Ed Miliband narrowly beats David Cameron in snap poll after leaders' debate

By The Guardian

An always tense, sometimes disjointed and occasionally cacophonous seven-way live TV leaders debate saw Ed Miliband just shave ahead of his rivals, according to a snap Guardian/ICM poll conducted after the event.

Labour, aware of Miliband’s poor personal ratings before the campaign, will be pleased he was at least matching the normally more popular David Cameron according to ICM and the three other post-debate polls.

Miliband branded the prime minister as aninvisible man who said little in the two-hour long debate on ITV. But the prime minister will be pleased that he emerged from a safety-first performance largely unscathed from his only head-to-head television clash with Milband.

Cameron, remaining calm under sustained attack, drove home the central message of the Tory campaign and even stole a line favoured by Miliband saying: “The choice at this election is sticking with the plan that’s working, or going back to the debt, taxes, borrowing and spending that got us in this mess in the first place. I say let’s not go back to square one; Britain can do so much better than that.”

The Guardian/ICM post-debate poll showed that Miliband won the debate by a whisker over Cameron – by 25% to 24%. Ukip’s Nigel Farage came third on 19%, Scottish National party leader Nicola Sturgeon was fourth on 17%, with Liberal Democrats leader Nick Clegg trailing in fifth place on 9%, ahead of Natalie Bennett for the Greens on 3% and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood on 2%.

But Cameron and Miliband were in a dead heat – 50% to 50% – when voters were asked to choose simply between the leader of the two parties.

The public perception that it was a closely fought battle was underlined in a separate ComRes/ITV poll in which Cameron, Miliband and Farage were tied on 21%. Sturgeon was in fourth place on 20%, followed by Clegg on 9%.

A YouGov poll recorded a Sturgeon win on 28%. Farage was in second place (20%), ahead of Cameron (18%) and Miliband (15%).

However, the rating differences between leaders are so small that few will see the debates as decisive moment in a campaign that has a month to go.

The initially slow and soundbite-filled debate in Salford was listened to mainly in silence by the studio audience and saw repeated leftwing assaults on austerity, immigration and NHS privatisation launched by Wood, Sturgeon and Bennett.

The Conservatives judged the SNP’s assault on Labour’s alleged commitment to £30bn of spending cuts as the moment of the debate since it revealed how a future Labour government would be dominated by a leftwing SNP.

Miliband, rarely attacked in public from the left and eager to focus on presenting himself as an alternative prime minister, initially struggled to find the room in a crowded multi-party to sharpen his attack on Cameron.

However, he found his voice when he mounted a strong personal assault on Cameron’s stewardship of the NHS and Cameron’s zero-hours economy.

Accused by Cameron of “weaponising” the NHS, Miliband hit back. Addressing the the viewers at home, he urged: “Use your vote as a weapon to fight for the future of the NHS because it needs to be rescued from you David. You failed the British people and you broke your bond of trust on the NHS.

“They believed you. They thought you were a different kind of Conservative. People at home will have to decide. I think the NHS is a foundation for working people in this country”.

Describing an NHS in decline, Miliband said: “I ask you at home to decide if this is what protection looks like... We’re missing the targets for cancer treatment for the first time ever... I do not believe that is protecting the NHS and his spending plans for the next parliament are even more dangerous I think people will conclude the NHS is going backwards”.

The Labour leader also accused Cameron of always wanting to talk about the past rather than the future.

Cameron chose to avoid any personal assaults on Miliband and, playing it safe, countered by saying: “If you don’t understand the mistakes of the past, you can’t have a plan for the future.”

Farage, the noisiest of the seven speakers and the performer most intent on differentiating from the “politically correct political class” was the most aggressive. But He found him under assault from Wood who told Farage that he should be ashamed of himself for advocating that immigrants with HIV should be banned from the UK.

The complex, seven-way TV debate is the only time in which Miliband will go head to head against Cameron, and Labour accused the prime minister of hiding behind Paid, the Greens and SNP.

The Tories are still haunted by the way the TV debates weakened Cameron in the 2010 election campaign and feared a series of direct confrontations this time would have forced the prime minister on to the back foot to defend his record.

The debate, calmly chaired by Julia Etchingham, was broken into four often diffuse subjects: the economy, health, immigration and living standards.

In possibly the liveliest section, on immigration, the conflict between Farage and Cameron largely focused on whether the prime minister had any realistic chance of negotiating with his EU partners to end the free movement of workers.

Farage insisted: “This is not about benefits. This is about numbers. I don’t blame a single migrant that wants to come from eastern Europe” adding the UK “has to build one house every seven minutes just to cope with immigration”.