Two thousand people last night filled the London Palladium, home of variety, song and dance since 1910, to debate the Britain’s future in or out of the European Union. We got a bit of variety, a bit of a clown, a sparkle or two, but no-one was sawed in half.
The Guardian Live event showed that people care; the queue to get in went the length of Argyll Street; people of all ages were there. The atmosphere, warmed up (the theatre was chilly) by a couple of stand-up comedians, was of a pantomime audience ready for a good night out. Cheers and boos and laughter flowed around the theatre as Andrea Leadsom (Tory), Nick Clegg, (Lib Dem), Alan Johnson (Labour) and Nigel Farage (UKIP) knocked each other about. Despite strong feelings on the platform, very few people changed their minds during the evening, according to a show of hands.
Alan Johnson made the best points in favour of remaining in the EU, on the 70 years of peace through grindingly long negotiations; the protections of employment law extended to the working people of 28 countries; the protection against crime and terrorism a joined-up approach to European policing provides. Nick Clegg was the most passionate, and came over increasingly strongly as the evening progressed, particularly in response to Nigel Farage’s preposterous provocations. Farage is professionally rude, as he is in the European parliament. His interventions are not arguments, they are attacks, like a mini-Trump. His outrageous hypocrisy, trumpeting against the EU while pocketing a generous salary and colossal benefits as an MEP, is one of the reasons why he has never won a seat in Westminster, despite trying for years. I have never come across Andrea Leadsom, and her remark that there was no internecine war within the Conservative party was derided by all 2,00 in the audience.
It is extraordinary that we spend time in this debate, which has been conjured up by the Prime Minister to appease a fractious Tory back bench, when the real crisis in Europe – the refugees seeking safety and a better life and unemployment for a large number of young people in the southern states – is so huge that it will take years of doing the work to ease the pain.