Reactions to the third Prime Ministerial Debate

The Debate on the BBC iPlayer

Newsnight's analysis episode

Getting around to watching this a couple of days late, but here are my reactions - which I'm writing whilst watching it as they come to me.

• David Cameron... The thing that strikes me most about him is this:Poor little Cammy-wammy, confused and out of his depth. "What are the other two men saying?" he thinks to himself, "oh, I just don't understand."This picture shows it again - Cameron seems to struggle to understand what is being said to him, whereas Clegg looks calm and composed. I've noticed this in other debates too, but in this debate it was mainly in the economy section. When Brown is listening to the others talk he tends to shake his head. That's a simple way of showing that he doesn't agree with their statements, but he uses it far too much.
• Another point about Cameron: He tries so very hard to dodge questions he almost gets away with it. The two in particular for how far through I am are regarding the £6 billion worth of cuts they want to do this year, and the cut in inheritance tax for the highest earners. Now, its all well and good that he makes his comments about 'only £1 in every £100', but those are efficiency savings. As Brown rightly pointed out, these cuts are coming on top of efficiency savings. These are actual cuts. Cuts will inevitably lead to lost jobs. We heard over the past week that some areas of the UK have nearly 70% of the economy in the public sector - Northern Ireland and Wales in particular. Yes, that's too high, but evening out the balance by reducing the public sector isn't the right way of doing it. That just removes money from the local economy which could be spent in these private companies. And that could very easily lead to a double-dip recession.
• As for inheritance tax, he made a point about how he wants to encourage people to save money that can be passed on to their children and do the right thing, but completely ignored the point that the other two made that the cuts the Tories want to make benefit the richest people in this country. He made no claims that he was raising the threshold of inheritance tax, so his little argument about ordinary people doing the right thing was entirely pointless.
• The issue of the banks. Now, I personally want to see this economy move much more towards highly-skilled manufacturing and science as our main economic outputs. As a country we still cling to our military power for our place in the world, which is something that is out of date ever since World War II, but I won't go into that. The simple fact regarding banking though, is that we are a world leader in this sector. Ignoring the fact that it could be this very issue that got our economy built so very heavily on debt compared to other economies, that doesn't mean that a move towards manufacturing and science has to include a move away from banking. Indeed, implementing the correct infrastructure and the amount of time required for those sectors to develop means that a move away from banking would be unwise in the short term, let alone the long term. It is for this reason that I don't agree with the LibDem policies on this matter - they'll simply push the companies out to another area of the world where they can make more money. It's not like they don't have enough money to do such a thing at the drop of a hat, after all. The Tory plans could very well do the same thing. It is only Labour who really seem to understand this.
• Cameron definitely performed better in this debate, but the other two did well too. Clegg was the only one who actually answered questions from the audience directly on a consistent basis, but he did not do such a good job presenting his policies as he has done in previous debates. Brown performed very, very well in the economy section of this debate - showing that he is the only party leader - and his the only party - that understands the situation properly (specifically between Labour and the Tories - I prefer the general gist of the LibDem economic policy) but not quite as well throughout the rest. I would say that Brown is the only one who seemed Prime Ministerial, despite his failings. But I wouldn't call him the winner, or either of the other two.