Cameron's best moment: the sunshine of the final TV debate
David Cameron has had a peculiar campaign. For the most part, the big set-piece occasions haven't quite caught fire, while many of the Tory leader's successes have been the relatively low-key and impromptu successes of the campaign trail. Having said that, it was the biggest set-piece event of them all - the final TV debate - which gave Cameron his best moment of the election. Here, he was energetic, direct and, most importantly, optimistic. And he even managed to sell the Tories' school reform policy in a straightforward and engaging way. In his closing statement, Cameron did what he always promised he would - and let sunshine win the day.
Honourable mention: meeting the angry parent of a disabled child.
Cameron's worst moment: the general wooliness of the 'Big Society'
David Cameron has worn a smile to mask nervous caution, if not desperation at times. Cameron has epitomised a wider Conservative malaise which stemmed from the public's disinterest in 'The Big Society'. There are radical ideas in the knots of that woolly term. The Tories have the ingenuity to reform Britain's failing education, welfare and social institutions with activism and a mantra of personal responsibility. But Hilton and Cameron's 'Big Society' was subsumed in a technocratic and metropolitan language that few beyond SW1 understand. The digital revolution, upon which so much of 'The Big Society' was drawn, has yet to take root. It may have been five years too soon for something so determinably modern.
Honourable mention: a first debate performance which didn't meet expectations.