Follow @Kalpoint_com

Nick Clegg s powerful performance worries Brown, Cameron

Posted on: Mon April 19, 2010

LONDON: Britain s election race was thrown wide open on Sunday, as polls confirmed a stunning surge in support for the Liberal Democrats, normally the third-largest party, ahead of May 6 elections.    

A series of opinion surveys put the Lib Dems in second or even first place after their leader Nick Clegg s powerful performance in a first-ever TV debate last week with his Labour and Conservative counterparts.    

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, battling to avoid an end to 13 years of Labour rule, admitted he had lost last Thursday s debate against Clegg and Conservative leader David Cameron.    

 I think it s energised the campaign. It s thrown the campaign wide, wide open. People thought it was a closed book to start with. I lost on presentation. I lost on style, he told BBC television.    

But he insisted: This isn t a sprint ...This isn t an X-Factor talent show, adding: I ve learned at the end of the debate, substance will come through.      Snap polls after last week s debate showed Clegg the clear winner, and a poll the following day had his Lib Dems up three points at 24 per cent in overall voting intentions, although still in third place.    

But a series of polls in Sunday newspapers showed an even stronger surge: a BPIX poll in The Mail on Sunday even put them in first place on 32 per cent, against 31 per cent for the Tories and 28 per cent for Labour.    

Three other polls put the Lib Dems in second place, behind the Conservatives but ahead of Labour.    

There are still nearly three weeks until the election, but if sustained such figures make a hung parliament and a rare coalition government seem even more likely.    

Under Britain s electoral system, such a result could see Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his governing Labour Party end up in pole position despite coming third in the popular vote.    

The BBC s seat calculator said those figures would still put Labour on 276 seats 50 short of a majority; the Conservatives on 226 and the Lib Dems on 119.    

Clegg said something exciting is happening in the British political system, which has seen the Conservatives and Labour trade power for the best part of the last 100 years.    

But he dismissed as completely absurd a suggestion reported in a Sunday Times front page story that he was more popular than British wartime leader Winston Churchill.    

 I think people are getting a little hyped up. The campaign is still in its early stages. It s only a beginning.

 It s a small door which has been opened to encourage people they can get engaged, get involved and there are more possibilities available to them than simply repeating the stale old two-party politics of the past.     

Bob Worcester, founder of pollsters MORI, wrote in The Observer newspaper:- Up to now this election has been static; now it s electric. Before last Thursday s debate, the Liberal Democrats were a sideshow; now they are centre stage.     

The main opposition Conservatives consistently leading in the polls for more than two years now face a major fight to stop the crucial floating voters they need from switching support to the Lib Dems.    

Conservative leader David Cameron urged voters to give his centre-right party a decisive mandate to tackle Britain s huge debt. Is another five years of Gordon Brown going to get that job done? He s had 13 years and he is making things worse, Cameron told activists in Gloucester, southwest England.

Courtesy : The News