Dear David Cameron,
Today is St George's Day, however the celebrations will have to wait - we have for now our own dragon to slay and it's called the Liberal Democratic Party.
The televised debates have proven to be a game changer in this election to an extent none of us expected; they have catapulted the third place also rans into first place, and made the current governing party seem an irrelevance. If we are to win the election with an outright majority - as we must - something must be done. Last night that something became apparent.
In the United States the televised debates are a big part of their Presidential elections, but one part of many in very big elections. Their impact is mitigated by a sea of television and radio ads, swamped in effect, and by far longer election campaigns stretching right back to speculation about potential primary challengers. The voters are bombarded with information. Our problem is not the debates - rather that we have imported a Presidential style debate into a constituency based election for a cabinet based government and crammed it into a few weeks. Some people will vote having only seen the debates, or part of them. It means that 4 1/2 hours of television has a greatly disproportionate influence - far greater than in the US - and so 'new kid on the block' Clegg can use his novelty factor before it wears off.
Last night after the Sky Leaders Debate the various party officials, hacks and spinners were interviewed and it struck me - the Lib Dems are their own worst enemy. Beyond Clegg they are all either incredibly odd or incredibly crazy, indeed they're usually both. In one debate about Trident they even suggested the Japanese alternative, namely a research lab which could do research if we one day needed into possibly maybe eventually one day maybe building some kind of weapon ("Don't attack us or we'll launch our boffins!") whilst another spokesman looked younger than I am (I'm 21). And here is our great opportunity. We cannot go back in time and cancel the debates, but we can "swamp" them with overwhelming force at their weakest point. In short it's time to fight fire with fire and unleash our secret weapons - your team - against their weakest flank - their team.
The more policy is discussed, the more people are turned away from the Lib Dems -as last night's debate proved. The more Lib Dems people see, the weirder they seem - as the post debate coverage proved. In every policy area Labour has failed and the Lib Dems either have no policy for change or a loony policy that will defeat itself, yet in every policy area the Conservatives have well thought policies for real change and the people to argue for them with reason. We've had the Leaders debate, we've had the Chancellors debate, now it's time for the Schools debate, Health debate, etc etc, and for these to be televised, prime time. We have the rules, the broadcasters have the studios, and it's not like there's anything else on - all you have to do is challenge them.
The question is not whether we should do it, it's whether it's fair to launch Grant Shapps, Andrew Lansley, our Trident educational missile Michael Gove, Liam Fox, Damian Green et al against Lembit Opik and Co. I say fire up the studio!
