Clegg 'won'. Does he get a prize?
Q: Who will be Chancellor of the Exchequer if Labour win the election?
A: Vince Cable
(fail)
I dunno about a prize but he'll almost certainly get more votes. Whether they count for anything is still unknown.
From what I've heard, the first few percentage swing points towards the Lib Dems will actually help Labour, as they'll be from Tory seats. As the swing becomes more pronounced, the model says that Labour will start worrying, places like Liverpool which are historic Labour safe seats are suddenly under threat.
Even with that though, unless its some monumental shift, the 'best' result for the Lib Dems will be a hung parliament. In that case, Brown stays on as Prime Minister and is given the chance to try and construct a government, likely by forming agreements with other parties. You saw that last night with the obvious difference in Brown's stance between Cameron and Clegg, he was effectively wooing Clegg in comparison.
I already know that my vote won't count though. I'm voting Lib Dem, but in a Tory majority of over 10k, that would have to be some serious swing to cause a change.
Clegg did come across very well I thought. One of the biggest reasons was that he seemed to be able to back up his claims with a bit more substance than the other 2.
Brown came across surprisingly well, although this may just have been because I had such low expectations for him. Unfortunately, any chance Labour had of getting my vote disappeared when they forced the Mandybill through the wash-up period of parliament instead of properly debating it.
Cameron came across fairly poorly. He kept on blabbering on about "waste", but was only able to quote a couple of fairly tame examples of this. Sure canning the 7% pay rise for NHS managers is a good idea, but it's not going to magically result in billions of pounds of savings. Waste is only waste once you've identified it and explained exactly how you'd save the money. Until then, it's just an empty and substance-less word.
I was leaning in favour of Lib Dem before seeing this debate (I've explained my anti-Labour stance, and our Tory candidate lives over 50 miles away from my town for a start!). This debate has just enhanced that lean.
You've just reminded me about the most annoying thing about Cameron from last night.
The only real concrete example of waste that he identified was the 7% payrise for NHS managers, but then he went on to say that the only public service he was protecting was the NHS, and that he'd actually be increasing the contributions in real-term over the life of the parliament.
It's just that proper coalitions (where members of both parties are appointed to cabinet positions) are extremely rare in westminister parliamentary systems. It's more common to have a formal agreement or accord between 2 or more parties, but where only one party actually forms the government (i.e. Labour would govern, but the LDP agrees to support them for a certain period of time - say 2 years, and Labour agrees to implement certain policies favoured by the LDP). However, even in that instance, normally, if the Cons actually won more seats overall, they should still be asked to have the first crack at governing. Then, if defeated on a confidence motion, the other two can go to the Queen and say they're willing to try governing rather than have an election.
Sadly, a proper coalition will never happen in Canada. Our opposition parties tried that back in 2008 and the governing Cons went on a PR campaign painting the move as "treasonous" and illegal, and against the will of the Canadian public, etc. And since way too many people have no fucking clue how parliamentary systems actually work (i.e. we don't actually vote in governments, we vote in MPs who then decide who will form the government), the Cons managed to rally a majority of Canadians against the idea of a coalition. They still use the term as a threat when they start to sag in the polls.