Miliband vs Millwall

I’ve been trying to think of a good football analogy to describe the battle between the two main parties as the general election approaches. One suggestion is the second leg of a Champions League game, with the Conservatives having won the first leg by one goal to nil. If we assume that the Tories are playing at home, that means Labour have to score two goals to win, whereas all the Tories have to do is not concede. Last week’s debate certainly felt like that, with Cameron playing a tight, defensive game and Miliband trying to score at every opportunity. The Conservative leader ended up winning on aggregate because the Labour leader failed to find the back of the net.

But a Champions League match suggests two teams of real quality, which is where the analogy breaks down. The past few weeks have felt more like a game in the bottom half of the Championship, something I’m all too familiar with as a QPR supporter. In these games you rarely see any quality. Rather, the team that wins is the one that makes the fewest unforced errors. Forget about Real Madrid versus Bayern Munich. This is Millwall versus Brighton on a rainy Tuesday night in April.

So far Labour seem to be making more mistakes than the Tories, although I’m biased. After the first televised clash, I was worried that Cameron might have made a tactical blunder in agreeing to the ‘debates’ — generally regarded as the biggest unforced error of the 2010 campaign. But watching Miliband struggling to stand out from the crowd in the seven-way debate was reassuring. That one also produced a marvellous own-goal in the form of Miliband’s revision notes, which he left behind in the green room.