It was one year ago tonight that Nick took on Nigel. And tonight he takes on Nigel and five others. All of them will be queuing up to attack him. Nigel because Nick’s open, liberal, internationalist stance is the antithesis of all he stands for, Ed, Nicola, Leanne and Natalie because that’s what they do and Dave because the last thing he wants is another coalition with the Nick. After all, he did tell the Daily Mail that he’d govern like a proper Tory if it weren’t for Nick. When the Prime Minister talks about Ed Miliband being in Alex Salmond’s pocket, you can tell he feels that he’s been in Nick Clegg’s for the past five years.
But lets just take a moment and smile. This is the first major occasion like this at a UK level when there will be an equal number of men and women on that stage. I wish it wasn’t remarkable and I hope that in my lifetime it won’t be. Natalie Bennett, Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood and Julie Etchingham, you are making history.
So, let’s look at the basic housekeeping first. The debate can be seen on STV and ITV live and you can watch online on the Lib Dem website here. I will probably watch the BBC News Channel, where, alongside the debate, they’ll have the Worm, which shows selected viewers’ instant reactions to what is being said.
Format
Each leader gets a one minute statement. Then there are four question and answer sessions on the topics of health, the economy, immigration and the future of the UK. Each section, after each leader has had an uninterrupted minute to answer the question, lasts for up to 18 minutes.
My advice to Nick
The last topic should give Nick a chance to take a distinctive line. He needs to show that Lib Dems are the true guardians of devolution in Scotland. The SNP is only really interested in independence, so much so that it’s taken its eye off the ball when it comes to actually running the country. Labour and the Tories are not natural supporters of more powers to Holyrood and it’s Lib Dems who made the way in ensuring that substantial new powers were announced as part of the Smith Commission.
On the economy, Nick has to be very clear that what those business leaders backed yesterday is not what the Conservatives offer. He needs to show that it’s our party who have made the difference. We all remember what happened the last time the Tories were in charge in a recession. This recovery has been achieved without mass unemployment and with much greater fairness. He has very little time to tell that story. He will do the anchoring in the centre ground stuff that is judged to work with those who would consider voting for us, but he also needs to tug on the heartstrings and show off our values. He needs to show that when we came into power, we concentrated what little cash we found in the backs of drawers and under the sofa cushions in the Treasury on the poorest and most vulnerable. Giving extra resources to disadvantaged kids in school does so much for their future life chances and is already increasing attainment. Transforming attitudes to mental health and improving services is so important to the 1 in 4 people who suffer mental ill health and those who know and love them.
Nick has something to say that should appeal to our natural voters, to those Labour and Conservative voters we need to vote for us in key marginal seats. There are an awful lot of people out there who have been helped by a Liberal Democrat policy, across all sections of society: the young people who have benefitted from apprenticeships, women from tax cuts, parents from shared parental leave and additional help with childcare, the most disadvantaged kids who are getting nursery education from two years old. He doesn’t have long to make sure that he speaks to all of those groups of people.
The most important thing is for him to be himself and not to put out too many contrived lines. He needs to be the reasoned and humorous person he is. He also needs to make a case for the Liberal Democrats still to be there in government, to show what still needs fixing and will never be without us there.. He needs to show how both Labour and Conservative parties are deeply reactionary forces.
Of course, he’s not going to be the only insurgent on that stage. That will make for an interesting dynamic. The thing is, if the whole thing turns into a rammy, the Conservatives will make hay for the rest of the campaign about impending chaos if they don’t get a majority.
Nicola Sturgeon will be one to watch. She will have less scope to do what she did during the head to head debates during the referendum where she shouted over people. However, her tactic when she’s questioned is to fire back questions at her inquisitor at an incredible rate. That’s possible, but much more difficult with 7 people on the stage. . Her objective is not to win the debate. She is playing the long game of achieving Scottish independence. Scaring middle England into voting Tory will be a big part of her strategy because the SNP see a Tory majority government as a route to a majority for independence. She has no interest in taking part in a coalition at Westminster. Why would she want to take away her opportunity to blame it for everything at every opportunity? If I were Nick, I wouldn’t be explicitly excluding her from something she doesn’t want to be a part o anyway. He has too much else to do in a short time. She has every chance of having lefty England loving her and small c conservative England being terrified of her. She would consider that a win.
It’s going to be a fun night. Come and watch along with us on Twitter. For the smutty minded amongst you, there was talk of a #massdebate hashtag, or you can choose the official #leadersdebate. I’ll be back with some post match thought much later.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
Follow @libdemvoice.org on Bluesky
Like us on Facebook
Subscribe to our feed
Sign-up for our daily email digest
Back on the campaign trail
1963: London's summer of the Hoverbus
Have resignations led to a rethink?
Steve J Smith
nigel hunter
Chloe
Abrial Jerram
26 Comments
I know it chimes with my off-made points about our party but Clegg is at his best when he speaks as a Liberal and not as a soggy centrist. Early on he was far too much of the latter and I was genuinely wondering if I was watching the same debate as the LDV tweeters.
Liberal Democracy has so much more to offer than ‘borrow less than Labour, cut less than the Tories’. Nick Clegg appears too often not to recognise this. For me Clegg’s best moments were when he summed up on the NHS: funding, mental health and proper social care.
Oft !!
Shame there was no question on Defence and Foreign Policy.
I think Clegg did the best. But if I were only a casual watcher I would have said Miliband. My thoughts wouldn’t have gone to Clegg much because he leads a fairly small party.
The centre ground is crowded, but it doesn’t mean we abandon it – it means we build alliances and stop splitting the vote – both in elections and on opinion polls!
Sturgeon was indeed the one to watch. She won the night hands down. But as I keep noting, she and Salmond are the most competent politicians in British politics. (I said competent, not likeable or liberal or anything else, just competent). Both she and the Leanne Wood had an astonishing inbuilt advantage for voters in their countries – they were in effect the only representatives of Scotland and Wales.
Overall it was well organised and good TV and actually a good advertisement for multi-party politics.
Tony
Clegg positioned himself as equidistant between Conservatives and Labour. Is this what Lib Dems want?
Also, Clegg repeated the Tory lies about Labour causing the global financial crisis of the late 2000s.
It was great to see women leaders, they showed the squabbling men in suits up.
@ TG – “Both she and the Leanne Wood had an astonishing inbuilt advantage for voters in their countries – they were in effect the only representatives of Scotland and Wales.”
Leanne Wood certainly does not represent me, and given the fact they have succeeded in representing wales in westminster with less than 10% of MP’s for a generation (?) i’d say a lot of people agree with me…
I must have been watching a different debate to everyone else- as I thought Sturgeon’s performance was quite weak, along with Leanne Wood. They were far too vague, and confirmed that their parties live in a cloud cuckoo, fantasy world, completely detached with the pressures of running the UK. Sturgeon hardly spoke, and didn’t go into enough detail. Nick Clegg did OK, and it reminded me of the 2010 debates where he looks directly at the camera, and used hand gestures to explain things, also he was standing with his hands in his pockets, like in 2010. He got a good balance and combination of attacking the Tories, and defending the coalition’s record. Cameron looked slick, statesmanlike, and seemed to ooze authority and leadership, i.e showed he was prime minister material. Also, he looked really tall in comparison to Sturgeon, towering above her. Miliband did better than he does at PMQ’s, but does not look or sound like a Prime Minister.
WildColonialBoy is right. Labour didn’t cause the global financial crisis; they just helped it along a lot, particularly being easy with increasing inequality, banker’s bonuses and PFI giveaways.
i’m not sure the lib-dem’s will benefit from clegg’s concluding remarks on the scale of debt interest and how it impacts public spending.
it was a worthy point well presented, and one i’ve been keen to make here, but wouldn’t you just nod and then vote for cameron to enact it for you?
A great night for the women, not just numerically; from where this viewer was sitting, Sturgeon, Bennett and Wood (roughly in that order) were head and shoulders above the four men.
Miliband and Cameron both performed reasonably and cancelled each other out. Unusually, the polls seem to agree with me on that.
Farage, as ever, was amusing but repellent.
Clegg seemed like a spare part, not knowing what to do. His opening salvo against Cameron came across as risibly phoney after spending most of the last five years as Cameron’s lickspittle. I could visualise him apologising to Cameron for that in advance. The only memorable thing Clegg said was when he declared to the audience that he was going to be up front about his tuition fees pledge break – then turned to Miliband and, er, tried to blame Labour for it, even though he’d claimed to have a costed plan to abolish fees, not just vote against them. Apart from that, he seemed to plump for middle-of-the-road anonymity, reflected in him finishing in the middle of the pack in the post-debate polls for both best and worst performer. I suspect he went in to the debate with modest expectations, and met them.
Agree with Tony Greaves. Sturgeon won by a country mile. Clegg was a bystander.
What did Sturgeon win on? She was extremely vague, full of pre-rehearsed wishy-washy, clichéd nonsense. . I’d love someone to quote me something in particular she said that put her above the rest.. David Cameron wiped the floor with her and Miliband on the economy.
WildColonialBoy 2nd Apr ’15 – 10:33pm
“Clegg positioned himself as equidistant between Conservatives and Labour. Is this what Lib Dems want?”
Setting aside what we Lib Dems members want, judging by early public reaction via polls and social media, the viewing electorate weren’t that fussed about the equidistance message either.
I thought Nick Clegg might actually have made a greater positive impact with viewers than he did. That he didn’t shows something of the uphill struggle facing us.
Gary Mc
OK Gary I will give you one example as requested. ” … A right to education based on ability and not the ability to pay”
Julian Gibb. But what does that actually mean? Where do uou draw the ability threshold?
Tabman
Free education! Like Nicola I received a free University education as did my wife and two children. Those who deny following generations the same right should be ashamed.
@Stephen H, thanks, you have helped me finally understand my own concerns about Clegg in the first half. I thought as the debate went on, he got into it and did well, if not fantastic. However, too much of the start was fluffy, I am not Labour, nor am I a Tory.
The soggy centrist (as you aptly put it) worked at the last election when he was the only other choice on the meal, but now there are three other very competent and now relatively diverse party leaders standing next to him (as well as one racist) for the I am none of the above vote. These other leaders all have very distinct messages to go with their ‘I am none of the above’ message. It was when Nick got on to what we have done (e.g. early years election) that he started to show why he and the Lib Dems do have much to offer the British public.
Nicola Sturgeeon projected well as a voice and image. Her stand for free education was (if most of us here are honest) what we believe instinctively as Liberals, but then the format did not press her to explain how it would all be paid for and how universities would be protected.
By contrast Miliband, Farage and Bennett are handicapped by their voice and how their voice is part of their image. Cameron and Clegg are more neutral in this respect. In terms of performance, I thought Clegg was better than five years ago. For me his best line was saying in defence of foreign aid that it is not right to make ourselves better off at the expense to the poorest people on the planet.
But the event was much, much more about image than substance: apart from the sound and image of each leader, overall there was a clear visual image with the message that multi-party politics has established itself in the UK.
Julian Gibb – “Free education! Like Nicola I received a free University education as did my wife and two children. Those who deny following generations the same right should be ashamed.”
As did I.
Only when I went to University only about 20% of school leavers went to University, a figure that has now roughly doubled.
That was government policy, supported by the public apparently, but both parties here appear to have been too dull to anticipate the cost implications of doubling numbers in universities.
Some choices:
Maintain numbers at ~50% and have fees
Maintain numbers at ~50% and bump taxes to scrap fees
Reduce numbers to ~33% and have the option to scrap fees
Reduce numbers to ~33% and use the spare cash to have a party / reduce the deficit / do some terribly liberal things
@Jedibeeftrix
“Reduce numbers to ~33% and use the spare cash to have a party / reduce the deficit / do some terribly liberal things”
Most people would regard education as a terribly liberal thing. It’s funny how the idea of spending money on HE education provokes these demands of “but how are we going to pay for it?” in a way that no other area of policy seems to. One would think that HE was somehow less worthy (and less of an effective investment) than everything else the government spends our money on.
Test that notion.
Put a penny on income tax to fund free UK university education.
But I’ll put money on lib-dem hand wringers getting all worried over whether they are being fair to those who will never got to university.
Maybe in 2020 that deficit can be corrected by a further penny on income tax to fund apprenticeships…. Until people start worrying about the other billion forms of unfairness this will introduce.
Or, we can just accept that doubling numbers means it cannot be ‘free’ anymore.
@ all, re my comment – “Shame there was no question on Defence and Foreign Policy.”
Now being discussed on The World at One (R4).
Apparently there will be a BBC organised Defence and Foreign Policy debate in the coming weeks, i sincerely hope it is properly covered here.
Nicola Sturgeon on the right to free education was the spine tingly bit for me, it was good tv and really just confirmed what we knew/suspected – ukip are content to br cast as pantomime villains, the greens and plaid are also-rans, the lib dems are correct about most things but are hampered by the self-inflicted damage to the leader, cameron is much more likeable than his party and ed miliband is a student politician from a leafy background. Hmmn.
the other interesting thing was how little was cast at clegg by miliband and, especially, cameron. Guess who they each want to be in govt with in a few weeks! Interesting that clegg’s toe-curling moments were his attacks on cameron, odd, because I know the parties are separate, and I know that the coalition is over. somehow though it just seemed cheap.
Julian Gibb. OK Gary I will give you one example as requested. ” … A right to education based on ability and not the ability to pay”
Nick Clegg tried that in 2010, and look what happened. It sounds great in theory in a fantasy, cloud cuckoo world, but unfortunately in the real world life does not work like that. The fact is universities cost money, and the stats show that graduates earn much more than people who didn’t go to university, so surely they should make some contribution for the benefits they’ve received. In England and Wales If you don’t earn over £21k, you pay nothing back, but Scottish students get a freebie. The SNP have never had to deal with a proper UK budget, and do not understand how to run an economy efficiently, believing in a free for all. Sturgeon’s line was indicative of the “something for nothing culture” prevalent in Scotland, which George Osborne rightly ridiculed Labour for, and Nick Clegg should have had a go at her, as he was in exactly the same position 5 years ago and then realized the harsh realities of government were completely different from the cloud cuckoo, fantasy world of Opposition and the limited Scottish Parliament.