Well despite Mandelson's spinning, it is clear that Gordon Brown failed to break out of the rut he is in and lost the third debate.
I felt Cameron had his best performance so far and probably edged ahead of Clegg this time, but I was pleased with Nick Clegg's performance overall and across the three debates, Clegg was the main winner, Cameron did himself no harm, and Brown did himself no good.
What will this do to the polls ? I expect it to confirm a further drop in Labour support, especially with ITV running a poll this evening showing that 40% of people who were planning to vote Labour were not so sure now.
3 comments:
Nich - I agree. Cameron, then Clegg with Brown a long way behind.
I think Clegg was ill advised to go all "answer the question"/"yes or no" as he ended up sounding petulant and political point scoring. He is far better when he stays above the fray.
Finally, did I hear him right - he said 80% of immigrants come from Europe? The right figure is about a third, I understand. That's the danger of being over-confident when you don't know the details.
On the overall series - Clegg is the clear beneficiary, by getting the LD message out to people who had never really heard of them before.
Hopefully we can move back to two party politics (Tory/LibDem). :-)
I am not surprised that Clegg has failed to maintain his initial popularity with the public. He tends to get quite angry when he is challenged about issues, and it needs a calm and collective person to be a leader. On last night,s debate he noticeably struggled with facts and figures. It was as though he was plucking at straws, and he looked like a novice standing between Cameron and Brown.
There is one big concern that has received little publicity from the horrible British tabloids, and that is what jobs will there be for thousands of british workers if the Typhoon and Nuclear submarine's are abandoned by either the Tory's or the Liberals.
Re: jobs impact of cancelling Eurofighter - I think this could be managed without much impact, because there are significant penalty clauses in the contracts to ensure that any cancellation will not require radical negative impact on the suppliers.
Of course, this means there are no real savings to be made from cancelling the Eurofighter. I wonder if the LibDem figure for these savings, like Clegg's 80% EU immigration figure, also came from a magazine article!
The real data in both cases is somewhat different.
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