Bollitics: VT General Election Poll #4 - Leaders Debate one

[andy1989]

So what exactly did Clegg do better than Brown and Cameron?

exactly my thoughts. cameron came across far better, especially considering he has the most to lose.

his final statement was very good also

[Mantis]

So what exactly did Clegg do better than Brown and Cameron?

He appealed to the disillusioned electorate.

Brown and Cameron never really went fully into detail but instead suck to their usual guff. Cameron especially failed completely about discussing his policies and was completely incompetent on the economy.

If that works for you, well so be it.

But Clegg played his cards right and as a politician there isn't much more you can do.

He didn't do anything different. People are only flocking to his support because the Lib Dems are not as involved with the government as the other two parties.

Oh well, the more people who vote Lib Dem the more votes that takes away from Labour.

[juanpabloingram]

Am I the only one to think the show/setting and format looked very 1980's style and the tie worn by Alastair Stewart dear god!

[tonyh29]

Times has it as :

Cameron 33.6

Brown 21.2

Clegg 45.2

Torygraph

Cameron 44

Clegg 39

Brown 17

YouGov:

NC 51 per cent,

DC 29 per cent,

GB 19 per cent

ITV

NC 43 per cent,

DC 26 per cent,

GB 20 per cent

The sun wanted you to sign up so not checked there , the Mirror will have it as Brown 100 , Cameron - 4500000 , Clegg who ?so didn't bother checking that one

Broke rules (kept talking)

Nick Clegg 9

David Cameron 0

Gordon Brown 5

wonder if we will see a more aggressive stance next time around ?

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

He didn't do anything different. People are only flocking to his support because the Lib Dems are not as involved with the government as the other two parties.

And now people want them involved because they, in the chancellors and this debate, have shown more that they are more than competent.

With over 50% of under 25s not even registered to vote, and the majority taking to Clegg, the youth will have a large say in this.

Have to say, they made Cameron out to be a complete dick about his tax subsidies for the rich, and quite rightly.

[villa4europe]

the sun will swing it camerons way, the write up of the chancellor one was shocking

[kidlewis]

Trident is the one major policy I disagree with Conservatives on. We are not really an economic and country super power anymore, and thus we won't really be sitting at the top table in a few years with the USA, Russia, India and China.

Trident would be something which would keep us there. Like the frogs we generally do pretty well when it comes to nuclear weapons and capabilities. Apart from Wine and striking it's the only thing the majority of the world seem to notice about France. That and Sarkozy's wife.

Getting rid of Trident is a must IMO.

I am still voting Tory at the moment because Gary Ridley seems to be a real achiever and I think Lib Dem don't really have a chance in my constituency in getting rid of Robinson. He has a fairly big majority but I think Gary has made some real inroads with the local people here and I think my personal vote is best place with him.

I really hope the Lib Dems make some big gains, hopefully moreso in the Labour seats, but I am more than happy to see a few conservative seats go as long as Labour don't get back in.

I think the defectors from conservatives to Labour from 1997 will either go back to voting conservative or vote lib dem. I think Labour could get utterly destroyed in these elections if Clegg performs as well as he is doing in these debates.

[tonyh29]

I hate how Clegg kept on acting as if he was somehow superior to Brown and Cameron.

i think that's what the public liked ..the lid dem game plan is clearly one of we are better and we aren't like the others .. in the wake of the expenses they'd one their homework it seems

I suspect Clegg is also trading well as a result of the public's nativity in believing the false prophet Saint Vincent of cable

[kidlewis]

Was interesting as well in that all the news of late has been about Brown and his bullying and he even tried it tonight didn't he ..constantly talking over his time limit and talked over the others a few times as well

It made him look arrogant tbh

what royally F*cked me off about Brown was he had the cheek to say to Cameron 'this isn't Question Time it's answer the question David.'

says the man who didn't turn up to more than double the PMQs that Blair did, the many who avoided so many questions Cameron and Clegg through at him since he became PM.

[kidlewis]

I hate how Clegg kept on acting as if he was somehow superior to Brown and Cameron.

i think that's what the public liked ..the lid dem game plan is clearly one of we are better and we aren't like the others .. in the wake of the expenses they'd one their homework it seems

I suspect Clegg is also trading well as a result of the public's nativity in believing the false prophet Saint Vincent of cable

I was surprised how Clegg seemed to agree more on certain points than he did with Brown.

I always thought it would be the other way round but I didn't get that impression from the debate.

Clegg did seem patronising and I was egging Cameron on to agree with him more because personally my views sit inbetween the Liberal and conservative ideals.

If I could cut up both their manifestos and take the bits I want i'd be pretty happy.

[tonyh29]

that was another thing that impressed me tonight , whilst Clegg and Brown went for cheap shots to deflect and score points , Cameron didn't and in the long term i think that will win through ...

The Torygraph called it right with this just before the debate kicked off :

That fellow beside Mr Cameron, on the left. Watch him carefully. For Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, hopes to emerge as the big winner from the debates by playing to Britain's undecided, angry middle ground. He plans to surf to influence on a wave of indifference.

The under-scrutinised Mr Clegg is tapping into our collective distaste for politics in all its forms by selling himself as the anti-candidate

[stewiek2]

Worst Kraftwerk gig I've seen. Not like 1990 at the Hummingbird. They were ace then. Oh how they are missing Florian Schneider!

[tonyh29]

actually having just read the whole article it's worth a read so here it is in full..

In the first of the TV debates all eyes will be on David Cameron. The weight of expectation is upon him, the pressure there both to seal the deal with the electorate and to kill off Gordon Brown in one deft strike.

The debate will indeed be a test for the Tory leader – but it is one from which even someone with the rhetorical gifts of Cicero and the timing of Eddie Izzard would find it difficult to emerge victorious. And the reason? That fellow beside Mr Cameron, on the left. Watch him carefully. For Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, hopes to emerge as the big winner from the debates by playing to Britain's undecided, angry middle ground. He plans to surf to influence on a wave of indifference.

In Manchester tonight, we will see in action the strategy that he has been pursuing relentlessly since last year, when The Daily Telegraph laid bare the rot at the heart of this late Parliament. His insight, if we can call it such, is that voters are so fed up with politicians that they don't want any of them to win outright. As our landmark poll of marginal constituencies shows today, more than half the electorate would rather see a hung parliament than a Labour victory, and many vital Lib Dem-held seats are tilting away from the Tories. In this anti-politics election, Mr Clegg's siren call is dangerously seductive: punish the politicians by giving no one overall power. Don't vote for me, vote for uncertainty.

The under-scrutinised Mr Clegg is tapping into our collective distaste for politics in all its forms by selling himself as the anti-candidate. Just as Jimmy Carter aligned himself against Washington to win election after Watergate, so Mr Clegg sides with us to pelt the two main parties. Listen to him at his manifesto launch yesterday, or any day for that matter, and his refrain of "a plague on both your houses" and references to "the old parties"

will chime with the discontent we all feel.

This posturing allows him to reprise a variation of the selling-point the Lib Dems used in 2005. Then it was: "We opposed the Iraq war." Now it's: "We didn't fiddle our expenses." Some of the party's MPs were caught out, but as a whole they escaped the madness of flipping properties, and the front bench emerged unscathed. If smugness has a colour, it is yellow.

However much the Tories may congratulate themselves on their ability to win the daily battle, they remain a party that is more popular with the critics than the audience. Our poll still shows substantial leads in most of the marginals they need to win. But the overall story remains that of a project that is a succès d'estime, not a mass movement. Labour is not escaping, either: a subdued Gordon Brown is being led from safe house to safe house by his minders, but he remains deeply unpopular. The country is not prepared to give him a second chance.

So Mr Clegg is banking on the prospect of a hung parliament, by quietly encouraging a parallel campaign – not for a particular party, but for an idea. A groundswell is building that says: "Keep them all out." The "Vote for a Change" campaign and other advocates of voting reform are pushing the idea that the public's uncertainty should be represented in the election result. The plan is to legitimise the idea of a hung parliament – note, for example, how its proponents have rebranded it a "balanced parliament" – before guiding our pencils to the Lib Dem box. Google revealed yesterday that online searches for "hung parliament" are up 233pc, eclipsing those for "Nick Clegg".

What Mr Clegg is not telling us, however, is that entrenching uncertainty by voting for it would do nothing to relieve the anger and frustration that voters feel about our politics. If anything, it would exacerbate our disenchantment, by tipping us into a world of shady deals and party shenanigans that made Mr Brown's regime look like a beacon of transparency.

As no one can imagine a circumstance in which a minority Conservative administration could come to an accommodation with Mr Clegg, due to the fundamental differences between the parties on a range of key issues, the only coalition on offer is Lib-Lab. It is all too easy to identify the ways in which the Lib Dem leader would be willing to support a minority Labour government, or even a Labour Party that had fewer seats than the Tories but was prepared to do a deal on the Liberals' pet projects. Why else has Mr Brown, normally a reliable Liberal-hater, shown a bit of ankle on voting reform and fixed-term parliaments? His soak-the-rich economics is naturally aligned with Vince Cable's: indeed, if giving Mr Cable a Cabinet job was the price of survival after May 6, Mr Brown would send the red box round immediately.

The Prime Minister must envy the Lib Dem mansion tax, a punitive levy on illiquid assets that would force owners to sell their homes to pay for rises in property prices over which they had no control. And he will have felt a stirring of recognition at the Lib Dem pledge to find £5 billion just by cracking down on tax avoidance. The fiscal legerdemain unveiled by Mr Cable and Mr Clegg yesterday was straight from the Brown playbook. In fact, with his roots in Scottish Labour politics, the saintly Mr Cable is closer to Mr Brown than his keen sense of humour and dancefloor footwork suggest. Like him, he knows what it's like to hate his boss. Like him, he will say anything for a headline (to judge by the trail of policy flip-flops he has left behind him). Like him, he has acquired a reputation for omniscience that is ripe for demolition.

The prospect of a Lib-Lab arrangement that entrenches fiscal madness and institutional mayhem explains why those in Conservative circles are desperate for the party to get past the 300-seat barrier. Short of that, and Britain falls prey to a patchwork of compromises involving every minority interest in Parliament. No wonder Scottish and Welsh nationalists are pushing hard for "balance". North of 300, and the Tories believe they would have enough seats to prevent the formation of a centre-Left coalition.

We know already that the hung parliament scenario is preoccupying Whitehall, where the head of the Civil Service has ordered officials to prepare a manual for managing the country through uncertainty. Sir Gus O'Donnell's aim is to avoid economic meltdown if the markets take fright, although there is plenty to suggest that the City has already priced in an inconclusive result. Indeed, a sharp reaction is more like to come if the Tories are returned with a working majority: a major report from Deutsche Bank last week predicted a stock market boom and a sharp strengthening of the pound if the Conservatives deliver.

So, this evening, keep an eye on that smooth, good-looking guy on the left. He's very persuasive. He knows you loathe Mr Brown, and that you aren't sure about the moon-faced guy in the middle. He'll tell you they are both the same, and neither of them is much cop. But remember that he, too, is a politician with a plan. He's got nothing to lose – and he must be stopped

Beware the Clegg

[kidlewis]

that was the thing that impressed me tonight Clegg and Brown went for cheap shots to deflect and score points , Cameron ddin't and in the long term i think that will win through ...

The Tortgraph called it right with this just before the debate kicked off :

That fellow beside Mr Cameron, on the left. Watch him carefully. For Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, hopes to emerge as the big winner from the debates by playing to Britain's undecided, angry middle ground. He plans to surf to influence on a wave of indifference.

The under-scrutinised Mr Clegg is tapping into our collective distaste for politics in all its forms by selling himself as the anti-candidate

and he did it very well.

Browns cheapest shot was saying conservatives main pledge in their manifesto was on inheritance tax for multi millionaires.

It would be like saying Caroline Lucas MAIN pledge in the green party manifesto is saving Badgers.

I agree with the conservatives idea in regards to elderly care. It shouldn't be the case that if you have savings, no mortgage and other assets then all of it (bar something like £7000 which is to cover funeral etc) has to be used on care.

If it's still the case when I'm old I will be remortgaging my house when I am 85 and bow out in a massive Scarface style coke binge with hookers, sliding down the stairs with an M16 in my stanna stairlift.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

As i said he's playing his cards right.

Cameron played it too safe, quite simply, and I'm none the wiser on how he will achieve any of his policies. It'll cost him.

Don't trust the man, don't trust his party. They, along with the other parties, have a lot of good policies, but Cameron more than any other just bugs me. He isn't cut out for debate tbh, but his speech at the end was good.

[tonyh29]

Cameron played it too safe, quite simply

you could be right there .. it could come down to he has the most to lose I guess

it will be interesting to see how the leaders change for the second debate .. Will they both focus on Clegg for example instead of bickering with each other

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

No I think the common consensus is a hung parliament is most likely, both Blue and Red will criticise eachother and give Clegg a free run to impress the electorate again and any decent point he makes they'll agree with and go onto some anecdote about little miss eyepatch in basingstoke.

[stewiek2]

Seriously, after watching it I really have the opinion that not one of them has any charisma or appeal whatsoever. Sadly in this day and age with the public at odds of who actually offers them something worthwhile it will come down to which leader impresses. Not one did.

If I was pushed, I would say that after a shaky start Cameron became more at ease. Clegg seemed decent but desperate to say 'please believe me' and Brown, after 13 years of that word removed Blair's rule of which he as a key part of, and his own rise to PM without the public vote makes it nigh on impossible for me to believe a **** word he says.

I really do not want to vote for any of them, frankly. Hell gimme Kraftwerk to vote for!

[snowychap]

Cameron played it too safe, quite simply, and I'm none the wiser on how he will achieve any of his policies. It'll cost him.

It may do but don't expect Osborne to tell you how much.

[CarewsEyebrowDesigner]

Cameron played it too safe, quite simply, and I'm none the wiser on how he will achieve any of his policies. It'll cost him.

It may do but don't expect Osborne to tell you how much.

well played