An immediate reaction to the final leader’s debate

OK, not that I am biased or anything, but Nick Clegg clearly won.

However, to avoid sounding like a sad fan boy, I should say that he didn’t finish as strongly as I had hoped he would. It was a very good performance from Clegg and there were some very strong moments. There was a period of 20 minutes or so in the middle where he was clearly the boss. The bit in particular that had me cheering and punching the air was when he worked in the point about the banks and the Cadburys takeover. But there were no killer moments and some of the narrative about change that I wanted to see in there didn’t appear. Nick Clegg has consolidated the Liberal Democrats current position tonight. But for the record, that position is bloody brilliant, so well done!

The most improved performance I thought was Brown. Despite him looking very ill, he was much more effective than he was in the previous debates. The exception was the closing statement he gave, which was an awful attempt to frighten the voters, and was capped off with that scary smile. That moment just made me feel slightly ill. A better performance, but has he done enough to rescue Labour from the defeat they are heading towards? I think not.

The one with the real problem was Cameron. It wasn’t a bad performance. No real blunders and some good moments. Yet, the Tories are in the hunt for a majority. To secure that he needed to give the appearance tonight of being a credible Prime Minister. He did not achieve that. This was Cameron’s moment. He didn’t rise to it.

Finally, I just want to say I am bored with the issue of immigration now. Can we please have some talk about the environment in the closing days of the campaign?

This content was originally posted on my old Strange Thoughts blog.