Further thoughts on the debate fall-out

How to handle a three-horse race? The one opinion poll since the first TV debate shows a massive boost for the Lib-Dems - up to 30% vs 33% for the tories and 28% for Labour. It remains to be seen whether other polls will match this and whether they will be able to sustain it, but it does raise some interesting questions (not the least of which is the inequalities in the system where such a result would still make Labour the largest party!). Without a question, the conservatives and labour now the need to address the Lib-Dem factor in their campaigns, but this presents a number of problems:

1. Labour's tactic so far has been to stress the similarity between the two parties in terms of policy. To suddenly start attacking those policies will be too much of a u-turn and will count against them. Its a policy that was always a bit risky, as it was just as likely to encourage disenchanted Labour voters to vote Lib-Dem as the other way around.

2. The rise in popularity of the Lib-Dems, however much or little it is sustained, vastly increases the probability that we will have a hung parliament. It will be a hung parliament in which Mr Clegg will quite possibly play the role of king maker (however he will deny it in advance). I, sure that neither party will want to hugely antagonise the man who they may need to work with after the election.

3. Any attacks actually only succeeds in keeping the focus on the lib-Dems and their policies. Whereas a week ago, Labour and the Tories were only discussing their own and each others policies, now we are getting comments on why scrapping trident is a bad idea, etc... But at the end of the day, the media attention is still on the Lib-Dems, which will play partly in their favour.

The tories response the this today seems to be to attack the notion of a hung parliament and say it would be bad for the country. We'll see how that plays out for them...

The Scottish Question...

Whilst I can kind of understand why Alex Salmond was a bit peeved at not being invited to the party on Thursday, it did seem a bit like the SNP was trying to play it both ways: complaining both that they weren't invited to participate and that most of what was being discussed didn't affect Scotland. For the record, I don't think they should have been invited - they are only fielding candidates in a tenth of the seats being contested on May 6th, and as far as their complaints go - I seem to remember in the last Scottish elections, their campaign made quite big issues out of some things that were not devolved matters (such as trident). Well, what goes around comes around. It will be interesting to see how an SNP government vowing not to cut public services works with a Westminster government making cutbacks, especially a tory one. You can't see the Westminster government continuing to fund Scotland at current levels in order to enable them not to make the cuts being made in England. So would the SNP make the cuts but use it as political capital come the next Scottish election or decide instead to use their tax varying powers to raise extra money in Scotland?