Mamma mia! The last Leaders' Debate has come and gone, so what on earth are we going to do on Thursday evenings now? I was half expecting an announcement at the end of the show telling us that the Debates will be coming back for a new series in the autumn. Next Thursday of course is the election itself, which will be a straggly, bleary-eyed, long-drawn-out affair. How much nicer if it could be compressed into a crisp 90 minutes and then decided on a viewers' poll.
But I'm just wallowing in the Neverland aura which has shrouded this entire election campaign. It has been a phony war waged in a media limbo, where (as sterner observers have pointed out) the hardest questions have consistently been fudged and avoided. Everybody knows massive budget cuts are coming, yet Nick Clegg is promising to ease the tax burden for the lower paid, Gordon Brown is still promising a never-ending escalator of tax credits, and Evil Dave is going to cut inheritance tax for a handful of rich bastards. "It's so unfair!" wails Gordon, like Harry Enfield's Kevin the Teenager (David Dimbleby, not standing for any nonsense, pictured below)
Still, what did emerge from Debate 3 was a clearer sense of demarcation between the threesome. Cameron's notion of devolving power to parents, teachers and voters in general is looking less far-fetched in comparison to Brown's "you can't stop spending" mantra, as the impending election date prompts premonitions of harsh reality and fiscal armageddon. Nick Clegg, meanwhile, seemed less sure-footed than in his previous appearances, not so much offering a clear alternative to the other parties as nervously stealing titbits from both of them. According to the notorious post-match "worm" graphic, viewers liked his idea of all three parties collaborating on a joint national policy for confronting the economic situation, but can you really see it happening?The instant polls had Cameron as the clear winner of the final Debate, and I'd have to agree. He was better prepared, more fluent and more confident than the other two, and finally turned a bit of serious artillery on some of Brown's more preposterous allegations. At last, he quashed Gordo's canard about "taking 6 billion pounds out of the economy", explaining that "the economy" and "the government" are not synonymous. When Brown started boasting about how "I had to nationalise Northern Rock" and save the global financial system, Dave pointed out that he also knighted Fred the Shred, the Dick McDastardly of the Royal Bank of Scotland, and spent a decade crawling up the backside of the City of London.
He also suggested, both in words and by his rather imperious demeanour, that Brown's rantings now resemble symptoms of a terminal condition. It must have been a feat of willpower for Gordo to drag himself onto the podium after being put through the wringer over the "bigotgate" episode in Rochdale, but he did look very like Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, just before he has a nervous breakdown on the witness stand. That weird grin that keeps pinging on and off like a faulty kitchen striplight is crying out for specialist attention (pictured left - Humphrey Bogart as Queeg, blaming everybody else)Meanwhile, in the world beyond David Dimbleby's TV heaven, many punters are mad as hell. They think the politicians are shifty, conniving and dishonest, flatly refusing to answer basic questions about the economy, tax rises and immigration. But the Governor of the Bank of England says that the party which has to implement the punitive financial measures required will be so loathed that it will be thrown out of government for 30 years. If you were Dave, Cleggy or Gordo, how would you play it?
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