Tomorrow's debate - some thoughts.

The received wisdom in the press with regards to tomorrow's debate is that Cameron will do well on Europe, but Clegg will win on Afghanistan. Nobody seems to be giving Gordon Brown a chance to do well on anything. All three assumptions are worth holding up to question though.

Cameron on Europe - The tories position on Europe could possibly be the most popular of the three main parties, but they have been reluctant to focus on Europe so far in the campaign, why? Historically there have never been all that many votes in Europe come general election time. If anything, in the past, any focus on Europe has lost votes for the tories because it has not been talking about the issues that voters are really concerned about, it has shown up splits in the tory party and a focus on Europe has got to be good news for UKIP and the tories would be the main ones to lose votes if UKIP were to receive a surge in popularity. There's also another potential weakness in the tories over Europe. Under Cameron the conservatives have withdrawn from the main centre right groupings in the European parliament and allied themselves in a relative small grouping with parties from Poland and the Czech Republic and their Polish allies have policies which could definitely be seen as homophobic. If this was seized upon by opponents, following Chris Grayling's outbreak of putting his foot in it a couple of weeks ago, this could be a PR blunder for the tories.

Clegg on Afghanistan - the question here is whether the Lib Dem leader can really appear different from the other two when he has steadfastly refused to promise withdrawl within the next parliament. The Lib Dems stance is not a pronouncedly different from the others in order for them to take advantage of the anti-war sentiment in the same way Charles Kennedy did last time around. Afghanistan is almost certainly an issue that voters care about more than Europe, but even here polls indicate that for the majority it wouldn't influence their vote, possibly because none of the main parties are offering anything that different from each other. Clegg will also have to deal with the raised expectations following his performance last week - has he peaked too soon?

Brown has nothing to offer. Gordon Brown hs a proven track record in standing up for things like the millenium goals to alleviate global poverty and pushing for larger targets in combatting climate change. Whilst he hasn't always been successful in building an international agreement, there can be little doubting his commitment and passion in these areas. If he can focus the debate on to those kind of issues there's every chance that he will come out well. I would also tend to agree with him that he has more substance to offer than the other two. His challenge is to try and find a way of conveying this to public.

My own prediction would be for a reduced audience from last week and a very even debate with no clear winner. There might be a slight swing back from Lib Dem to Tory afterwards but nowhere near the level of movement we saw after the first debate.


On a separate note, tonight I'm off to hustings for my own Edinburgh North and Leith constituency. I think I'm just about decided that I'm not voting for the sitting Labour MP - his campaign has been too negative. In the current climate I do not need a politician telling me why I can't trust other politicians, I want to be told why I should trust any of them. I'm going hoping to be convinced by the Lib Dem candidate but suspect I won't be. I think I might well find myself liking the Greens the most, which could well confirm me in my current voting intentions which I would express as thus:

I want to vote Green, but in a close election like this it feels like a wasted vote so I'm probably going to vote yellow in the hope that this will bring a change to the system so that next time a vote Green would actually be worthwhile.