Thursday, April 22, 2010

12 Things To Look Out For Tonight

1. Whether David Cameron and Gordon Brown look down the camera.
2. How many times any of them say "I agree with..."
3. Gordon Brown's planned attempts at humour.
4. Nick Clegg's joke about going from Churchill to Hitler in a week.
5. Any sign of hubris from Nick Clegg.
6. How many times Nick Clegg mentions to two old parties.
7. An appeal to Nick Clegg for UKIP votes over his In/OUT referendum
8. Whether Adam Boulton imposes himself more on the debate than Alastair Stewart did.
9. How David Cameron lays into Nick Clegg without appearing to.
10. If Nick Clegg can escape the dog's breakfast of his policy on replacing Trident.
11. How many minutes it will be before Nick Clegg mentions LibDem position on Iraq.
12. How many times Nick Clegg says "we got it right on Iraq".


I'll be on 5 Live at 7.30pm and then after the debate with Tony Livesey doing the pre and post debate commentary.

24 comments:

Simon Gardner said...

“An appeal to Nick Clegg for UKIP votes”

Having had the misfortune to meet a lot of those deeply unpleasant UKIP voters, I find this concept exceedingly improbable.

neil craig said...

I don't think the referendum is just aimed at UKIP voters. It will appeal to a lot of mainstream Conservatives too unless Cameron matches it. The LibDem weakness is that, having broken this referendum promise before it must be presumed to be another deliberate lie unless proven otherwise. Cameron has a problem on the referendum promise too but not nearly as severe as Clegg's.


We may see a lot of the people who voted UKIP at the Euro election going for the LibDems to break the PR logjam. That is a point on which the Conservatives should certainly move.

Anonymous said...

Looks like it's all about Nick Clegg again. Brilliant!

#nickcleggsfault

Rupert Murdoch will not decide the outcome of this election. The public will.

The Tories won't win this election.

Julian Bray said...

Also look for the state of Brown's fingernails he has been biting them again...sign of acute stress...nice list Iain...

Manx_Matt said...

So shall we just ignore the irrelevant Cameron then, as your post suggests? Is he and his 'policies' not something to look out for?

tutor2u said...

Number 13: Cameron abandoning the lecturn and walking towards the questioner to being a "conversation with a voter". He's bound to try it

Demetrius said...

Sorry, count me out, there is more interesting and real stuff to watch.

Demetrius said...

Sorry, count me out, there are more interesting things to watch.

Anonymous said...

One question I don't expect to be asked or answered - "After the three-way betrayal over the EU 'Treaty', why should any of the electorate trust any of you ever again?".

Shame, because a) It needs asking; b) Cameron would win that question, even if we all know his assurances are pie-in-the-sky.

No doubt there will be a token question on the EU, but don't expect to hear any constructive answer.

Throughout the debate my worry is that Cameron just won't be chippy. Every misrepresentation from the other guys, he needs to be on top of it. George showed him how to do it on the DP debate the other day.

PS Iain, Surely UKIP voters would rather die than contribute to the furtherance of Nick Clegg's political career. Not that that will stop him trying of course - the man may be a 'nice bloke' but he's also an utter charlatan.

p smith said...

I will be interested to see whether Clegg uses the opportunity tonight to accuse Cameron of sitting in tacit silence while his agents engage in personal smears on him. And let us be clear, Coulson has been feeding different lines of enquiry to the Mail, Telegraph and Express unless you believe in the tooth fairy and the random possibility that three different papers would come up with three different smears on Clegg based on events that happened years ago, all on the same morning.

More to the point, the public can smell a rat here and if Dave were put on the spot on live TV in front of 5 million voters, he has nowhere to go. Clegg should challenge him to denounce the personal smears. If Cameron does he risks alienating the very newspapers he has asked to carry out his dirty work so he won't do that. If Cameron denies that he has anything to do with it, no one will believe that (and Brown will weigh in on Clegg's side). Either way and with no risk, Clegg will have turned it around leaving the mud sticking to Dave.

I know the received wisdom is that the Lib Dem bounce will fade but it is just possible that the Tories could crater and the Lib Dems move further ahead.

Tapestry said...

Cameron could trump Clegg's conditional IN/OUT referendum offer, by saying that he agrees with it.

And will be offering just such a referendum during the Parliament without any Clegg-like conditions.

consistent. clear. powerful.

Clegg is risking Britain's EU membership without any attempt to renegotiate and get a better deal.

Cameron agrees the issue needs settling, but first let's attempt a renegotiation, rather than a simple withdrawal. If the renegotiation fails to get a satisfactory result, then the people will choose withdrawal. But first the work has to b done.

Clegg's approach is irresponsible.

Unknown said...

These are all good items for making a drinking game out of tonight's debate.

Jess The Dog said...

Will Brown and Clegg back each other on Europe? That's the main issue that the public and the Tories agree entirely on, to the exclusion of the other parties.

wild said...

All Clegg has to do is convince possible Labour Party voters that if they vote for him that they will continue to get a Labour government, possible Liberal Democrat voters that he hates the Tories as much as they do, and possible Conservative voters that he is nether of the above.

Ian C. L said...

13. How many times Brrroooon says "let's be honest" or any variation of

This is clearly the latest catch phrase dreamt up by those paragons of virtue - Balls, Mandlescum, Campbell

Bird said...

The Sun got a big sympathy vote for Brown over their bullying allegations.
Now they're doing the same for Clegg with today's coverage.
Whose side did they say they were on?

Anonymous said...

I've discovered that it doesn't matter what they do, some people will vote the same way they always have... Regardless!!
http://dissentingprole.blogspot.com/2010/04/politics-is-funny-thing.html

Not a sheep said...

"we were right on Iraq, unlike the two old parties" is on my BINGO card

Anonymous said...

So it's going to be all about Clegg again tonight?

javelin said...

Julie (socialism is best) Cunningham on Tonight programme talking about the national debt. She must be spitting teeth.

Size of national debt = 796 billion

increases at 1/3 million a minute

half the uk economic output

public blame banks and wars

javelin said...

Some more than stats from Tonight prgramme

every family owes £30k

incomes taxes pay half of taxes

a family on salaries of £30k + £18k pays total tax of 37.5% tax (£18k).

Sean said...

I never fail to be amazed by the number of problems that Gordon Brown promises to fix in the next year that he's conspicuously failed to address in the past 13 years.

Andy in Newcastle said...

Cameron much improved this week and no free ride for St Nick either. No knockout blows, but then there weren't any last week either. Next week's on the BBC could be very good indeed!

Anonymous said...

I think Nick Clegg was battered on Trident, rightly so. The Lib Dems want to disarm yet haven't got the bottle to come out and say so. They try and tinker around the edges by saying there is a cheaper way of doing it, which there isn't

We have covered the issue here

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2010/04/a-cheaper-deterrent/

and in general terms, looking at the defence stance of all the major parties here

http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/tag/election-2010/