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Thursday 29 April 2010

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‘This must be the Big Society David Cameron is banging on about.’

Thursday, 29th April 2010

The final TV debate - live blog

Peter Hoskin 8:15pm

2046, PH: Question on tax. Brown can barely wait to get into the Tories' inheritance tax plans. "Richest 3,000..." etc. A shame, for him, that this is a popular policy.

2044, PH: At last, Cameron hits back against Brown claim that the NI cut is "taking money out of the economy". He says: "Gordon is saying that the government is the economy." He does well, too, to characterise Brown's position as "let's keep wasting money this year, and raise taxes the next."

2043, PH: ...which lets Clegg slide in with a request to "take this beyond...

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Ten questions for Gordon Brown tonight

Fraser Nelson 6:38pm

By rights, Gordon Brown should fear this debate on the economy more than any other. Here are ten questions I would like to hear him answer:

1. You told Gillian Duffy yesterday that you have a "deficit plan to cut the debt in half over four years." This was a lie, wasn't it?

Our debt is £771bn now. Your deficit plan - ie, to run huge deficits for years - will actually double it to £1,406 billion within four years according to the Treasury. The debt for which...

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Cameron’s tactical dilemma

James Forsyth 6:04pm

One thing to watch tonight is David Cameron’s strategy for dealing with Nick Clegg’s plan to take peoples’ first ten thousand pounds of income out of tax. This policy is clear and appealing and one that many Conservatives like. Indeed, Cameron himself called it a ‘beautiful policy’ in the first debate. So it is imperative, that the Tories have a way to try and defuse it.

During the campaign, the Tories have used two different attacks on it. One is to criticise it from the left, to argue that the policy is...

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Dear Dave,

Daniel Korski 5:02pm

Tonight is about the economy - the most important issue troubling voters. Amazing, though, your economic mesage has not been particularly clear. Incredible given what the Labour government has done, I know, but true.

George Osborne cannot seem to win over the City; the Lords of Finance never miss an opportunity to tell the FT that they don't like/trust him.

Your deficit-reduction message is on the other hand clear - but voters don't seem to like it, believe it is actually necessary and seem worried about the "Sword of Cable",...

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Should Cameron attack Brown or Clegg?

David Blackburn 4:14pm

Obviously, yesterday's disaster has written-off tonight's debate for Brown. But ‘Bigot-gate’ is obscuring the European bailout crisis. Allister Heath and Iain Martin surmise that the euro crisis gives David Cameron a further advantage, if he can exploit it. Iain writes:

‘Mr. Cameron has just been dealt a potential ace by the markets. It will be interesting to see if he realizes this and works out a way of playing it in a manner that voters understand.

The worsening crisis in the euro zone has attracted very little attention

...

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Dubious Lib Dem tactics, continued...

Ed Howker 2:16pm

Last week, I reported on dubious expenses scheming by two Liberal Democrat MPs – Paul Rowen in Rochdale and John Leech in Manchester Withington – and subsequently wrote a blog fdetailing Paul Rowen’s method of funding his political campaigning at public expense.

Inevitably, having failed to respond to my questions, Rowen stated that the pieces were part of a “Tory smear campaign” – but that’s just not the case. In fact, in the last week, I’ve received a wodge of correspondence from constituents disgusted not just by the candidates’ questionable fundraising methods but also about the...

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A tale of two images

Peter Hoskin 1:09pm

Labour's, erm, "poster" ahead of the TV debate tonight:

And Coffee House's take on what Number 10 might look like on May 7th (with thanks to the great Carla Millar for putting the photo-montage together):

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To what extent should Cameron and Clegg use Brown's gaffe against him?

Peter Hoskin 1:03pm

Given the timing of Brown's Mega Gaffe, you've got to wonder how it will play out in the TV debate tonight. Will it, for instance, mean that he gets a hostile reception? Will he try to defuse the situation by repeating his apologies, or perhaps by making some sort of light out of it ("Yesterday, I met a woman in Rochdale...")? Will it overwhelm the deeply serious economic questions which need asking and answering? And so on.

There's one question, in particular, though, that I'd be keen to hear CoffeeHousers' views on:...

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The morning after the duffing up

James Forsyth 12:09pm

It will be hard to isolate the influence of ‘bigot-gate’ on the polls as any taken after today will also include the effect of the final debate. But a few things are worth noting. First, this will be a ‘slow-burn’: Brown’s dismissal of such a large section of the electorate will take a while to sink in. It’s the kind of thing that is going to get discussed for days. I was doing a phone-in on Radio Five last night and those working on the programme told me that it was one of their...