This was a challenge for democracy. It was a test of how many different voices could make a sensible contribution to a debate about who should govern Britain, and how. The answer turns out to be at least seven, very politely and possibly quite boringly. But as people in the many countries that are enduring the alternatives to democracy would point out, dull can be really good.
What made tonight special, however, was that there were three female party leaders alongside the four men who lead the Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems and Ukip. It must have been the nearest thing to gender balance in the history of British democracy. Did it make a difference? You bet it made a difference.
It was three women against four public schoolboys, three of whom had been at Oxford. There was a chasm between the women’s approach and the approach of the men that was only partly about their proximity to power. What the women had in common was a connectedness to the wellsprings of political activism.
Each in their own way wanted to defend the things that distinguish Britain as a civilised country. Plaid Cymru’s leader, Leanne Wood, won almost the only applause of the night for telling Nigel Farage he should be ashamed of himself for trying to stigmatise migrants with HIV. The Green party’s Natalie Bennett talked about austerity not in big numbers but in terms of the ripple effects of the closure of a Sure Start centre. And Nicola Sturgeon, justifying her starting position as favourite, wrote a love letter to Labour on behalf of the SNP that included the best defence of free university education since tuition fees came in.
Were they exponents of luxury politics? That’s what the men will say. But did they shape the debate? Yes.
