the jobs tax line into mix.

Keep it simple stupid. But that means simple answers for each question - not the same answer!!

An invitation to join what??

Those of you who are members of the Conservative Party will doubtless have received an email today inviting us to join the government of Britain. The government of Britain is, of course, a Labour government. I hope (barely) that it will be a Conservative one - but that depends on whether the British public accept the present job application by Mr D. Cameron.

At present the Tories arrive much as Portillo did when seeking the Tory leadership in 2001, or as Cameron did likewise in 2005. They seemed at one stage to be red-hot, can't lose favourites. Now they hope to crawl over the line.

So, why did they issue an invite as if they were the hottest ticket in town? As if they were so classy that they did not need any flashy covers, just the name of the event and their own name?

Fortunately, the imagery of that sort of "exclusive" invite from a posh-club will go over most people's heads. They will just be confused a little by the title, assuming they even read it. But it does suggest that there is some truth in the attacks that the Cameron-circle live in a different world. They live in a world where invoking this sort of imagery seemed like a natural and stylish thing to do.

That is not the world that they are pretending to live in.

Detoxifying the Tory Brand

Cameron is praised for detoxifying the Tory Brand. He has made them gay friendly. He has increased the presence of minority candidates and of women. He speaks little of immigration, almost vacating the issue for Labour to claim that it (belatedly) 'gets it'. It tries to say little of Europe - it's main message going into the campaign is that it doesn't want to pick a fight with 'our partners'.

But, where is 'class'?

There are vast swathes of the country where the working class worry about crime and worry about immigration. They have little time for those in their midst who sponge off the state. Their women are scathing about all-women shortlists saying that Betty Boothroyd needed no such things. They want discipline in schools, and probably wouldn't mind their sons and daughters having a crack at the 11-plus. They oppose European integration. Their are thoroughly patriotic - the sort of people whose children still consider the army as a career. They have nothing in common with the left wing intelligensia of the Labour Party - and are probably a little tired of party insiders being foisted on them.

How little these people have in common with New Labour?

Nothing, of course.

But they will not vote for a Tory party that devastated their industry in the 1980s. They were never pro-Tory before, but the 1980s made the Tories anathema. They have not forgotten.

To these people class matters. Not in the crude sense of hating Etonians, but in the sense that the Tories are not like them and care nothing for them. This was something that Cameron did not tackle. He denied it - encouraged by the Crewe and Nantwich by-election. But when recessions come, the question is rather stark: who cares if you suffer? The rich Tories or the Labour Party?

How the Tories could have done with teaching the white working class that the Labour Party did not care! The Republicans had achieved this in America with considerable success. While rich Democrats bussed poor whites to the worst schools, the children of the same Democrats were not bussed. Is it not the same with our state schools - do Labour MPs take the same chances with the kids' education as poor people (of all colours) are made to do?

Did Cameron reach out? No - he reached out to rich Guardian readers with his denunciation of grammar schools. All part of the detoxification, of course.

So, vast parts of the country will not vote Tory because the Tories are the party of privilege. They may have more in common with Tory policies on a vast array of subjects, but they are more likely to leap all the way to the Nazi Party than to take the comparative pixie steps to the Tories.

Why? Because Cameron never tackled this part of detoxification. Class was too close to home for him to acknowledge it.

He deserves to lose for failing to do so. Sadly, the alternative makes us hope he wins.

What is wrong with honesty?

It was sad to see Theresa May this morning. An excellent example of the debased nature of public debate.

20-40,000 public sector jobs will go due to wastage. It is said that there should be no need for sackings as there is a high turnover in the public sector. Now, this is quite right. Millions are employed in the public sector, so a turnover of just a few percentage would allow for these sort of cuts in job numbers to be made.

But, in her need to stay on script, she appeared evasive and was evasive:

1. What is wrong with admitting that there may be job cuts? They cannot be ruled out, but on their calculations it should be avoided. It is after all the truth, and people understand it. But, in her mind is the fear of the headline it would provoke.

2. If a job represents waste, why should it only go when someone is good enough to retire from it? Or why wait until someone near to them in a useful job retires, allowing the pointless civil servant to be re-allocated?

3. Why not point out that the NHS has at least 1 million staff, and 40,000 jobs would represent a turnover of 4% - not difficult when many of the workers a temporary migrants who go home after a few years. But - ho dear, that would touch on immigration!! That would touch on the ring-fencing of the NHS, where any efficiency savings must find a home (hopefully efficient) in the NHS lest someone cries "they are cutting our health service!!"

4. Why not point out that the credit crunch has cost hundreds of thousands of private sector jobs, so to absolutely guarantee public sector jobs would be wrong? Diane Abbott may say that it is wrong for public sector workers to pay the price of bailing out the bankers - but that is a crude approach to the economic crisis. Car workers and so many others have paid the price of the asset bubble exploding in our faces, and that has included bailing out the banks. But why this should fall only on the innocent parts of the private sector and exempt the public is a mystery?

5. Why not point out that a failure to make cuts in the deficit will lead to a crunch in the government's credit. That will lead to externally imposed austerity measures. Then here will be real and horrible cuts.

But now, we just get Mrs May dragging in the talk of "jobs tax", "endanger recovery", "our provisional figures say..." and lots of other talk that blanks the dangers that lie beneath.

There is a real danger for the Tories in this. It is unsustainable to pretend that there is no risk of job cuts, it will have to be admitted. When they admit it, they will appear not just as bad people to those who simply hate the cuts - but evasive and dishonest to those who recognise that such things are a horrible necessity.

A double whammy in trying to please everyone.

On not getting it, Mandelson style

This morning Mandelson gave what, 13 years ago, would have been an excellent speech. It promised all sorts of glowing things. We would have an economy built on innovation and industry. Government would facilitate. It would reform politics. What was there not to like?

The answer, of course, is that it is not 13 years ago. Labour has had a long time to go down the routes that Mandelson mapped out, but had not. But there is something more.

In promising to reform politics and the economy, Mandelson repeatedly used the phrase that the Tories "did not get it". In doing this, he showed that far from bringing any improvement to political life, he continues to inhabit the world of spin. Intelligent argument is eschewed in favour of attractive buzz-words and slogans. The Tories "do not get it"!! And don't ask about the last 13 years, because "we get it". In short, Labour has seen the light, praise the Lord!!

But what does Labour get:

- So, it will make constituencies of similar size giving up its in built advantage in the name of fairness? No.

- It will give Scotland and Wales a proportionate number of MPs? No.

- Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs won't be able to determine for England policies which, for their own constituencies, are nothing to do with Westminster? No - heaven forbid.

What they have done is go root through the voting systems and take out the only one that promises to skew the system even more in their favour. They have latched onto the Alternative Vote System. Even here, they are equivocal. They doubtless know that an unpopular Fourth Term Labour Government might find itself hammered under Alternative Voting. All it needs is for them to disillusion the country so much that they cease to be the second choice of most LibDems.

What else do we find from Mandelson? Wealth through investment in the universities. Is this the same Mandelson who recently cut their budget - something which facilitated Darling announcing new special funding. A new politics? An end to spin? I think not.

And they will secure the (doubtful) economic revival... This is the party that bought into not one but three Ponzi schemes during the last 13 years:

1. The Ponzi scheme of debt.
2. The Ponzi scheme of expanding the economy through immigration - you need more immigrants for the next expansion, and to pay for the services when the old ones settle down and do awkward thingsw like have children, grow old, fall ill, etc.
3. The Ponzi scheme of out-sourcing - it may make some businesses more profitable, but it does have obvious limitations as a long term business plan.

But forget all of this,because, Labour "gets it".

It is a desire to wipe out the last 13 years, and present again the fresh faced promise that seemed so attractive in Blair's 1997 victory speech.

But we know that they have failed because their methods have failed. They have targets which are corrupted into a "tick box" culture. Hospitals become breeding grounds for germs. Pointless appointments are scheduled so that a patient can "see a consultant" within a time frame, after which it can be "no-business as usual". Discipline collapses in the class room - and, even if there is some irony at Guardian reading teachers squealing at the inevitable outcome of their own progressive principles, it is a very bad thing for our future.

Labour doesn't get it. But it still corrupts politics with facile slogans. Sadly, that infection has also spread to the Tories.

What Grayling Should Have Said

So, Grayling is trying to squirm out of his difficulties? Meanwhile, our liberal minded friends are releasing their inner-Robespierre on anyone who questions orthodoxy on discrimination issues, even in the slightest degree. Hence, I suggest here what Grayling should have said:

"John Stuart Mill once said that no issue should be closed off from debate and criticism lest it become a matter of dogma. A long time ago, Chris Huhne and maybe even Peter Mandelson would have known that. We have seen the harm done to the immigration debate by it being policed by constant denuncations of racism. It is a bad thing for democracy and public debate if the smallest criticism of the existing law is made impossible.

This is effectively what Labour and the Liberal Democrats have sought to do with their exaggerated response to my comments on Bed and Breakfast establishments and gay customers. They have not merely asserted - which is understandable - that the cause of gay equality must come ahead of any socially conservative religious sentiment and that this priority should be given legal force; they have asserted that to doubt that legal force should be given to that priority in all situations is akin to being a vile bigot.

In short, their position is not just absolutist in its championship of gay rights, but they demand that it should not in any way be subject to criticism. It is not just that their position should not be qualified, but that no one should dare even suggesting that it should be criticised.

This is a dangerous proposition. It really will not do to say "what if a major religion objected to black people?" No religion does. We should not use hypothetical analogies to add to the categories of what is seen as beyond debate. That should be a rare thing indeed.

But what of the subject at hand? It is worth remembering that, as the liberals never tire of reminding us, that we live in a diverse society. There are religious ethics which contradict from time to time modern secular ethics. We do not want to create different systems of law. People cannot opt out of any legal obligation by citing real or spurious religious scrupples.

But it has always been the case, at least since we stopped enforcing religious conformity, that in some situations we allow conscientious objection rather than drive people of strong faith from society. For example, at times of war, we accommodate Quakers with their objections to fighting. I suspect that, as diversity increases, we shall increasingly find ourselves making such accommodations in order that we can live together.

However, what is proposed is that we should never accommodate. To the crude liberal mind there are two possibilities, 1) never accommodate, or 2) always accommodate. So to make any exceptions means you must scrap the entire law. This simply does not follow: if we made no exceptions then the Catholic Church would have to employ men as nuns, and women as priests. Also, let us suppose that Mr and Mrs Smith want to hire a nanny - but Mr Smith is a philanderer on his very last chance - do we doubt that Mrs Smith should be entitled to discriminate against young, pretty female candidates?

What I have suggested is no more than this. The principle of equality is a good principle. It may be uncomfortable to some, but so be it. However, when it brings that discomfort into their own home, I begin to doubt. If someone runs a hotel or a guest house, then it should be open to all. But when it is very much their own house, and they will in the ordinary course sit down with their guests at the same table, the situation is different. As with my nanny example, the subject matter is intimate as well as commercial.

That is my doubt, and I am aware that there are counter-arguments, and arguments with considerable strength. A Bed and Breakfast that generally advertises is a commercial enterprise, so must not turn people away. I am aware of the strength of that, but there is strength in the arguments for accommodating the squeamishness of a minority. Were this exception to cause great problems in practice, then I would think again.

So, all that I have suggested is a minor exception in a marginal case. It is a case that I find difficult, but many would disagree with that. The point is that there is no warrant for saying that such points ought never to be raised nor argued. That appears, perversely, to be the liberal position.

I should say one more thing. It has been suggested that having this view would disqualify me from being home secretary - the home office enforces these laws, how can the home secretary disagree with a law that he will be enforcing? This is also nonsense. Ministers uphold laws whether they disagree with them or not. In the Victorian days, some Home Secretaries upheld capital punishment although they were abolitionists. Until it was repealed, Labour education ministers upheld section 28. The law on this point is clear. Whatever my personal doubts may be - and those doubts are not Conservative Party policy - are frankly irrelevant."

Unfortunately, he contented himself with squirming.

A strange turn of events

Labour's rise in the polls has been built largely on a simple trick. Mandelson and Brown simply do not acknowledge any defeats or blows made against them. It would be very easy for an intelligent man to agonise about having once denied the need for cuts and (shortly after) presented himself as a man who could be trusted to cut public spending. Similarly, we would probably worry about presenting ourselves as having succeeded in controlling immigration, when it has merely fallen a little from record heights achieved on our watch.

But why worry if you can simply ignore those problems. Why be concerned if you can flatly deny them when the heat is on, and sneak out an apology later. Do not admit a failing when being cross-examined in Chilcott enquiry. Do not admit in PM's questions that the whole G20 was out of recession first. You mislead the enquiry, and put up a good show when it matters most. And you pretend (to cheers) that Spain is a G20 member.

Like Eddie Murphy in the sketch, and Shaggy is in his song, if you simply ignore your fault regardless of all the evidence, you may just get away with it. Hence, the taunts of Cameron as to Brown's boast of "no more boom and bust", does not ruffle Brown - and Cameron looks like a name caller.

At least that, perhaps, is what you see if you watch too closely. The audience on last night's Question Time seemed almost at times to queue up to call Brown a liar. Maybe the public do not take enough interest to end up giving high marks for artistic impressions to politicians, even when they are spinning tall tales. Like RicRoc's rebuke to Shaggy: but they caught us on camera saying we'd solved boom and bust, that we would lead the world out of recession, that there would be no cuts, etc.

So, maybe Cameron should not worry too much that he seems to be bashing his head against a brick wall trying to get Brown to admit failure.

His worry should instead be to present a positive case, and let the public take care of Brown's nonsense. We have seen with the National Insurance issue that a positive policy can cause havoc to Labour. Labour have committed themselves to outright denunciation of everything about Tory economic policy. They could not cope with the idea of businessmen supporting the opposition. So, they over-reacted and fell into the trap that they have laid for Cameron.

It is obvious that Labour should have respectably disagreed. They should have wheeled out those who back their approach. Then repeat a lot of half-truths and untruths about how the Conservatives have got everything wrong from Northern Rock onwards - Newsnight exploded this, but it still makes a good line. Instead, they ranted and raged. Labour does not really do criticism well.

Will it matter? I think, yes. The polls may go up and down in the next month. But Labour need the aura of being a saffe pair of hands, and they need the Tories to have an aura of danger and incompetence. They need those impressions to be whirling around the heads of undecided voters come 6 May. The sight of businessmen queuing up to endorse supposed "Tory incompetence" was actually good, doubtless helped. But it helped that Labour made it a much bigger story with their hysteria.