Debate Round-Up: Gordon Brown’s Pink Tie, Nick Clegg’s Susan Boyle And David Cameron’s Rushmore
DID you see the debate between Nick Clegg, David Cameron and Gordon Brown? Alan Johnson calls it an “acoustic session”. He’s right – the same old songs to a flatter tune. Did you watch it all? Or did you just watch The Good Wife and wait for the pundits and the myriad polls to tell you what went on?
Here’s a round-up of views:
Trevor Kavanagh (Sun): “Mr Brown grinned painfully… Nick Clegg slyly fuelled the rift between the Big Boys. But it was David Cameron who had the audience nodding in agreement”
Daily Mirror: “Brown crushes naive Cameron…”Gordon Brown, in pink ti and blue shirt was statesmanlike…”
The Weirdest And Best General Election Pictures
Bob Roberts (Mirror): “David Cameron was left floundering last night as Gordon Brown repeatedly outsmarted him…”
Tony Parsons (Mirror): “It felt massive. Princess Diana on her wedding day, England in a World cup semi-final…bigger…”
Patrick O’Flynn (Express): “In face he [Brown] came over as Gimli, the grumpy dwarf in the Lord of the Rings films…”
Quentin Letts (Mail): “…the whole thing was zestier than US presidential debates. Better TV”
Judi James (Star): “Cameron stood stony-faced and slightly scary, so presidential that he looked like he’d bene chipped from Mount Rushmore”
Times: “Mr Clegg played the outsider, opening with a reference to his fellow contenders as “these two”. He sought to portray problems over immigration and crime as being due to the failings of both Labour and Tory governments. “The more they attack each other, the more they sound the same,” he said.
The Weirdest And Best General Election Pictures
Edmund Conway (Telegraph): “The most surreal moment came about 20 minutes in, when each of the protagonists took turns to accuse the others of failing to come clean about their spending plans. For once, all of them were right.”
Marina Hyde (pub): “It was, however, an indisputable fact that, 10 minutes in, the screens showing the hockey were getting more viewers. Twenty minutes in and the migration upstairs to watch the football/darts/paint dry was almost complete. Thirty minutes in seemed as good a time as any to inquire of one man who was winning. “Phil Taylor’s losing,” he growled. “I’m watching the darts. I don’t follow politics because they’re all the same, and nothing changes. I follow darts.”
Autonomous Mind: “This election is the most sanitised and ideology-free in our history, which is why we can expect collective yawning and mass TV channel changing tonight as Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg ‘debate’ in a format that is more regimented than the North Korean armed forces”
Gerald Warner (Telegraph): “It was a re-run of Britain’s Got Talent, on the same television channel – with Nick Clegg in the role of Susan Boyle. At any moment one expected the cameras to pan in on Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden and Piers Morgan looking gobsmacked. “I dreamed a dream in time gone by…” (About Gladstone boring for Britain, Asquith cutting the House of Lords down to size and Lloyd George preying on our wallets and typists.)
Gideoen Rachman (FT): “Clegg’s main tactic was obvious but effective. He portrayed the two other leaders as representatives of an exhausted system, and went some way to capturing the crucial banner as the “change” candidate. He was also effective in giving the impression that he alone was being honest about the fiscal dilemmas that Britain is going to face. His attack on David Cameron for suggesting that fiscal problems can be solved by cutting “waste” was skilful. Of course, there were also contradictions in Clegg’s presentation. On the one hand, he argued that “cutting waste” is largely an irrelevance – and then he reeled off a list of wasteful projects that needed to be cut. But apparently it didn’t matter.”
The Weirdest And Best General Election Pictures
Gary Gibbon (C4): “David Cameron hasn’t particularly used the middle position in the same way that Vince Cable did in Channel 4’s Ask the Chancellors debate and that’s because he largely ignores Nick Clegg – unlike Gordon Brown, who, as I said before, is trying to embrace the unwilling Lib Dem leader in a loveless armlock.”
Melissa Kite (Telegraph): “Before long Gordon Brown, perhaps sensing the way the wind was blowing, had a new catchphrase: “I agree with Nick”. After he said it for about the 17th time, it was getting really tedious. David Cameron didn’t set the world alight but was perfectly fine – likeable, reasonably convincing, did what he said on the tin, so to speak.”
So say the experts…
The Weirdest And Best General Election Pictures
Posted: 16th, April 2010 | In: Reviews Comments (5) | TrackBack | Permalink
