Tv

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

Leaders’ debate – live blog

2207, PH: Well, we’ve just been through all that – and guess what’s leading the News at Ten.  Yep, the ash cloud… 2205, PH: And that’s it.  I’ll be writing a verdict post shortly. 2203, PH: And Cameron has pre-empted Brown’s statement well.  He says that the other two have tried to frighten the audience about the Tories – but “put hope before fear”.  His key message after that is about national insurance.  A solid closer from the Tory leader. 2201, PH: Classic Brown. He points the finger at the Tories, saying that they can’t match Labour’s guarantees and that they’d risk the recovery. I’m not sure this negative approach

Peter Hoskin

Take your seats

Right – the pizza has been ordered, my glass is overflowing with raspberry Ribena (New! And delicious!), and I’ve fired up the old cathode ray tubes. But, somehow, I’m still feeling quite ambivalent about tonight’s TV debate. Maybe it’s because I still suspect it will be a cautious affair – with neither side wanting to risk the kind of mistake which could define their evening. Maybe it’s because of the wall-to-wall coverage of the past few days. Or maybe it’s because the New York Times has a (deliciously arch) point when it writes that UK politics is finally “moving into the television age”. In the end, the most interesting thing

The Spectator

Covering the TV debate

We’ll be live-blogging tonight’s TV debate on Coffee House from 2030.  Do, please, join us then. And, in the meantime, over on our special election site Spectator Live, Spectator panellist Gaby Hinsliff has written about why she doesn’t think tonight’s debate will be a make or break moment.  And Reform’s Thomas Cawston has prepared a set of questions for the party leaders to answer.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Advantage Cameron | 15 April 2010

I’ve just been watching the feed coming out of the studio where the debate is taking place and what struck me was how much of an advantage his central position will give David Cameron. In all the shots of the studio, the middle lectern is where your eye is drawn first. The leaders, I’m told, have all had half an hour in there to familiarise themselves with the surroundings. They now appear to be white-washing parts of the studio.      

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A night to remember?

I’ve just arrived in the press room in Manchester where the media will be watching the debate; the hotel lobby is full of hacks and spin doctors. The question being asked is whether this is the moment that the electorate begins to engage with the election. Although I know that some in CCHQ worry that tonight’s debate could be so he said, she said that it deepens the public’s cynicism about politics. Today’s extreme weather has added an intriguing angle to tonight’s proceedings. Douglas Alexander, who along with Peter Mandelson will be working the spin room after the debate, has already claimed that Brown is concentrating more on the lines

James Forsyth James Forsyth

No sweat

The leaders will be allowed to use their own make-up artists tonight. This might sound like a trivial detail but how the leaders look is, sadly, going to be an important factor in who gets the most benefit from the debate. I expect that the big beneficiary from being allowed to use his own make-up team will be Cameron. As his Newsnight interview during the 2005 leadership contest – when Cameron used his own not Newsnight’s make-up artists and as a result looked far better than David Davis had the week before – showed, the Cameron Team appreciate the importance of these details.

Daniel Korski

Memo to Cameron: don’t be angry

There will be no shortage advice for David Cameron as he prepares for tonight’s TV debate. Wear this tie, smile a lot, be direct but not controversial and so on. The newspapers have been full of tips and lessons from the US debates. The Tory leader is also said to have hired Squier, Knapp, Dunn Communications, a DC-based political consultancy, specifically for help with the TV debates. Allow me to add my piece of (unsolicited but free) advice: don’t be Mr Angry. People want to like you; they want to feel that you can be trusted. They know they don’t like Labour. They know that the country needs change. But

Peter Hoskin

Brown’s signature parade

Only 58? Labour’s last letter attacking Tory spending cuts this year had 60 economists’ signatures attached to it. Their latest, released today, has only 58. Number 10’s signature-marshalling skills are clearly on the wane. I sincerely hope that the Tories don’t marshal some economists of their own. The last time that happened, back in February, we witnessed the low point of the fiscal debate – with both sides using a bunch of academics as a substitute for a proper conversation with the public. And, lest we forget, Guido’s handy graph reminds us just what those economists were and are quibbling over anyway. This is a phoney war, so it’s little

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Brown will fear the foreign policy debate most of all

The Tories’ Invitation to join the Government was never going to dwell on defence. (You can listen to the brief chapter on defence here.)  But that doesn’t mean defence isn’t an election issue. It is, and it’s one that the Tories will win. Brown’s defence record is abysmal even by his standards. Former service chiefs have described how Brown ‘guillotined’ defence budgets whilst fighting two wars, and field commanders in Afghanistan have made constant reference to equipment shortages. These accusations were corroborated by facts that Brown then tried to distort before a public inquiry. That’s not all. As Alex notes, buried in Labour’s manifesto, is an admission that the Defence

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Adam Boulton’s damning verdict

We’ve already collected some of the general blogosphere response to Labour’s manifesto launch, but this addendum is worth making separately.  In a post describing the hostility of the Labour crowd towards the gathered media, Adam Boulton writes (with my highlights): “The crowd, including some cabinet ministers, booed and shouted at questions they didn’t like. Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, had his question interrupted by jeering and Graham Wilson of the Sun was booed just for identifying his newspaper. Labour did not behave like that in the last three elections when the Sun backed them. Gordon Brown was happy to join in this confrontational mood. It was the most substantive

Wednesday

David Blackburn

Clegg blows a golden opportunity

Nick Clegg won’t get many opportunities to sell himself to voters and he has just been demolished on the Today programme. All things to all men, Clegg was all over the place. He couldn’t give an exact answer when questioned about the size of the deficit, and the Lib Dems’ shifting position on the depth of cuts was exposed once again, recalling his autumn wobble on ‘savage cuts’. He also refused to rule out a VAT rise. Similarly, he could not expand on his plans for parliamentary reform beyond labels such as ‘radicalism’, ‘renewal’ and ‘the old politics’. Caught between defending himself from the Tories and attacking Labour, Clegg panicked.

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s silent victory

I think Osborne’s main victory tonight would be to reassure those who thought him a clueless idiot. The left demonise him, and it’s easy for the right to despair at him too (yes, guilty). But the figure we saw tonight was calm, collected and assured – and I reckon this was his achievement. He allayed fears. Expectations of his performance would have been rock bottom, and he’d have surpassed them easily. He was playing it safe. Vince Cable did his after-dinner speaking comedy act (I met William Hague in the ‘spin room’ afterwards, who swears that some of Cables lines were nicked from his repertoire), and the studio audience loved

Monday

Alex Massie

Do Debates Really Help the Liberal Democrats?

Well, in one sense, yes of course they do. By putting Vince Cable and, later, Nick Clegg up against their Conservative and Labour peers the Lib Dems are granted a status and respect they never achieve in other circumstances. So in terms of exposure and credibility then yes the debates help the Liberal Democrats. The format helps too: since Labour and the Tories will sensibly ignore the Liberals the third party is rarely tasked with the awkward business of defending its own proposals. Instead it can scamper around picking off the low-hanging fruit dangling from the Labour and Toriy trees. Since, god help us, there’s no shortage of that then

Peter Hoskin

Few fireworks – but solid performances from Cable and Osborne<br />

So now we know what happens when you put three would-be finance ministers into a room, and start asking them questions.  There’s plenty of esoteric language, a good dash of posturing – and next to no fireworks.  Thinking about it, perhaps we shouldn’t have expected much else. Not that the pyrotechnics were completely absent, of course.  Both Cable and Darling rounded on Osborne over the Tories’ national insurance plans, and Osborne hit back with some well-directed attacks on Labour’s own tax and spend agenda – even getting Darling to waver and admit that a “death tax” is no longer on the cards.   But, for the most part, calm and

Peter Hoskin

Chancellor’s debate: live blog

2057, PH: We’ll sign off for now. I’ll be back with a summary post shortly. 2057, JF: Osborne gets his closing statement just right, sounding humble and emphasising this is the voter’s choice. I expect Osborne will be very satsified with his night’s work. 2055, PH: And Osborne has the closing word.  He’s not quite as direct as Cable – saying that the Lib Dems won’t be in government, and that the Tories have “shown, under the leadership of David Cameron” that they’ve got what it takes – but its a neat enough closer. 2054. PH: Punchy stuff from Cable, who says that you can’t trust Labour because they got

Peter Hoskin

A smart move by Osborne – but he needs to ready himself for his opponents’ attacks

There’s little doubting it: the Tory plan to (at least partially) reverse Labour’s national insurance hike has handed George Osborne a high-calibre weapon for tonight’s TV debate.  It is, I suspect, an attractive and attention-grapping policy in itself.  But it also helps the shadow Chancellor paint the Tories as the party of aspiration.  Or, as Tim Montgomerie has put it: “Seven out of ten working people will be better off if Cameron becomes Prime Minister.” But announcing the policy this morning has also given Alistair Darling and Vince Cable a chance to very publicly denounce it later today.  We’ve already had a preview of what’s likely to form the central

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Osborne must ask: why trust the party which ran up the credit card bill in the first place?

Public sector net borrowing, public sector net debt, total managed expenditure, departmental expenditure limits … zzzzz.  One of the main reasons why Labour has been able to fashion an economic narrative, against all odds, is because they can rely on some pretty esoteric language.  Thus debt becomes interchangeable with deficit, and cuts can be hidden under layers and layers of different spending metrics.  Perhaps more than anything, this almost-casual deception is Brown’s greatest skill. Which is why it’s encouraging that the Tories have tried to demystify some of the fiscal debate, putting it into language that everyone can follow.  They’ve set out their “more for less” argument by referring to

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Three Sunday polls have growing Tory leads

We’re operating in or around the margin of error here, so we can’t be certain whether this is truly the result of the Budget – but it’s still striking that three polls in tomorrow’s papers have growing Tory leads.  The ICM poll for the News of the World has the Tories up one to 39 percent, Labour down one to 31, and the Lib Dems on 19.   YouGov’s daily tracker has the the Tories unchanged on 37 percent, Labour down one to 32, and the Lib Dems on 19.  And Anthony Wells is reporting a BPIX poll for the Mail on Sunday, which has the Tories on 37 percent, and

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The Chancellor’s debate is an opportunity for Osborne

So, we have a date for the Chancellor’s debate. Channel 4 News will host Darling, Cable and Osborne on Monday the 29th of March at 8pm.   I have a suspicion that George Osborne will come out of this debate rather well. He doesn’t have an expectations problem, unlike Cable, and is quick on his feet. Most importantly, the facts are on his side. It is also worth remembering, as one Tory MP reminded me earlier this week, that since becoming shadow Chancellor Osborne has never failed on a set-piece occasion.   One thing that Osborne must do in the debates is make sure he takes on Cable as well

Thursday

Alex Massie

The Election Debates will be Dreary. What would Improve Them? Debating!

More on the “exciting” debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg that are, inevitably, going to become the most “important” moments in this year’s election campaign. As I suggested at the Daily Dish, these are problematic for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is that they won’t be debates at all – at least not in the sense that anyone who’s ever taken part in any real debating would understand the term. Mr Eugenides puts it well: What’s ironic about this is that in the debating I know, it’s usually the quality of a team’s arguments that wins the day, not their style. Beyond a