A Narrow Victory for Gordon Brown

First things first: SKY lost. A debate that was supposed to be about foreign policy scarcely touched on many of the bigger, more interesting issues in the world. Nothing about China, Russia, Iran, Islam, Israel-Palestine, Africa, terrorism, etc etc. The ability of a British government to influence some of the issues arising in these parts of the world may be limited but it would be interesting, nevertheless, to hear what the leaders had to say about them. Instead there was europe, nuclear weapons and a brief detour into Afghanistan to allow the leaders to dust-off their favourite Afghan anecdotes (jogging! Mechanics!).

Despite that serious limitation it was another surprisingly entertaining contest and, in points terms, a much closer one than last week’s. Partisans on all sides could make a non-ridiculous case that their man won. Myself? I’d have scored it Brown 81 Clegg 80 Cameron 78.