The second leaders’ debate: reactions, thoughts, comments
The second Prime Ministerial Debate on the iPlayer
I've just finished watching the second debate, and I wanted to give my reactions straight away this time, rather than waiting half a week to comment on it.
Firstly, it was a lot closer this time. But, again, I think that Clegg had a showing that was stronger than the other two - even if by a much smaller margin. That's fine by me. I wanted to see him stand his ground, to not fall back under increased scrutiny and pressure, and he stood it well. A quick look at a few polls mentioned on the tail end of an article by the Independent agree with me - 2 of the polls have Clegg ahead of the other two, and the third one - the YouGov poll for The Sun - as Cameron ahead of Clegg. Frankly, we can begin to disregard the YouGov polls in my opinion - I'm going to have to write a whole post just about News Corp.
Secondly, Cameron made a point about scare-mongering tactics used by Labour a couple of times. But the Tory campaign has two focal points that use exactly those tactics - namely that a hung Parliament would be bad, and that voting for the Lib Dems is a vote for Gordon Brown.
It was amusing to see how the other two had copied ideas from Clegg - looking at the camera directly, commenting on the other two arguing amongst themselves, that sort of thing. I'm glad that Clegg didn't try to distance himself too far from the other two, he applied just the right amount of rhetoric to not overdo it. I particularly liked his opening and closing statements - they were positive messages, uplifting, particularly his closing statement. Running campaigns on messages of hope rather than messages of 'you have to pick me because everything sucks' is the right way of doing things.
Why haven't I mentioned the issues? Because there were no real bombshells. There's nothing really to highlight. We already knew much of what was said today. If you're unsure of the policies that the three parties hold, then the best thing you can do is watch the debate(s) for yourself, rather than read about them from a silly wannabe-blogger. If you want my opinion on whose policies I support, then it probably wouldn't surprise you to know that I like the Liberal Democrat policies - I think we need to engage more with Europe, I think that cutting back on public spending too soon would damage the economy but that cuts do need to be made in the medium-term, I think that a Trident replacement doesn't make sense for a country of our size when the two biggest nuclear problems - Iran and North Korea - not only are not focused on us, but have the USA and the wider global community breathing down their necks.
The only thing I've come across that I don't agree with is the plan to introduce heavier taxes on banks regardless of international support. I like the idea of moving our economy more towards things like highly skilled manufacturing and other industries where we can be a world leader - which requires good science funding, something which the Lib Dems and Labour are both supporting in different amounts but the Tories are planning to cut in a very short-sighted move - but that does not mean that banking has to be pushed away - and deploying such measures without international cooperation would do just that. Other than that, their policies simply make sense to me, which is why I support them.
I'm looking forward to the next debate. It will air at a similar time on the BBC, Thursday the 29th of April. One week after that is the election. So... We are just 2 weeks away.
