Second Leaders' Debate: Summary

Tonight’s debate was meant to be focusing on international politics and foreign affairs. Despite a vigorous debate on the future of the Trident programme, the European Union and Clegg’s reminder about the illegality of the Iraq War, there was little debate on foreign policy. Where were questions about Iran? Where were questions about the Israel / Palestinian conflict? Sudan? Zimbabwe?. Instead we got a pointless question about the Pope’s visit.

Brown commenced with honesty – “If you want style and PR, count me out”. He delivered strong substance, and spoke with pride of Labour’s recent decisions on the economy. I thought he missed a crucial opportunity to embarrass Cameron about his new bedfellows in the EU, namely the homophobes and anti-Semites. Cameron improved on last week’s poor performance, but only a trifle. Cameron is still failing to sell this new “modern, compassionate Conservative party”. He was eventually embarrassed by Clegg when asked directly about his proposed cap on immigration, for which he provided no numerical answer.

Trident and immigration policy highlighted bipartisanship between the Tories and Labour against the Lib Dems. It was nice to see Clegg hold his own, and remain faithful to his ideologies.  The novelty of Clegg has definitely not worn off, and I predict a further boon for the Lib Dems in the polls.

Just a small mention of any gaffes. We are still waiting for a Ford-esque gaffe. Last week we had Cameron expressing the Chinese as a nuclear threat. This week we didn’t have a gaffe from Cameron, more an inappropriate comment about being “blown away” by the courage of the troops in Afghanistan. Reckless words ‘Dave’.

Clegg weathered a strong storm from both Cameron and Brown, and from a ferocious Fleet Street. After now 180 minutes and a long week, Clegg remains the frontrunner of the leaders. Naturally, with our FPTP system this will never equate to seats  - but he has proven that we have a three, not two, party system.