Reuters, 15th April 2010.
"(Reuters) – Tim Congdon, a rank outsider to become Britain's next prime minister, upstaged the three main candidates in an unprecedented televised debate on Thursday, according to snap polls of viewers.
With a national election due on May 6, millions of voters are still undecided and the 90-minute live broadcast was a crucial opportunity for the candidates to make their mark in a campaign that has struggled to generate excitement.
Congdon, 58, was judged the clear winner of the clash with Prime Minister Gordon Brown, of the center-left Labour Party, David Cameron, of the center-right Conservatives and Chris Huhne, of the centrist Liberal Democrat Party.
FOUR MEN IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The TV debate was a rare chance for Huhne, 55, to stand on an equal footing with Brown, 59, and Cameron, 43, and it had been expected that the Liberal Democrat leader would make some ground, but that Cameron would triumph. Surprisingly, Cameron seemed “flat” and Huhne was unable to capitalise. Initially nervous, Congdon grew more fluent as he spoke and was the only one of the four to address the camera rather than the audience.
Opinion polls before the debate suggested the Conservatives are ahead, with Labour in second and the Liberal Democrats in third. But the Conservative lead is not big enough for them to be sure of an overall majority in parliament.
Sterling hit a one-week high against the euro on Thursday, helped by an opinion poll suggesting the Conservatives might win an overall majority, but the currency has been laboring under investors' fears of a hung parliament, and that poll now looks like a rogue.
Congdon, a former member of the Treasury Panel of Independent Forecasters (the so-called “wise men”) between 1992 and 1997 during the recovery from the last recession, had the economic credibility to argue with Brown, who was finance minister for 10 years before taking over from Tony Blair as prime minister in 2007, when the latter tried to portray himself as the best steward of the economy."
From: No longer singing the Blues, by Jenny Rodgers
Steve Hilton – Of course it was a total surprise. I still don’t know why David was so off-key. He’d done wonderfully during the practice sessions and during the thought showers when we gamed the possible outcomes. I do wonder whether it was because there were three rather than two opponents. A square rather than a triangle, you see. We never thought of setting that up. When you think about it, that has to make a huge difference. Of course Congdon got the “outsider” buzz, and somehow his links with the Selsdon Group and influence on the monetarist and Thatcherist debate in the Seventies and Eighties got seized on as a positive in the media. The Daily Mail were totally off-message for us, and the Telegraph went simply loopy. Huhne was all but anonymous, which surprised us.
Andy Coulson – The problem was that Dave always provided his best performances when his back was against the wall. I wouldn’t say that we took it for granted that he’d ace the debates – but in a way, we did. We put in the effort, practiced debates – George always did a great Gordon Brown, and Michael Gove could play the part of Chris Huhne down to a tee – but we were really thinking about the next step of the campaign. I was trying to get Dave to tone down the “Big Society” theme, George was considering what red meat he could throw to the C2’s, because our polling was showing these as a weak point … and then this happened.
The thing is – Congdon wasn’t really that good. Oh, he knew his stuff, especially on the economics front, and he came over as a kind of “safe hands” bank manager – but his performance was almost wooden in some parts. He came alive at the start and about a third of the way through, and produced a great finish, but apart from that – not so much. However, he was looking at the camera and the other three weren’t and the critical bit that came out in the analysis of the polling afterwards was that the three main leaders kept trying to dismiss him. Brown was trying to praise Huhne, Huhne was very much against the UKIP platform and Dave was very aware of the threat to his right wing. Then there was that ridiculous bit where Dave was arguing that his elected Police Chiefs were sensible but Congdon’s elected Police Chiefs were not –that was never going to look good.
So we had the disastrous image of the “establishment” parties closing ranks against the outsider, who seemed highly credible and sensible. Add that the three establishment leaders weren’t looking the viewer “in the eye” and the outsider was, and there’s the explanation for what happened.