Nick Clegg's lower profile could help him win the TV debates
The entertaining cover of The Economist this week has artist Derek Bacon showing a hoody that David Cameron forgot to hug, who has done a Banksy on poster of the three party leaders. Brown is ‘the devil you know’, Cameron ‘the devil you don’t’ and Clegg is ‘Who the devil’.
The cover, reproduced above, reflects a 20-page election briefing of some of the best writing and insight that can be found within The Economist (incidentally, here is a publication I am happy to subscribe to – check out a guest blog on News International taking The Times and The Sun behind a pay wall).
It made me think about the forthcoming television debates between the three main party leaders and the different expectations that people have. Will Gordon Brown’s undeniable intellect conquer David Cameron’s equally undeniable debating skills? A case of style over substance or perhaps experience over youth?
Wait, what about ‘Who the devil’ Nick Clegg? Well there is the interesting thing, no-one really knows how Clegg is going to perform. Indeed he has the least to lose and everything to gain. Expectations for Cameron’s performance are so sky high his PR people are trying to play it down, while Brown has to truly impress viewers to confound their low expectations of him. Clegg on the other hand can be seen as an alternative to these two big beasts and may well come across as the voice of reason rather than one of the snarling other two.
It happened in the Chancellors’ Debate on Channel 4 and commentators and viewers alike concurred that the Liberal Democrat’s Vince Cable was seen as the calm steady hand between Chancellor Alistair Darling and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne.
So great is this risk that according to the Telegraph, both major parties are set to focus on taking out Clegg’s Liberal Democrat legs.
Who do you fancy in the forthcoming debates? Do you think it will make much difference to how people will vote?