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"Why are we all so poor? You said there'd be fewer immigrants but there are more? Why do you look like ham, mate?"Why is Cameron bothering with this hassle when he could have just sat back and wait for Ed Miliband to be caught on camera failing to master some basic life skill, such as eating a bacon sandwich or passing a homeless person in the street?It's obvious why the Tories had been stalling up until now: if Cameron has to defend his turd of a record in a live TV debate, he might actually end up looking worse than Ed, if you can imagine that.
Like the bullied kid at school on the day his tormentor shits himself in class, Ed Miliband had been making the most of the shellacking Cameron was receiving over not stepping up to the plate, even tweeting at him personally but doing that thing where you put a full stop in front of the tweet so everyone can see your zinger. However, he's probably feeling somewhat less smug now the debate is actually going to happen, as it will probably go terribly for him.
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Despite having made a generation of students distrustful of all politicians, Nick Clegg's whole thing these days is to position himself as an antidote to politicians – the one in the dead-centre who's going to rein those other idiots in and stop them doing anything too drastic. As such, the format of a seven-way TV squawk-off could work for him. He may be planning to just sit there, tutting and rolling his eyes and coming off as a sensible if hugely unspectacular candidate.That said, everyone's stolen his "remembering to say the person who asked the question's name" schtick since that technique ignited Cleggmania before the last election. I can't really see #IAgreeWithNick taking off again, can you?
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This is essentially a high-stakes Question Time, so it will basically be the equivalent of New Year's Eve down the local for Nigel Farage. He will be able to go HAM on immigrants like no one else, safe in the knowledge that he wasn't going to get any votes from Guardian readers anyway. The same goes for the EU, where he can just repeat everything he said against Nick Clegg last year, and add some stuff about Cameron and Miliband not having a firm enough policy. Flipping the script, UKIP's lack of much to say about anything else could go either way, depending how good Farage is at riffing, which is usually pretty good.The only thing he'll have to look out for will be saying something openly racist, because his supporters are always keen to insist they're definitely not racist and I'm sure he'd lose a ton of support if he ever did that live on air.
We all saw what Green Party leader Natalie Bennett admitted was an "excruciating" interview with LBC's Nick Ferrari, where she had a "mind blank" and totally forgot how the party would pay for its housing policy. Like a dodgy goalkeeper that players try to rattle by showering with long-shots, a TV debate will be fraught with candidates facetiously asking Natalie about the absolute minutiae of her policy – for instance, the tiny detail that one of their main anti-poverty policies might actually make people poorer.The format won't give her time to explain anything properly, and David Cameron can just sort of smile and roll his eyes and say, "Oh, is that right? You're sure? You remembered your own policy this time? Well at least that's something." She'll awkwardly try to laugh it off and get back on track but by that point, in front of a fickle live TV audience, the damage will have been done.
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It's difficult to see how the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon could possibly lose out here. Her only opponents worth speaking of in Scotland are Labour, who will be besieged from left and right.Labour, the Tories and UKIP will play to their audiences by getting upset at her for trying to break up the union, but that's not going to make her look all that bad to the almost half of the Scottish population that voted Yes. The other just-more-than-half presumably weren't going to vote SNP anyway.This will just be a chance to reel off some social democratic policies in front of a nation that has only one Tory MP – that and watch Ed Miliband squirm.The same pretty much goes for Plaid Cymru, except to a lesser extent. The former mining villages of South Wales might still spit when they say "Thatcher", but elsewhere Wales has eight Tory MPs. And way fewer people give a shit about Welsh nationalism.@SimonChilds13More politics:These Are the Coalition Governments That Could Run Your Life After the Next UK ElectionWhich Party Is More Bigoted, UKIP or the Tories?Do Your Sexual Fantasies Affect the Way You Vote?