Sian Davis believes that David Cameron won the first round in the televised battle for No 10.
It started out pretty much as you’d expect. On came David Cameron, looking composed but also orange (too much make up!), ready to be grilled by Jeremy Paxman, who duly asked him about food banks – why so many more of them since the Coalition came to power? After a few awkward moments, Cameron found a standard politician’s answer – more take-up because of higher visibility and anyway the economy is now on the up (reams of this stuff right out of the Tory manifesto). Later on Paxman slipped in a personal dig about various rich people that Cameron had employed or backed who had gone on to misbehave in some way. The implication was that to have picked so many wrong ‘uns Cameron must have something in common with them! Got to love Jezza’s interview style!
Then David Cameron took questions from the studio audience. Before coming back on the questions he made a show of thanking the questioners for the contributions they had made to the community – as a police officer, NHS worker or whatever. I suppose it gave him more time to think of an answer. At the end there was a bit of banter with presenter Kay Burley over Cameron’s consumption of shredded wheat: has he ever eaten three? This was a jokey reference to Cameron having set his own sell-by date – two terms as prime minister (he hopes), but a third would be overdoing it like three shredded wheat. If referring to the ad, he surely should have said Weetabix, but I guess it’s the kind of ‘joke’ you have to be in on…..
Then Ed Miliband came on. It was amusing right from the start watching him flounder as he took questions from the audience, pacing up and down the stage, and trying to laugh off the rather harsh question of why he was running for PM rather than his brother…but the worst was yet to come.
The ‘questions’ from Paxman to Miliband were more like a series of personal digs. Paxman brought up Miliband’s brother David again and pushed him (Ed) on whether he knows what people think of him. Paxo pointed out that some of his fellow Labour MPs had called him a liability and that people think he is a ‘North London geek’. It was as if he was trying to reduce Ed Miliband to tears! But then Millie bounced back with a line about ‘people have always underestimated me’ at their peril. And he scored strongly with a quickfire comment about Paxman thinking too highly of himself. You could almost hear the pegs coming down!
On twitter there were mixed reviews, though many people said they would vote for Miliband simply because Katie Hopkins says she will leave the country if he ever becomes PM! There was ‘much respect’ for Miliband for not breaking down after such a hard interview (even Paxman was heard asking him ‘are you all right?’ just before they went off air); though I have to say my favourite tweet was ‘can someone call Ed’s mum he needs to be picked up now! #BattleForNumber10’.
There are six more weeks to go before polling, and another debate next week (this one should be good, they are actually going to put Farage in it!) Watch this space…