Question Time Debate

[John Simkin]

I thought the programme was a great success. It showed up the faults of all three candidates. Charles Kennedy comes across as someone without the necessary gravitas of a political leader. He also lacks passion and energy. The audience was able to illustrate that he has not thought out his council tax proposals clearly enough. He is bound to lose votes on this issue.

Michael Howard came out as the person I would least like to be prime minister. His budget clearly does not balance. His policies on the NHS are laughable. His policies on immigration clearly is an attempt to get the racist vote. His comments that he would have ordered the invasion of Iraq War even if he knew they had no WMD shows that he was willing to break international law in his efforts to back Bush. What an appalling PM he would make.

Tony Blair gave the most professional performance. Obviously, it suited him to have questions from the audience on a complex subject such as the legality of the Iraq War. Even so he was badly damaged by some of his answers. A experienced boxer once said that you always know when you have hurt an opponent by the expression on his face. They always smile. That is what Blair does when he is caught out. It is a smile (smirk) that people don't like.

One of the most revealing questions concerned the booking of doctor’s appointments. He clearly did not know that his target driven agenda creates problems like this. It just showed how out of touch he is with the real world.

The most damaging question came over top up fees. The young man made the point far better than any Jeremy Paxman could have done. Blair is more vulnerable on this point than any other. A clear example of a broken promise (you might even want to call it a lie). At least Blair admitted that there is another way of funding university fees (increased income tax) but failed to explain why this solution is not acceptable to his government. How can you morally justify that young people have to pay back the cost of their university education but older, better paid graduates, don’t?

[Guest]

I thought the programme was a great success. It showed up the faults of all three candidates.

Agreed.

Was it Blair who refused to have a live debate in the usual question time format or was it all of them?

I was interested to hear Blair's comments about Gordon Brown. Maybe it is now election strategy on the part of Labour to give the impression that Blair will be gone soon

[Andrew Field]

I thought the programme was a great success. It showed up the faults of all three candidates.

Agreed.

Was it Blair who refused to have a live debate in the usual question time format or was it all of them?

I was interested to hear Blair's comments about Gordon Brown. Maybe it is now election strategy on the part of Labour to give the impression that Blair will be gone soon

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Blair refused to have the live debate - the other two had wanted to do so.