BBC Leaders' Debate

Here we are then, the end of the trilogy of Leader Debates. Will we be feeling unsatisfied and short-changed as we were with The Matrix Revolutions, pleasantly entertained as we were with The Bourne Ultimatum or blown away and desperate for more as we were with The Lord of the Rings – Return of King? I’m going with Bourne (I’ve always been a Matt Damon fan) but perhaps, all in all, we’ll just be glad to have closure over this whole glossy affair and relieved that politicians will only pop up in the more escapable news bulletins and newspaper headlines from here on in.
 
Economy
The most important aspect of tonight’s debate is how open the party leaders will be with regard to what spending cuts and/or tax rises will be implemented in order to balance Britain’s bruised and battered books. The recent IFS report clearly stated that cuts not seen since 1979 are required from Labour and the Lib Dems and not since WW2 from the Tories but the parties have only given us a small glimpse of the future decisions that will need to be taken, if they haven’t already away from public consumption. I don’t expect any party leader to reveal more than they already have in terms of cuts and tax rises but it would still be the decent thing to do.  
 
Labour
Gordon Brown needs to win big in tonight’s debate, it needs to be a game-changer. The pressure is all on the Prime Minister as he tries to hold an increasingly despondent Labour pack together. The only time Brown was ahead of Cameron in the polls in the past 3 years was when the financial crisis was at its worst. With the Greek tragedy available to be leveraged as an issue and a potential return of the ‘no time for a novice’ message, Gordon has a glimmer of hope to have voters thinking the same as they did back in the Autumn of 2008. He has an awesome challenge on his hands to frame the debate in his favour though and I don’t think he has the capacity to do it when anything from Clegg or Cameron repeating his ‘no more boom and bust’ to the mention of the disastrous gold sales can bring him back to square zero.
 
Liberal Democrats
Nick Clegg is on easy street right now given he blew the ceiling of his party’s (and probably his own) expectations for this election and consequently has the least difficult evening ahead of him today. The Lib Dem’s position as Britain’s second party has been cemented in poll after poll for a week now and only an uncharacteristically catastrophic performance from the likeable leader will see him and his party spiral back down to third. There is not as much of a difference between the Lib Dems getting 90, 100 or 110 seats given that the system is counting against them and they can take their grievance into the next Parliament with the public behind them. I predict Clegg will mention Vince Cable as many as ten times this evening and receive a spike on ‘the worm’ on each occasion.
 
Conservatives
David Cameron has a sizeable task on his hands, though nowhere close to the gargantuan challenge Gordon faces. There is one week to go, Cameron is the strong favourite to be the next Prime Minister but there is still no sense of inevitability surrounding his charge to Number 10. Cameron has had years to ‘seal the deal’ with the British public so what chance is there that he can do it tonight? Slim I would say. The rehashed themes of we’re all in this together and reheated warnings of not cutting soon enough will be received with the same approval ratings in the lousy low 30s. However, with polls showing a clear gap between the Conservatives and Labour, even a mediocre performance from the Tory leader, exaggerated by a fawning press, could deliver a majority for his party. It may ultimately be a victory won out of default given the abandonment of Brown and Labour but right now Cameron has a lot to gain without too much to lose, which is not the worst position to be in at the moment.
 
Bigot-gate
Neither Clegg nor Cameron will get away with raising Gillian Duffy as an issue tonight. Shoe-horning her into a debate on the economy will look cheap and opportunistic and do more damage to themselves than it will for Labour. The best bet is to hope that an audience member raises it as a question and then they can watch Brown squirm in talking about a short, toxic incident that took place a full 36 hours earlier. At the end of the day though, bigot-gate is yesterday’s news and Gordon Brown shouldn’t feel obliged, as many are urging him to do, to make an apology for his comment during tonight’s debate.
 
Scotland
The SNP can only watch on from the sidelines now that all legal challenges to get involved tonight have been unsuccessful. The best hope in terms of this debate having any direct impact on their fortunes is that Scottish voters are unimpressed by all three leaders on the show and decide to turn to the SNP instead. Not ideal but not entirely hopeless either. There is also the comfort of knowing that the BBC Scottish Debate is still to come and minds can still be changed. Also from a Scottish context, I daresay Bella Caledonia’s impressive #ScotlandSpeaks campaign will be in full flow tonight on Twitter and elsewhere as it was in the past two debates.
 
Chairperson
David Dimbleby, lest we forget, has a starring role in tonight’s proceedings too. I have little doubt that he will marshall the process admirably and objectively but the man knows his stuff and is not above delivering the odd cutting, glib remark to chop someone down if he is not impressed with their answer, as he so regularly does on BBC Question Time. Will David be tempted to do the same this evening and prove to be an unlikely deciding factor in who is seen to be the winner or, more pertinently, the loser?
 
Conclusion
The most likely outcome of tonight’s debate is an earnest, well-meaning discussion that contains no telling blows and no lasting gaffes. In other words, 90 minutes of battle resulting in a three-way score draw that does little to affect the current polling figures. After all, with such a strict format, there is little scope for a significant impact to be made but the best bet for a moment of seismic proportions is for one of the leaders to hit their stride with a certain answer or closing speech, to capture the mood of the country, allay fundamental public concerns and deliver a short speech steeped in depth but with searing rhetoric that leaves millions of the watching undecideds thinking ‘yep, he’s the man for me’.
 
Of the three leaders, Nick Clegg is best placed to do so and he is my out and out favourite to win tonight’s debate.