The debates between the leaders of the three main English parties have been a marvelous leveller, breaking the usual nexus of political and media power that determined every election since I’ve been alive. And that level playing field allowed the the traditional underdog - the Liberal Democrats - to shine, gaining a recognition as a political force that had long been denied them.
During the third debate, though, it was became apparent that the Conservative party held all the cards. Labour is a busted flush; the Lib Dems are bluffing as best they can with a weak hand. The Tories, though, held trumps - support from the popular press, government in living memory and a hard-nosed line on the economy that will have won over their heartlands of the southeast and Midlands.
But what does it all mean? It was the Tory party that laid the foundations of our economy, with an ideological drive to break the power of organised labour and to deregulate the economy. In their wake they left a broken and moribund manufacturing industry, and a vast, booming and uncontrolled financial sector. Labour deepened the Thatcherite settlement, pandering to the financial sector and to the retail industry that its easy debt fostered, helping nurture a consumerist, service-led economy feeding off the crumbs left by the Masters of the Universe in the banks and private equity houses. Through stealth taxation and private/public finance initiatives, Labour sought to redistribute to the broken formerly industrialised regions and to expand the public sector without raising alarm amongst the financiers who bankrolled it all.
But, as we learnt, the whole foundations were rotten. Our economy was feeding on itself, cannibalising itself in the absence of significant demand from the newly-industrialising economies of Asia, notably China. Ultimately, when we ran out of investment opportunities in the developed world - after a few giddy years of highly-leveraged returns off the mortgage payments of those least able to afford a home - the bubble finally burst, and all our flaws were laid bare.
Newly naked, what can we see in the mirror? Vast swathes of the country are still dependent on the public sector - whether for employment or for benefits. But while dependency is surely a problem - as development economists have long argued - their plight is as much the lack of gainful employment in the private sector as it is the overweaning presence of the state. And without a meaningful industrial policy there is little hope for new employment, for the service economy needs a productive industry off which it can feed, and the financial sector - if there is any justice - will be soon be on a tighter leash. Simply demanding that the poor work will not provide them jobs. But of course, continuing the massive expansion of the public sector is not sustainable - as taxes are insufficient to support them, particularly when the times are bad.
That said, the fact of the matter is that there is no grand solution. We need to support domestic industry, to restore the jobs that were lost in the 1980s. And those jobs need to be self-sustaining, not dependent on taxes creamed off far too few sectors of the economy.
What are the parties offering? Labour is offering more of the same, hoping that an economic recovery will restore a taxable surplus that it can continue to deploy in its vast social re-engineering programme. The Tories are offering a tribalist retrenchment, arguing that they will let those who have money keep it by denying it to those who they deem to be spongeing off the state, and that that - somehow - will solve the country’s problems. And the Lib Dems, sadly, are offering little more than to be a fair intermediator between the two larger parties in the case of a hung parliament, an outcome that seemed surer before this final debate.
Because in this final debate Cameron has finally found his voice. His blend of Puritanism, beggar-thy-neighbour selfishness and his very British style of machismo on reducing the deficit will have struck a chord with the southeast, where this country’s elections are won and lost. It is the quintessence of modern British conservatism - self-interest dressed up as a necessary medicine, miserliness cast as tough love.
I only hope that the British sense of fair play denies him a majority.