Contrarian post of the day.

One party has just received a ten-point boost in the polls, not on the basis of 6 million people reading their manifesto from cover to cover but, so far as I can make out, on the basis of a personal television appearance by their leader - a leader who is standing in only one constituency and can only be voted for by residents of that constituency.

I have a strong, long-standing distaste for the pretence that the Prime Minister is a President, and for a system of campaigning that focuses strongly on the personal appearance and charisma of a figurehead while ignoring policy details. So I consider this development is clearly and unequivocally a bad thing for British politics. Read your candidates' electoral material; question them at local hustings; and either vote for someone who you trust to represent you or, if worst comes to worst, vote to keep some bastard out.

But for the love of gods *please* don't pretend that Nick Clegg's strong performance in the first debate leading directly to a massive boost for the Lib Dems is another other than the same vain, empty, personality-driven approach to politics that bought us Tony Blair as Prime Minister, and remains depressingly likely to bring us Tory Boy in the near future.