WELL-MANNERED TORIES WERE OUTSHOUTED BY LABOUR

THE BBC stopped a torrent of flak from the rest of the media last week for the biased audience in the so-called leaders’ debate. I mean the one where seven party leaders faced each other (with Amber Rudd deputising for Theresa May).

The complaint was that the audience was rowdily antiConservative. Let me unusually take up the cudgels on behalf of the old Beeb. It had tasked the polling agency ComRes to choose an audience that could be expected to support the seven party hierarchs in equal and balanced proportions. So why the unstinting barracking, heckling and slagging off of Ms Rudd and Ukip leader Paul Nuttall, the only two right-ofcentre politicians on the platform?

The reason was the only one the analysts overlooked – manners. The Tory voters listened politely to the left-of-centre five, even while disagreeing with them. The pro-Labour claque behaved like a pro-guillotine mob in the French Revolution. That was the reason the whole audience seemed biased.

That is the shape of modern politics. Those who believe in fair play and common manners tend to vote Tory; apart from a few intellectuals, the rabble tend to vote hard-Left.

That is why democracy works for the British. At the moment of vote-casting the elector will be in solitude and privacy in a curtained booth – an environment conducive to calm reflection and thus moderation. Extremists prefer to be part of a chanting mob.