AS the final week of the campaign gets under way, reflections on the 2010 election are favourable. It has been a good, clean fight. With the exception of Mr Brown’s Rochdale aberration, politicians have generally shown the electorate, and each other, greater respect than we have previously come to expect.
The great expenses debacle has made Westminster politicians learn a little humility and that’s no bad thing. It has led to greater concentration on policy with less emphasis on personality. A good turnout is widely expected on the back of the television debates.
The result could not be closer to call and there’s all to play for in the final days. There’s a real sense of possible individual constituency upsets and, beyond that, a national result that will change the face of British politics forever.
Last night’s final television debate will have set the scene for the concluding drama and that will be, quite rightly centred on the economy. Events in Greece have served to pull into even closer focus the problem of Britain’s debt and how it should be tackled.
All three major parties are still, to varying degrees, rather coy about exactly what they will do to either increase taxation, cut spending or, most likely, both.
The party that is brave, that doesn’t treat us like fools and says, explicitly, what it will do come May 7, is the party most likely to earn the respect of the electorate.
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