Regular readers will know that I cannot abide Miliband and most of what he stands for, but that bias aside I still think he was the biggest loser in the Question Time Leaders’ Debate where there were no winners.
The woman running a small business pretty much buried Ed Balls even though he was not in the room! If UK plc were listed at Companies House, Balls would be a disqualified person along with the rest of the Labour 2010 Exchequer squad.
Miliband effectively sent all his Scottish Labour MPs their P45s by categorically ruling out any sort of alliance with the SNP; and then he painted himself into a corner by stating that none of his Manifesto commitments were open to negotiation. Why did he just not tell the audience in Leeds that if he has the most seats on 8th May he will be forming a minority government and daring Alex Salmond (Nicola Sturgeon’s proxy) to sink it?
Cameron came across quite well for once because wearing a suit meant that he could not play that sleeves rolled up working man image that has looked so stupid for the last week. In typical politician fashion he went with weasel words when asked about child benefits so that he did not actually make any commitment about caps or cuts. That was probably pretty stupid given the small amount of money involved (in overall spending terms).
Clegg had a tough job of actually making any points because every time he tried to explain anything that the LibDems had achieved in the Coalition the audience interrupted, starting with the very first predictable question about tuition fees when the questioner just did not want to hear the explanation that Clegg has already given numerous times in the last three months.
Just for good measure, Labour’s Hillary Benn continued to dig the economy hole even deeper on Daily Politics trying to explain away the structural deficit that the 1997-2010 government created when most of the world’s other developed economies were running a surplus. Whilst he was backing Miliband’s “no SNP deal” strategy, Andy Burnham was contradicting that elsewhere. Somebody take the shovel off them...
I wonder if anybody from the Electoral Commission was watching the guy from the BNP because he virtually confessed on air that their submission to them was factually inaccurate, which was illegal last time I looked.