By Brian Wheeler BBC News Online political staff

The odd couple of British politics took to the stage in a valiant attempt to "revive the tradition of the public meeting".

Tapping into an apparent new-found appetite for live political debate, Old Labour stalwart Tony Benn met David Davis, the new darling of the Tory right, at London's Royal Festival Hall.

This is the libertarian wing of the maverick tendency!

David Davis

During a two-hour session, the pair attempted to set aside party differences to hold a genuine debate on the future of Britain's public services.

Dressed in near-identical shirt and tie combinations, with jackets draped on the back of their chairs, the two men inevitably found much to fall out about.

But there was also a surprising degree of common ground, particularly on wider issues such as Europe and civil liberties.

'Depersonalising the poor'

Mr Benn, inevitably, had all the best lines.

He opened the debate by arguing that the welfare state must be more than "a modern version of the poor law".

It had to be funded on an "insurance principle" and include an element of "redistributive taxation".

It must also be democratically run, with control in the hands of local people and workers, rather than "management consultants".

The idea of treating citizens as customers, he argued, "depersonalised" the poor and ignored the "public service ethos".

To rapturous applause, he told the audience: "If you have not got any money, you can not be a customer".

'Socialism does not work'

Mr Davis, by contrast, made a nervous start, attempting to win the audience over by saying how his Labour-voting parents would have been proud to "hear Tony Benn being nice about me".

Mr Davis started to go off message

The shadow deputy prime minister deserves full marks for not pulling his punches in front of a partisan crowd.

The three-quarters full hall were there, in the most part, to see Mr Benn.

To jeers, Mr Davis told them: "Socialism only works in two places, in heaven where they don't need it, and in hell, where they have already got it."

But his attempt to illustrate the problem of a "monolithic" health service by referring to the "tragic irony" of his Marxist grandfather, who, he claimed, died because of an NHS "misdiagnosis" fell a little flat.

He got a warmer reception - and a few laughs - with talk of his misspent youth - "I was a wild kid" - and his tribute to the teachers at his comprehensive school, who "gave him a start in life".

Opinion divided

But his central message - that Britain's overly bureacratic and centralised public services are not working and the only answer is more private involvement - was the last thing the predominantly left-leaning audience wanted to hear.

"The problem we have with the monolithic provision of public services, schools and hospitals, is that no matter how poor schools and hospitals get, we never close them," he told them.

His attempt to illustrate the point with a diatribe about Marks and Spencer was met with a few heckles and shouts of "Railtrack".

At the interval, opinion was divided.

Election turn-out

Some Benn supporters in the Festival Hall bar claimed Mr Davis was "not in the same league" as a public speaker.

But most agreed the Tory shadow minister had been "brave" to face such a tough audience.

The second half question-and-answer session went better for Mr Davis, despite having to sit downwind of Mr Benn's trademark pipe.

He more than held his own as public sector workers and others queued up to fire questions at the pair.

He also began to stray off message, criticising the "absurdities" of the Tory-created internal market in the NHS.

On turn-out at the last election, Mr Davis admitted that a lot of people might not have turned out to vote because they already knew what the result would be.

Agreement on Europe

Not surprisingly, the two adversaries also agreed wholeheartedly on the issue of the "undemocratic" EU, with Mr Benn attacking politicians who could make laws, "but you can't remove them on polling day".

Civil liberties, and the tendency of governments who cannot control crime to bring in tougher laws also brought broad agreement, prompting Mr Davis to claim: "This is the libertarian wing of the maverick tendency!"

Mr Benn didn't look quite ready to form a new party just yet.

But he did find more common ground with Mr Davis on "targets" and red tape in the public services, the need to breathe new life into parliamentary democracy and the need for more public debates.

Start of a beautiful friendship?

Both men also subscribed to the "Dixon of Dock Green" school of policing, arguing for more officers on the beat.

Mr Benn wound up the session with a joke about Mr Davis' initial approach to set up the event: "He said 'I'll have to run it past IDS'. I don't know what that means!"

But as the flashbulbs popped, Mr Davis' attempt to cement their new bond - by grabbing Mr Benn's arm for a victory salute - was quickly rebuffed by the old Socialist.