The daily take

The oxygen of publicity

The Liberal Democrats did best out of Britain's first election debate

BRITONS had never before seen putative prime ministers debate with each other on live television. Over the course of 90 minutes in a Manchester studio on the evening of April 15th, Gordon Brown, the Labour prime minister, David Cameron, the Conservative leader, and Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, blazed the trail.

Expectations were managed assiduously before the event. For weeks Mr Cameron’s Labour foes talked up his Reaganesque genius for televisual communication, so that anything short of a golden performance would be seen as failure. Similarly, Tories who privately regard Mr Brown’s plodding persona as their biggest asset have been telling people to expect something akin to the Sermon on the Mount from the prime minister.

In the event, neither man won. It was Mr Clegg who seemed to do best, his style falling somewhere between Mr Cameron's personability and Mr Brown's focus on policy. In a debate devoted to domestic issues, he sounded especially authoritative on education and healthcare.

True, he was helped by Mr Brown's often surreal efforts to ingratiate himself with the Lib Dem leader (his party could, after all, hold the balance of power in a hung parliament). And being able to smugly mock bigger rivals for squabbling is a Lib Dem privilege. Still, in an opinion poll by ComRes done just after the debate, he was rated the winner by 43%. 26% backed Mr Cameron, who edged out Mr Brown.

The prime minister's strengths were his usual ones: a good command of detail and a flair for creating dividing lines with Mr Cameron, especially on public spending. With his Caledonian baritone, he played the great sage on economics. Just as predictably, his weaknesses were stultifying rhetoric (phrases such as "net inward migration" and "proportional representation list system" abounded) and an inability to think on his feet (he struggled to respond to Mr Cameron's frequent attacks on his tax plans). His more partisan moments also jarred.

He did not commit any major gaffes, though, and neither did Mr Cameron. The Tory leader had a tough time of it, sometimes ganged-up on by the other two and often cut-off in mid-speech by the moderator. He manged to remain composed, and made strong opening and closing remarks. But he was, as he often is, competent rather than inspirational. Only on the issue of crime did he seem truly impassioned. Mentioning government waste in almost all of his answers also seemed to come at the price of the bigger picture.

The media-briefing operation after the debate was something for political junkies to behold. Around a dozen of Westminster's biggest figures spun to a pack of journalists in the cramped corner of a hotel conference room. Lord Mandelson, the business secretary, slyly praised Mr Clegg as "effective" while accusing the Tory leader of "just too much waffle". He said, optimistically, that the debate had "opened up the election". George Osborne, the equally cunning Tory treasury spokesman, said Mr Brown had "needed a game-changer and didn't get it" and that his attacks on Mr Cameron were "desperate...the public didn't want to see that."

The Lib Dems, though, were happiest. Having negotiated hard to secure equal billing for their man in the debates (two more will take place before the May 6th general election) he made the most of it. But neither Mr Brown nor Mr Cameron will be despondent. When the discussion veered briefly onto foreign policy, Mr Clegg seemed less assured, suggesting that he may do less well in next week's contest (which will cover international affairs). And for all their novelty and historical moment, it remains to be seen how many voters, grumpily indisposed to politicians in general, will be influenced by the contests.