Welsh leaders’ debate – the experts give their verdicts
years, and we are likely to see Labour continue to be the largest party, but with fewer seats, with Plaid Cymru and the Conservatives fighting for second place, and the Lib Dems are in trouble as they are replaced by UKIP as the party in Wales that comes second and third in lots of places.
“So going into the last week of the campaign, the leaders had an opportunity to move the dial, to make a real impact. But they didn’t.
“None of them did a terrible job. They can all take something positive from it. But it won’t cut through.
“It is one of those programmes that people watch. And when I say people, I mean people not like me who live in a bubble of political geekery.
“In my world, the debates are like Rorshach Tests, those inkblot pictures in which you see what you want to see. Party supporters and political geeks will be looking for coded messages and performances that confirm what they already believe.
“But in the last week of the election, its all about Mrs Jones. Leaders should be thinking – I have this one last chance to sway Mrs Jones as she holds her pen over the ballot paper.
“This may be the only political programme Mrs Jones watches. She wants to get an overall impression of the First Minister she is voting for.
“What makes them tick? What are their core beliefs? What sort of First Minister will they be? What sort of government will they run? Can I trust them with my money?
“Had she turned on the telly last night, she would have turned off pretty quickly.
“Both debates have been like FMQs.
“A bit of squabbling over this or that, some detail from one manifesto to beat the other detail from another manifesto. She would not have learnt a great deal, and it won’t have swayed her vote.
“Mrs Jones might just stay at home and not vote at all.” Professor Roger Scully, of the Wales Governance Centre at Cardiff University, believes the leaders know each other too well
“One of the problems with evaluating this type of debate is the way many people search for a single ‘winner’. Maybe that makes sense in a two- or three-way debate.
“But when you have six politicians, trying to appeal to rather different segments of the electorate, talk of a single winner makes little sense. Take Nathan Gill as an example. I doubt that most he would have enhanced his appeal to the majority of the Welsh electorate last night.
“But Gill doesn’t have to appeal to most people.
“His job was to try and reinforce Ukip support among the 15-20% of people who might vote UKIP next week.
“He did that job quite well, I suspect.
“In this respect, though perhaps only this one, he has a lot in common with Alice Hooker-Stroud.
“In both TV debates she has come over as less polished than her more experienced counterparts.
“But for those who might consider voting Green, a super-slick professional politico is probably not what they are looking for.
“Over the two debates I think all four leaders of the more established parties have performed creditably.
“Contrary to what some will tell you on Twitter, none of them had a ‘car crash’, but none have ‘smashed it out of the park’.
“Perhaps the biggest problem, though, is that they’ve all been having these arguments together in the Senedd for more than four years.
“At times they looked fed up with each other: they know each other’s strengths and weaknesses all too well, and have rehearsed the various arguments time and again. Perhaps it’s just as well that at least some of the parties will probably have new leaders by the time we do this all again.”