ding, ding - round 2

So we had the second leaders debate last night. After the first round it was going to be interesting to see how they would try to mix things up a bit (or not). It has been generally agreed by pundits and in the media over the last week that Clegg won the last round decisively, I agreed with them, but would he keep the momentum going or run out of steam, I eagerly tuned in to find out.

My early impression was that Brown was much improved, less wooden and more natural, and that Cameron had lost his apparent nervousness from the previous round although he still came across as vague to me; Clegg seemed about the same, perhaps a little repetitive. I thought the questions were a little weaker this time around, but my interest perked up when someone asked about the forthcoming Pope's visit to the UK and what the leaders thought about arcane Catholic dogma on topics such as science, abortion, contraception and gay rights etc.. The fact that such a question even appeared at all is a great boost for those of us who have been pushing a pro-rational and secular agenda for the last few years, such a question would have been inconceivable pre-9/11 in my view. Unfortunately though, the responses were apologetic drivel, Cameron towed the line, "we should respect all faiths", what a load of crap, why should we respect any old rubbish anyone chooses to believe just because its called "faith", Brown referred to his own Presbyterian background and supported the visit, he did confirm his position in opposition to some of the dogma but didn't really address the point of the question. According to what I read in the press, Clegg is supposedly an atheist, he confirmed that he "does not have faith" , this was encouraging and took guts I thought, however he mentioned that his wife was a Catholic and his kids were being indoctrinated into that mythology (my own translation) so I suspect he knows where his bread is buttered on the question of the Pope and he slotted straight into an apologetic track after that not really addressing the substance of the point. So, I wasn't impressed on that one and the question fizzled out with general consensus between all of them, no concrete thread for me to pull on that might help in my own deliberations.

The topics jumped around a bit, they talked about immigration, defence, Europe and the economy but I didn't really glean anything new, all of them repeated responses from the previous debate verbatim which was disappointing. There was a little more emotion as Cameron and Brown clashed on Labour "leaflets lies", which of course is trivial and boring but at least adrenalin levels spiked a little which is good to see albeit I would have preferred them to get animated and "off script" about a more strategic issue.

So who won? My take was that it was much closer this week, Brown did better, Clegg about the same and Cameron slightly better (but he still looked like a PR flim-flam merchant to me), too close to call but on the whole I find myself supporting Brown and Clegg more in terms of policies.

If you are having trouble deciding how to vote take a look at this WEB site http://www.votematch.org.uk you never know it might help... (PS when I did it it put the LD's slightly ahead of Labour for me)