Final Election Debate

Last night’s final TV General Election Debate concentrated mainly on the economy. The instant polls taken immediately afterwards showed David Cameron in first place, Nick Clegg close behind, and Gordon Brown trailing in last. It was a far more heated debate than the previous ones had been, with some real flashes of anger shown by all three of the party leaders. Having watched it I, personally, thought that Nick Clegg had won it as he came across as being more honest about the problems we face, and how to solve them. There was even a spat between him and Cameron over immigration. Clegg asked Cameron a question that required a straight yes or no answer but, of course, Cameron simply wouldn’t give one. Part of the question that was asked enquired whether the leaders thought they were out of touch with the concerns of real people, and whether they realised that they were elected to serve the people. As was to be expected, none of the leaders gave any answer to that.

The biggest question of all is how the parties would fill the huge deficit we have. The electorate all want to know where the cuts would fall, but there was still very little detail about this. If you’re interested in the debate you can read a report of it on the BBC website, where you can choose to watch the video or read the text.

During the week the independent Institute of Fiscal Studies agreed that none of the three main parties have said enough about where they’ll make cuts, although the Liberal Democrats have said more than the others. However, the biggest story of the week was Gordon Brown insulting a lady pensioner, who had always voted Labour, by being nice to her in public and then, as soon as he got back into his car and thought he was in private he called her a bigot. He immediately phoned her to apologise, and even visited her house a couple of hours later to apologise in person. The most unfortunate thing for him was that his words had been caught on tape, and that tape was played over and over again by the news stations. Here is a link to the furore.

We now learn that Tony Blair is to be wheeled out to campaign in some of the marginal seats. It seems the Labour Party thinks will help to diffuse some of the very negative publicity surrounding the bigot affair amongst long-time Labour supporters. Personally, although the Iraq War has hardly been mentioned in this election campaign, I can hardly see Bliar visiting marginal seats helping to win them more votes.

After last night when Cameron turned his fire on Clegg and almost ignored Brown, it looks as though the Conservatives will concentrate on the Liberal Democrats for this last week of campaigning. The Labour Party will just struggle along, bringing out their Big Guns in an effort to sway voters. And the Liberal Democrats will focus on getting the votes of the younger generation. In fact students have already threatened to swing seats because of the policies over tuition fees.

Many of us are feeling that this campaign had gone on long enough, and we can’t wait for next week when it all ends. The TV party broadcasts have been very predictable, and rather boring. Thank goodness there haven’t been too many of them. In the UK no candidate is allowed to buy TV advertising time, and the free broadcasts are only given if the requisite number of candidates for any one party are standing in the required number of seats. In England that’s 89 seats, but I don’t know what the law is in relation to the devolved parts of the UK, i.e. Scotland, Wales, and Ireland.

All the polls still show that we’re on course for a Hung Parliament. And if you aren’t too sure what that entails then here’s a link to some Q&As about it.

This time next week we shall know the outcome, with polling day being 6th May. After which I’ll be posting my final blog on this subject.

If the TV show The West Wing were still running I’d be voting Bartlett, lol.