The great unvetted public locked out as party leaders tour sanitised Britain

Fearful of a Mrs Duffy moment, party leaders are taking every precaution to avoid an unscripted encounter with members of the public

‘This election is being run as a pseudo-event. Back in the 1960s, the writer Daniel Boorstin defined a pseudo-event as one that would not happen if the cameras were not there. It’s almost as if he could foresee the day when journalists would travel to Somerset to watch George Osborne smile at a vacuum cleaner.

So far, this has been an election staged in out-of-town business parks, cleared factory floors, deserted building sites, and town halls filled with pre-screened party supporters. The list of venues to which the party leaders are bussed or flown satirises itself: a heavily-guarded empty barn, a facility that makes virtual reality suites, a rural hedgehog farm. On Wednesday, the Lib Dems retreated to a woodland adventure centre, prompting a return to that old thought experiment: if Nick Clegg says something political in a forest, does he make a sound?’

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