Tuesday 30 March 2010

Chancellors debate and rose-tinted political glasses

I watched the Channel 4 chancellors debate while chatting on MarkReckons Live debate here and watched the Twitter debate live during the program. I was struck by how supporters from each party thought there man did best and their man won. I also read this Tweet from Iain Dale after it was all over 'So, LibDems think Cable won, Lefties think Darling did and Tories think Osborne did. Wow. Thanks for that chaps. Would never have thunk it.' Yep Iain this is how many supporters always react (not all but many).

Well this is the problem with us supporters of political parties. It's so hard to be objective. OK I also thought Vince Cable within the context of the debate came across better than Osborne or Darling. Political supporters crowd their view by factoring in how they feel about the politicians and their policies already. However they do not separate this in general from the performance on the day.

Saying who won really doesn't get us anywhere. It's who the public generally agreed with that matters, and this was Vince Cable (even if you yourself disagree with what he says). I believe I'm being fair as for example I freely admit that Nick Clegg did not perform as well as Brown or Cameron on the Politics show leader specials by a fair margin. I don't know if Brown won or Cameron won these but Clegg didn't, so I am not simply following some party line because Vince is our man.

I just wish supporters could take off their rose-tinted political glasses and see what the public see. If we don't then we won't learn anything new about trying to win the publics vote. I expect the same thing will happen again during the leader debates. It will be again, a draw from the ranks of party supporters no matter what actually happens.


Todays link is Green Gabbles a blog run by Steve Gabbs a Green blogger and a fellow Bracknell blogger.

4 comments:

  1. Vince did ok, but he isn't the saint some LD supporters claim, as I discussed on my blog. http://greenreading.blogspot.com/2010/03/pledge-generator-chancellors-debate.html

    Osbourne didn't do very well, and Darling was all spin.

    Many people watching and twittering wern't members of the 3 parties. And Ian Dales claim that Lab represent the left is wrong.

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  2. Adrian I think your spot on.

    I dont see Vince as Saint Vince but I do like him all the same.

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  3. What was most fascinating about watching the reaction on twitter was that despite all the talk of "hating personality" politics most of the tweets were mentioning the demeanour and mannerisms of the candidates.

    Rather than what was coming out of their mouths.

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  4. Oh, and cheers for the link! :)

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