The gamble that paid off

And so the problems continue to pile up for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats.

First it was the local elections and the loss of 700 council seats, then the overwhelming referendum 'no' vote to electoral reform, now the finding of 'serious breaches of the rules' in relation to rising star David Laws' expense claims.

And it's not over yet. There are serious question marks over the future of another of the party's leading lights, Energy Secretary Chris Huhne, following claims by his ex-wife that he asked someone else to take some penalty points for a speeding offence.

The allegations have been denied, but with further revelations expected in tomorrow's Sunday papers, some Westminster observers are rating Mr Huhne's survival chances as "less than 10pc."

Is this what happens when a party that has been out of power for the best part of a century finds itself struggling to adapt to its new responsibilities, or is it simply a run of bad luck?

Either way, it was hardly surprising that Mr Clegg should have sought to reassert his party's influence in government this week, with the government's NHS reforms likely to be the new battleground between the Coalition partners.

Mr Clegg at least has public opinion on his side as far as that one is concerned , but the harsh reality is that he dare not push the Tories too far.

If he gets too big for his boots, Prime Minister David Cameron can simply threaten him with a general election which would in all likelihood delivery a Conservative majority and a Lib Dem wipeout.

For all the initial focus on the council election carnage, it is the AV referendum result that will hit the Lib Dems hardest, setting back for at least a decade the cause of electoral reform that is closest to the hearts.

With the benefit of hindsight, the whole thing now looks like a car crash waiting to happen.

As one pundit put it: "Here is a referendum recipe for disaster. Choose an issue that no one cares about, get the most unpopular man in Britain to champion it, and hold it on a day when everyone will use it to kick the most unpopular man in Britain."

Yet it's too simplistic to blame the failure of AV entirely on Mr Clegg, and in any case the outlook at the start of the campaign looked very different, with the 'yes' camp seemingly comfortably in the lead.

In this and other respects, the referendum reminded me of the one that took place in the autumn of 2004 on whether the North-East should have an elected assembly.

On that occasion, too, the 'yes' camp seemed to have a fair wind to start with, but lost the initiative once people started to take a closer look at exactly what was on offer.

Just as the people of the North-East might have supported a less lily-livered version of regional government than the one actually put before them, so the UK public might have supported a genuine form of proportional representation given the opportunity.

Instead, they were offered what appeared to many as a non-choice between the status quo and the 'miserable little compromise' – Nick Clegg's words -that was AV.

In the days following the general election last May, there was a perception that Nick Clegg had emerged as the big winner of a contest that seemed initially to have produced only losers.

If I'm honest, I may have bought into some of that myself, but the result of the AV referendum forces us to revise that view of history.

The truth is that Mr Cameron's great gamble of offering the Lib Dems a referendum on the voting system in return for handing him the keys to Number 10 Downing Street has handsomely paid off.

Twelve months on, the Conservative leader has finally proved himself the real election victor.

Review of the Political Year 2010

When future historians come to assess the political events of 2010, two big counterfactual questions are likely to loom large in their minds.

They are: what if Labour had ditched Gordon Brown before the General Election, and what if the Liberal Democrats had refused to go into coalition with David Cameron's Conservatives?

The second question is probably the easier one to answer. Mr Cameron would have formed a minority government, David and not Ed Miliband would have become Labour leader, and both would now be gearing up for a fresh election in the spring.

But the more tantalising question is whether Mr Cameron might never have become Prime Minister at all had Labour gone into the election under a more popular leader.

The political year 2010 began with Mr Brown's survival once again hanging in the balance.

Former Labour ministers Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt attempted to get MPs to demand a leadership contest, but rightly or wrongly, the consensus in the party was that by then it was too late to change horses.

As it was, the election turned into a slow-motion car crash for Labour, dominated by televised debates in which Mr Brown was predictably outshone by his two younger, more charismatic opponents.

Then, in the final week of the campaign, came 'Duffygate' - the kind of incident which could have happened to any of them, but which seemed somehow fated to happen to the luckless Mr Brown.

In terms of issues, the campaign centred mainly on the question of how to deal with the country's biggest budget deficit since the 1930s.

Here Labour was on an equally sticky wicket, with voters clearly concluding that the party was 'in denial' about the extent of the problem and crediting the Tories for being at least partially honest about the scale of the forthcoming cuts.

For all that, though, the public remained largely unconvinced by Mr Cameron and his team, and the eventual result saw the Tories falling some 20 seats short of outright victory.

Days of frantic bargaining followed, but with the parliamentary maths in favour of a Lib-Lab deal failing to stack up, it was always likely that a Lib-Con coalition would be the outcome.

Faced with the task of finding a successor to Mr Brown, Labour managed to saddle itself with the lesser-known of the Miliband brothers, courtesy of a crazy electoral system which gave the unions the decisive say.

For David Miliband, brother Ed's leadership election victory came as a bitter blow and the South Shields MP stood down from his party's frontbench.

Then, in one of his first acts as leader, Ed sacked former Minister for the North-East Nick Brown from his Shadow Cabinet team, leaving the region somewhat leaderless in Whitehall.

Indeed, with the new coalition busily taking the axe to every regional institution in sight, the North-East seemed in danger of losing its political voice altogether.

Initial excitement about the coalition soon faded. The 'new politics' spoken of by Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg in the TV debates soon regressed into the old politics of broken election promises.

Chancellor George Osborne had expected that the £80bn programme of cuts unveiled in his October comprehensive spending review would swiftly make him the most unpopular man in Britain.

Instead, it was Mr Clegg who became the government's fall-guy, completing his journey from hero to zero by backing the rise in tuition fees against which he had so vehemently campaigned in April and May.

The Lib Dems' decision to trade principle for power has clearly come at a huge political cost. The key question for 2011 is whether the coalition as a whole can survive it.

In the end, the public got what it wanted

So is it a betrayal of millions of people who voted Liberal Democrat to stop the Tories getting in - or a noble attempt to set aside party differences in the greater national interest?

Is it a reflection of the public will as it was expressed on 6 May – or something absolutely no-one actually voted for?

Opinions have invariably been divided about the new Con-Lib coalition that took office this week following Gordon Brown's protracted but ultimately dignified exit - and doubtless will remain so.

Whether it succeeds or fails - and much will happen between now and the scheduled date of the next election in 2015 - British politics will surely never quite be the same again.

Given that I have said as much already, it won't surprise readers to know that I think this is probably the outcome that best makes sense of the inconclusive election result.

Whether by accident or design, the public has got what it wanted - change, but in a way that avoids entrusting the fortunes of the country entirely to the Tories.

Were it not for the case that the coalition had a fair wind of public opinion behind it, it would probably not have come about.

By contrast, the public's reaction to any Lib-Lab deal would have been far more hostile - as the likes of John Reid and David Blunkett realised from the start.

In retrospect, Mr Brown should have realised this too rather than allow himself to be persuaded by Alastair Campbell and Lord Mandelson into trying to stitch together such a deal on Tuesday.

Maybe he was playing a longer game. By staying in No 10 and holding out the prospect of a deal, he enabled Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg to wring concessions out of the Tories that he would not otherwise have been able to.

Whether that was intentional or otherwise, we have ended up with a much less right-wing government as a result, and perhaps we owe the former Prime Minister a debt of gratitude for that.

That said, the enthusiasm with which the new Prime Minister David Cameron has embraced his new partners suggests that he may actually prefer it this way to governing alone.

There will be plenty of time over the coming months to analyse the new government - but what of Labour, in the week that it took its leave of power after 13 years?

Some think that by steering clear of a coalition that is destined to become hugely unpopular once the cuts start to bite, the party has snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

Had Labour somehow managed to stagger on in office, the resulting public backlash could have ended up destroying it for a generation.

As it is, the party now has an opportunity to rebuild and, free of the poisonous legacy of the Blair-Brown rivalry and the mistakes of the past 13 years, rebuild it surely will.

My own assessment of New Labour is that it was handed a remarkable opportunity to reshape British politics for good which, by and large, it squandered.

It has well and truly paid the price for its timidity. Mr Brown's opposition to Roy Jenkins' 1998 electoral reform plans finally came back and bit him on the bum this week - much as Jim Callaghan's opposition to Barbara Castle's 1969 trade union reforms were to bite him on the bum ten years' later in the Winter of Discontent.

He probably did save the economy from meltdown in 2008/9, but without a 'big idea' to take it forward, it was clear his government had run out of road.

It now falls to Messrs Clegg and Cameron to bring about the lasting changes which Messrs Blair and Brown ultimately failed to deliver.

Gordon makes the supreme sacrifice. Now bring on Bradshaw

Gordon Brown was always a party man at heart, and his decision to sacrifice himself in order to facilitate Labour's participation in a potential progressive coalition could yet go down as one of the great political game-changers in recent history.

Where Purnell, Blears, Flint, Reid and Co have failed, Nick Clegg has finally succceded, but for once I share Alastair Campbell's view - that Mr Brown never intended to stay long once the election result had become clear, and that far from 'squatting' in No 10, he was simply carrying out his duty to his country - and his Queen - by ensuring the business of government was carried on.

Against the odds, the prospect of a Lib-Lab dream team that can change this country for good is back in play, while the prospect of a 19th old Etonian Prime Minister has at least temporarily receded.

I am sticking by my view that Ben Bradshaw is the man to ultimately take this forward. Although I would be equally happy with Alan Johnson, it may be time to move to a younger generation of political leaders. David Miliband and Ed Balls will of course start favourites, but I think Labour now badly needs to move on from Blairite-Brownite battles and electing either of those two would simply perpetuate them.

Will they do the deal?

Usually, it’s all over bar the shouting by 3am, sometimes even earlier if it is clear that one party has achieved a landslide. But this has been no ordinary election, and this was never going to be an ordinary election night.

With each hour that came and went, the picture appeared to grow more and more confused as those of us watching on telly struggled to make sense of it all.

At various points in the evening, it seemed as though the Tories would either get a small majority, or at the very least come close enough to the winning post to govern as a minority administration.

But in the end, they fell 20 seats short, paving the way for one of the most dramatic days of political wheeler-dealing in recent electoral history and the prospect of the first Lib-Con coalition since the days of David Lloyd George.

David Cameron’s offer of a deal with Nick Clegg which could extent to a formal coalition was nothing if not bold, and demonstrated the Tory leader’s ability to seize the agenda.

As I write, the two men have agreed to explore the idea further, and fresh developments over the course of the weekend seem very likely.

But although Mr Cameron in his St Stephen’s Club speech yesterday was at pains to point out the potential areas of policy agreement with the Lib Dems, he was not entirely convincing on this score.

The Lib Dems’ opposition to the Trident nuclear deterrent and support for electoral reform are likely to be the big sticking points, although on the latter point, it has been suggested that the Tories could concede a referendum in which they would then campaign for a “no” vote.

Of course, it could easily have been very different. Another 30 seats for the Lib Dems and a handful more for Labour, and we could have been talking much more seriously about a Lib-Lab deal instead.

But although Prime Minister Gordon Brown is playing a patient waiting game in Number 10 in the hope that the Clegg-Cameron talks fail, his position is exceptionally weak.

The option of a Lib-Lab pact has least two big drawbacks. Firstly, it would not provide a “strong and stable government,” because the combined forces of the two parties do not in fact add up to a parliamentary majority.

Secondly, both parties performed so poorly in the election that a Lib-Lab alliance would be too easily portrayed by the Tories and the media as a “coalition of losers.”

Mr Brown is pinning his hopes on the fact that he has already offered a referendum on proportional representation, while Mr Cameron has so far talked only of an “all-party inquiry” into voting reform - but this is a chimera.

The fact is, I doubt that an electoral reform referendum could actually be won in those circumstances, as the public would simply see it as two defeated parties teaming up to change the system for their mutual benefit.

In any case, as I wrote last week, a Lib-Con coalition would be the outcome that probably best reflects the will of the public as expressed in this election – a desire for change, coupled with a desire to deny any one party a majority.

There are still formidable obstacles to a deal, not least the views of Mr Clegg’s own MPs. But the public’s evident desire for one is the biggest single reason why it just might happen.

Over to Dave

The result is still inconclusive, but it's already clear that the dream of a progressive-left coalition will have to remain just that for now. Messrs Harman, Mandelson, Johnson and Co have talked all night in language that suggested an attempt would be made to form some sort of Lib-Lab pact, but given how the two parties have performed I think it would be pretty politically unsustainable.

Although it is still possible the Tories may win an overall majority, a minority Tory government remains the likeliest outcome and, whatever the constitutional position, it would now seem sensible for Gordon Brown to put the ball of forming a "stable government" in David Cameron's court.

The Lib-Lab Dream Team

Today has been quite the grimmest weather I can remember on election day since I was old enough to vote. It may be a case of rose-tinted spectacles, but in my recollection all the others dawned bright and sunny. "The sun's out, and so are the Tories," quipped Neil Kinnock in '92. They were - but not in the way he meant. They were out at the polling stations ensuring victory for John Major.

Maybe this is a good omen, however. All of those bright and sunny election days ended in disappointment for yours truly, with the election of either a Tory government (1983, 1987 and 1992) or a pseudo-Tory one (1997, 2001 and 2005.) Today, for the first time in my adult life, there is the tantalising prospect of something genuinely different.

Of course, I'm not holding my breath. I have made clear in my Saturday column that I think the likeliest outcome today is a minority Conservative government, with a second election a little way down the line.

The result I am hoping for, however, is one which paves the way for a pro-reform coalition between the Liberal Democrats and post-Brownite Labour which can put this country's bent electoral system right once and for all.

To my mind, the chances of such a coalition depend on the Lib Dems outpolling Labour in the popular vote, for two reasons. Firstly, because such a result would make such a mockery of the current system that it will be rendered even more unsustainable than at present.

Secondly, because a 2nd or even 1st place for the Lib Dems in terms of share of the vote tonight could actually facilitate the arrival of Nick Clegg as the first Liberal Prime Minister since David Lloyd George.

Of all the possible election outcomes that have been outlined by the pundits over the past four weeks, the one that made most sense to me was Will Hutton's piece in last Sunday's Observer entitled: "If Labour is wise, it will usher Nick Clegg into Downing Street."

To coin a phrase, I agree with Will. If Labour comes third tonight and the Lib Dems second, Gordon Brown should immediately fall on his sword, and a caretaker triumvirate of Harriet Harman, Alan Johnson and Alistair Darling should deliver the Labour Party into a Lib-Lab coalition led by Clegg, the undisputed winner of this campaign.

What might such a coalition look like? Well, I've sketched out a possible version below. It has nine Lib Dem members and 13 Labour members, the latter incorporating the most pro-reform elements of the current Cabinet - Alan Johnson, Ben Bradshaw, Peter Hain and Lord Adonis for example.

With No 10 going to Mr Clegg, the Lib Dems could not have the Treasury as well, so Alistair Darling would stay on, reflecting his hard-earned status as the most trustworthy of Labour's senior figures.

The new Prime Minister aside, Chris Huhne would have the toughest job - as Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor it would be his task to pilot through the biggest set of constitutional reforms since those of the Liberal government of 1906, but the man who so narrowly missed out on the Lib Dem leadership is certainly equal to it.

As for Labour....it should take its time to elect a new leader, but my tip is Mr Bradshaw, an excellent minister who has very few enemies in the party, has an interesting personal back-story, and, unsurprisingly enough for a former TV journalist, is very good on the box.

The Great Reform Cabinet of 2010

Prime Minister: Nick Clegg
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Cabinet Office: Alan Johnson
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Alistair Darling
Foreign Secretary: David Miliband
Home Secretary: John Denham
Justice Secretary: Chris Huhne
Leader of the House of Commons: Harriet Harman
Business Secretary: Vince Cable
Defence Secretary: Lord Ashdown
Education Secretary: Ben Bradshaw
Health Secretary: Andy Burnham
Work and Pensions Secretary: Yvette Cooper
Climate Change Secretary: Ed Miliband
Environment Secretary: Ed Davey
Transport Secretary: Lord Adonis
Communities Secretary: Julia Goldsworthy
Culture Secretary: Tessa Jowell
Leader of the House of Lords: Baroness Williams
Scottish Secretary: Charles Kennedy
Welsh Secretary: Peter Hain
Northern Ireland Secretary: Shaun Woodward
International Development Secretary: Douglas Alexander
Chief Secretary to the Treasury: David Laws
Chief Whip: Bob Ainsworth

The Mid Derbyshire Hustings

This election is a bit of a first in our part of the world, as we're part of the brand new seat of Mid Derbyshire. In truth it's something of a weird amalgamation, bringing together the former industrial town of Belper and its surrounding villages with some of the northern suburbs of the city of Derby itself. The two areas have very little in common, Derby being culturally part of the Midlands and Belper seen by some as the first Northern town in England.

Electorally speaking, the boundary shuffle has interesting implications. By removing the solidly Tory-supporting suburb of Allestree into Mid Derbyshire, the Boundary Commissioners have turned Derby North into a three-way marginal which is being seen as one of the bellweather seats in this election. In the past fortnight, it has been visited by all three main party leaders, with Messrs Cameron and Clegg both in town on Friday.

We won't be getting that sort of attention here in Mid Derbyshire. The Tory candidate, Pauline Latham, is going to win, and having honed her political skills across 23 years in local government dating back to the days of David Bookbinder, I have no doubt that she will prove to be an excellent constituency MP.

But even though the result is something of a foregone conclusion, it was good to hear what the various candidates had to say for themselves at last Friday's hustings organised by Churches Together in Duffield, particularly in relation to their own personal values.

Joining Pauline on the platform at Duffield Methodist Church were Derby city councillor Hardial Dhindsa for the Labour Party, political virgin Sally McIntosh for the Lib Dems and businessman Tony Kay for UKIP. The British National Party candidate, Lewis Allsebrook, and the Monster Raving Loony Party's R.U. Serious gave it the swerve.

This being a largely Christian audience, it did not take long for a question about abortion and euthanasia to come up. Forget sorting out the economy and cleaning up politics - for quite a few people I know in Christian circles locally, getting more people into Parliament who will defend the sanctity of human life is really the touchstone issue.

Pauline answered, very honestly, that although she did believe in the sanctity of life, "I do also believe women have the right to choose an abortion." Hardial woffled a bit while basically agreeing, and Tony sidestepped it by saying that, as he and his wife have never had children, it had never really come up as an issue.

But mother-of-three Sally struck a different note, revealing she had been offered an abortion as a first resort by her doctor at the start of her third pregnancy. "It shocked me because it wasn't something I would ever want to do." She went on to say that the balance had swung "too far in the direction of choice," and that she supported lowering the age limit for abortions from 24 weeks. "To abort children who are viable scares me very much."

If that probably won Sally a few votes from this largely pro-life audience, Pauline will have scored highly on her response to the next question, which focused on plans to build thousands of homes on greenbelt land in the new constituency - an issue which affects Belper in particular.

The town's essential character is that of a wheel with five spokes radiating from the centre - Bargate, Openwoodgate, Far Laund, Mount Pleasant and Cow Hill, each of them surrounded by a 'tongue' of green open space. Yet much of that open space will be built on over the next few years if planners have their way.

Said Pauline: "We don't want Belper to join up to Heage. We don't want Little Eaton and Breadsall to join up with the city." All the other candidates seemed to agree, although in Hardial's case, it begged the question whether he's told his own government that.

Speaking to me after the meeting, Pauline told me that her first act if elected will be to try to block a planning application for the new homes in Belper that is due to be decided later this month. With local reporter Laura Hammond also in attendance, expect to see this story in the Belper News soon.

Another issue high on the audience's agenda was 24-hour drinking, with all the candidates moreorless agreeing that Tony Blair's attempt to create a "cafe culture" in the UK had been an unmitigated disaster, although Pauline fought shy of a suggestion that Derbyshire could become a pilot zone for new, more restrictive drinking laws.

The meeting meandered somewhat towards the end. In truth the debate format was rather static, and gave no opportunity for people from the floor to ask follow-up questions.

Tony Kay at least saved his best till last. In response to the final question - "Given that MPs are so reviled, why do you want to be one" - he replied: "Well, if I did want to be an MP I wouldn't be standing for UKIP."

His party, UKIP, may well finish a distant fourth in this contest. But in the contest for laughs on Friday night, he won hands down.

It is still not clear who is going to win. It is clear, though, that Gordon is going to lose

In my Journal column today I'm calling the 2010 general election against Gordon Brown and Labour. Not an easy one for me to write for reasons I make clear in the text.

Here it is in full.

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Thirteen years ago, on John Major’s last Saturday in 10 Downing Street, I wrote in my pre-election column that the over-riding factor when people cast their votes would be the desire for change.

Politics tends to go in cycles, and so this election, too, is likely to see the curtain fall for a Prime Minister who now seems ready to leave the stage.

For all the talk of “Cleggmania” and “Duffygate” altering the dynamics of the contest over the past three weeks, the key dynamic – the desire for a new beginning - has been in place from the start.

It is still not clear who is going to win on Thursday. It is, though, becoming clear that Gordon Brown is going to lose.

It’s not easy for me to have to write that. I continue to believe that Mr Brown could have been a perfectly good Prime Minister had he got the chance to be one at a time when his party as a whole was still riding high.

I also believe that history will judge him far more kindly than his contemporaries have done, and that the actions he has taken with regard to the recession will, in time, be vindicated.

But once the country began to tire of New Labour, it was always going to be a big ask for a man who has been so close to the centre of power for so long to successfully represent change.

The party’s core campaign message – “don’t risk the recovery” – has been an essentially defensive operation in a situation which cried out instead for vision.

The Gillian Duffy incident in Rochdale this week – which could have happened to any of the three party leaders – only put the seal on Mr Brown’s already fading prospects.

The real significance of it was not that he views the voters with contempt – he doesn’t – but the fact that he thought the initial exchange had been a “disaster.”

It wasn’t - Mrs Duffy had actually promised to vote Labour. But Mr Brown thought it was a “disaster” because he has lost both his self-confidence, and his ability to judge political situations.

His inability to make any inroads in the polling that followed Thursday’s final TV debate shows the public has by and large made up its mind about him, and they won’t change it now.

So, then, Clegg or Cameron? Well, I won’t dwell at length on the potential hazards for the North-East that may result from an outright Conservative victory.

Mr Cameron’s comments last weekend, suggesting the region receives too much public money, probably tell you all you need to know, however hard he later tried to row back from them.

Irrespective of that, I have argued previously that both Britain and the North-East need a balanced Parliament, for two reasons.

Firstly because the Tories cannot be trusted to govern on their own. Secondly, because this must be the last election fought on a bent electoral system which could yet produce a result on Friday that is beyond parody.

All along, the polls have suggested it will happen, but that may yet change as minds are concentrated over the remaining few days of the campaign.

The outcome that would probably best reflect the mood of the country at the moment is a Lib-Con coalition – but that can only happen, of course, if Mr Cameron puts electoral reform on the table.

If he does not, the likeliest scenario is a minority Conservative administration and – joy of joys! – a re-run of all this in a few months’ time as Prime Minster Cameron seeks a working majority.

One thing will be different next time though. Mr Brown will not be there.

What if none of them ends up in Number Ten?

Before the current election campaign got under way, there were some pundits who predicted that it could become the first such contest to be decided over the worldwide web.

But apart from one Labour candidate who made a fool of himself by using foul language on Twitter – the twit in question was swiftly forced to quit – talk of an ‘internet election’ has proved wide of the mark.

Instead, it has been the relatively old-fashioned medium of television which has led the way, with the debates between Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg proving to be the pivotal events in the campaign.

Indeed, they have assumed such a degree of significance that much of what has happened in between them has seemed a bit like waiting for the next course to arrive in a restaurant.

After the first debate, I wrote that it was beginning to look as though the will of the public in this election may be to deny both of the two main parties an outright majority.

At the time, it was a somewhat tentative conclusion, but the “Cleggmania” that erupted over subsequent days suggested it wasn’t far off the mark.

If proof was needed that it is the Lib Dem leader who is setting the agenda in this campaign, one need only look at how the second debate on Thursday contrasted with the first.

Whereas in the first one the prevailing attitude of the other two leaders was “I agree with Nick,” in the second one they were finding as much to disagree with him about as possible.

Another thing I wrote last Saturday was that the Lib Dems can expect an onslaught from the 'big two' over the next few days such as they have never seen.

In truth Labour has been rather muted in its criticisms, but the attacks on Mr Clegg in Thursday morning’s Tory-supporting newspapers will have done Mr Cameron’s party little good in my view.

The public has come to see that kind of journalism for what it is – not journalism, in fact, but merely an extension of the yah-boo politics they have come to loathe.

If the Cameron camp was hoping it would burst the Clegg bubble, it is already clear that it has signally failed to do so.

That said, both Mr Cameron and Mr Brown can certainly take heart from this week’s debate, which saw all three contenders much more evenly-matched than the previous one.

Indeed, Mr Brown’s ratings improved so markedly that he might even entertain hopes of coming out on top in the final, surely decisive confrontation this coming Thursday.

The Prime Minister is nothing if not resilient, and his “like me or not” passage in which he tackled his own lack of personal charisma head-on will have gained him a certain amount of respect.

There remains, though, a strong feeling in the electorate that, after 13 years and a record that can best be described as mixed, this government has finally run its course.

For that reason, we can expect to hear Mr Cameron continuing to hammer away at his core message over the next week that only a vote for him can spare us another five years of Mr Brown.

It is not, as it happens, strictly true. The price of a Lib-Lab pact could well be the Prime Minister’s head on a platter, in which case expect to see South Shields MP David Miliband summoned to the Palace.

Of all the possible denouements to this extraordinary campaign, that would surely be the most bizarre – that none of the three contenders who have slogged it out over the airwaves actually ends up in Number Ten.

The fact that such scenarios are even being discussed is a measure of just how unpredictable this whole election has become.

Tories win battle of ideas - but Clegg wins battle of personalities

Whether you take the view that politics is essentially about the big issues facing the country, or whether you see it as merely a clash of egos, there has been plenty to chew on this week as the election battle continued to shape up.

The 'policies v personalities' dichotomy was perhaps most elegantly summed-up by Denis Healey, writing about his former colleague Roy Jenkins in his autobiography 'The Time of My Life.'

"He saw politics very much like Trollope, as the interplay of personalities seeking preferment, rather than, like me, as a conflict of principles and programmes about social and economic change," he wrote.

So while Healey doubtless saw the publication of the parties' manifestos as the key event of the last seven days, Jenkins would have been more likely to incline towards Thursday's TV debate between the three main party leaders.

First off, then, the manifestos. In a nutshell, Labour's was the dullest, the Lib Dems' the longest and most detailed, and the Tories' by far the cleverest.

That is not to say the Tories had all the best ideas. Some of them - such as allowing local people to sack failing police chiefs and headteachers - may well cause more problems than they solve.

But the point is, at least are they are ideas, and at least they are fresh.

By going big on the 'new localism,' Tory leader David Cameron may well succeed in capturing the 'anti politics' mood that has gripped the country ever since the MPs expenses debacle of last summer.

The absence of such an overarching vision or ‘big idea’ in the Labour document, by contrast, seemed to underline the view that the party needs a spell in opposition to renew itself.

That impression was scarcely dispelled by the TV debates, in which a greying, seemingly exhausted Prime Minister was forced to square up to two younger, more vigorous and more charismatic rivals.

Mr Brown could have tried to use his greater experience to advantage, but perhaps constrained by the format, he seemed oddly reluctant to attack his opponents.

For instance, instead of trying to engage intellectually with Mr Cameron's claims that Labour’s National Insurance rise is about wasting money rather than cutting the deficit, he should have told him to stop talking rubbish.

The opinion polls have already declared Nick Clegg the big winner of the debate, and I have to say that confirmed my own impression

He made a slight fool of himself by refusing to say whether he agreed with Mr Brown's plans for a referendum on the voting system when we all know he would love nothing more, but that aside, it was an assured performance from the Lib Dem leader.

His best moment came when he pointed out that both parties had blocked his plans to allow constituents to recall their MPs in the event of serious wrongdoing.

This idea has since appeared in one form or another in all three parties' manifestos - a perfect illustration of how the old, adversarial politics frustrates real progress.

So will Mr Clegg's 'victory' change the dynamics of the contest?

Well, one thing is certain. The Lib Dems can expect an onslaught from the 'big two' over the next few days such as they have never seen.

But though it is still early days, it is beginning to look as though the will of the public in this election may be to deny both of the two main parties an outright majority.

If so, it is just possible that this could be the election that finally changes the face of British politics for ever.

Who has the best manifesto for the media?

Check back here tomorrow morning for my verdict on the parties manifestos and yesterday's TV leaders' debate - but in the meantime here's a piece I wrote for HTFP today comparing what the main parties are saying on the key issues affecting the media industry.

Not a good start for Labour

And so at last they're off, as the race finally gets under way in earnest in what promises to be the most pivotal UK general election since 1997 and the closest since 1992.

Not that that is saying much. Labour's victories in 2001 and 2005 were moreorless pre-ordained from the start, the only real interest being in whether the Tories would do well enough to save first William Hague's, then Michael Howard's leadership.

It's a different story this time round. This election is David Cameron's to lose, and if he does lose it, he will swiftly go the way of those two predecessors.

Labour, by contrast, is having to come from so far behind that, already, it is giving the impression that a hung Parliament and a deal with the Lib Dems is the best it can hope for.

The leaders' photocalls on Tuesday in the wake of Gordon Brown's visit to the Palace were nothing if not revealing, in terms of the subliminal messages each of the parties were trying to get across.

There was the Prime Minister outside Number Ten, flanked by his entire Cabinet as if to say: "We know you don't like Gordon, but we're a team, not a solo act."

Then there was Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg, flanked by Vince Cable in acknowledgement of the fact that the 66-year-old Treasury spokesman is easily the most compelling reason to vote for the party on 6 May.

And most tellingly of all, Mr Cameron, surrounded not by a frontbench team which is largely distrusted by the public, but by a group of fresh-faced candidates - although it was not long before his own star turn, wife Sam, joined him on the campaign trail.

So what of the story so far? Well, it has not been an especially good start to the campaign for Labour.

First off, the government was forced to shelve a series of measures it had previously championed, including the proposed regional ITV news pilot in this region which the Tories have perplexingly vowed to scrap if they win.

Most ironic was the scrapping of the Bill to provide for a referendum on the voting system - on the very day Labour sought to highlight its constitutional reform credentials in an obvious play for Lib Dem support.

Mr Clegg was rightly contemptuous of this. After all, if Labour had acted rather sooner on its 1997 promise on electoral reform, the wretched Bill would hardly have run out of time.

Equally clumsy and cynical was yesterday's foray by Transport Secretary Lord Adonis, advising Lib Dem voters in marginal seats to vote tactically for Labour.

The fact that Labour is already reduced to begging for Lib Dem votes this early on in the campaign speaks volumes for the government's lack of confidence in its own message.

But Labour's biggest difficulties this week came with the concerted assault by business leaders over its planned 1p rise in National Insurance.

Mr Brown’s response – that some of Britain’s shrewdest business minds had allowed themselves to be “deceived” by the Tories, was hardly an exercise in how to win friends and influence people.

This week has been but an hors d'oeuvre. The main course of this election campaign will be the three TV debates between the three leaders which are due to begin next week.

Mr Brown only agreed to take part in the debates because he is the underdog, and they are clearly crucial to his hopes of a comeback.

The Prime Minister has to do what Tony Blair predicted he would do long ago - and land a "big clunking fist" on his Tory opponent.

If he can, he is back in the game. If not, short of a Tory scandal or implosion, it is hard to see where else a Labour revival is going to come from.