The ITV Leaders Debate saw seven leading parties face off against one another on a level playing field, heralding perhaps a new kind of politics – naive as that sounds.
There was no clear winner with Labour and the Conservatives struggling to make their voices heard above the morass.
Clashing on the NHS, austerity and immigration, it was eminently quotable, as a good debate should be.
There were a few lines sneaked in from PMQs: “Forget zero hours, with Ed Milliband it’ll be zero jobs,” said the Prime Minister.
“Is there nothing Nigel Farage won’t blame on foreigners?” asked Nicola Sturgeon.
The UKIP leader, determined to show he – not the rest who claim thie ground – was the one who was different, said “No to the politically correct political class. Yes to plain spoken patriotism.”
Whether he will escape scot-free with his comments on health tourism and 60 per cent of HIV patients being foreign remains to be seen.
Ed Miliband rounded on David Cameron in a couple of heated exchanges: “People thought you were a different kind of Conservative, they were wrong.”
“David Cameron and Nick Clegg are blaming each other. They’re both right.”
For the most part the biggest winners were the minority parties, finally given enough time on the national stage to make their points, it somewhat diminished the power of two-party politics.
All signs point to power-sharing in Parliament, and there were slight echoes of deals and alliances being negotiated live on air.
Political dinosaur Andrew Neil – he of the bad wig and tongue-achingly awful attempts at humour – summed up the old attitude adroitly, opening his show with a line that belongs in the bad old days: “We’re here in Salford where the leaders will return to their campaign buses to find them up on bricks.”
Neil is part of a system that no longer belongs.
1.4 million #leadersdebate live tweets heralds a major win for ITV News, that much is clear.
35 days and counting.
