Marbury

dreamland

(Photo: Reuters)

After the giddiness of the first, and the excitement of the second, last night's debate felt like a bad third date, at which we suddenly became painfully aware of the other's affectations. Partly this was because we've got used to the leaders' debate mannerisms, which now seem cartoonish: Clegg's "shrug of exasperation at the old politics", Cameron's "pursed lips of authority", and Brown's wolfish grins, which appear at unexpected moments, as if triggered by passing planes. It was a little depressing, but then the theme was the economy, about which there is nothing undepressing to say.

What might have quickened the blood is if one of them had told the truth about how awful things are going to be; if Clegg had said, "I have to tell you, the next Prime Minister of this country would do well to spend their first week in an abattoir, learning how to make savage cuts" or if Brown had suddenly roared "I am Vishnu, destroyer of worlds". Instead, all three colluded in the pretence that by cutting down on next year's stationery order and cancelling the summer golf day, we ought to be able to muddle through this spot of bother. There was a dreamlike quality to it, which was enhanced by the BBC's choice of backdrop: a picture of Westminster refracted through a lava lamp. I thought for a moment that it might be sentient, and offering a silent commentary on the debate - purple when it was angry, pink when charmed. Whatever it was, it was unsettling (what on earth went on at the meeting where that was chosen? "These are changing times, times of uncertainty yeah? So the backdrop needs to reflect that.") The dreaminess was deepened by Dimbleby's impression of a mythical public school headmaster - peering over his glasses at the boys, and occasionally dropping off - and by the orange faces of the participants, which now and then would merge seamlessly into the backdrop.

Cameron performed at almost exactly the same level as he has done in the last two debates: not bad. He dared to be a little sharper - he had a good line about GB seemingly being unsure of which country he's presiding over. But he didn't really go for any top notes of passion or anger. He has played all three nights with a straight bat, pursuing, with considerable discipline, the classic strategy of a leader in the polls. He had a good outfit on, although his chin glistened, and occasionally, when he glanced at Dimbleby for permission to respond to a Brown salvo, he looked like he was summoning a waiter to deal with a troublesome beggar at his table.

Clegg, I thought, suffered most from the third date effect. His repeated lines about the "old politics" practiced by the other two seemed more like a shtick than before, delivered by a glib Dem. He got pounded by the other two to some effect over immigration, without managing the aggressive counter-punching he did on Trident last week. He waved his hands a lot, looked boyish, used a lot of Blairish tics ("Look...") and generally seemed less like a potential PM and more than ever like a trendy geography teacher (or as Ed Docx says in this month's Prospect, the winner of BA's short haul pilot of the year competition). He also wore a terrible, attention-seeking tie, which seemed determined to wrest the leadership of his party from under his nose.

When Brown began his opening monologue I thought this was going to be a terrible night for him. As we've seen over the last two years, if things aren't going well, he can't hide it. It's as if a light goes off inside. And last night he looked tired and beaten down. There was none of the smirk and pep he had in the first two debates. But somehow - I can only assume through a superhuman act of will - he dredged up the energy and conviction to deliver a strong performance. He was particularly good on the banks - the night he had to save them, and his anger at them, which chimed with the anger of voters. More impressive than anything he actually said was his display of an extraordinary, uncrushable will to go on, quite awesome to behold.

Not that it will do him any good. The die is cast, certainly for Brown. Not one voter will have changed their mind about voting for him, even if some of those who want him gone might admit to a lingering respect for him. Cameron won the instant polls last night not because he put in the strongest performance, but because people have decided he's going to win the election. I suspect that many voters, even if it is very reluctantly, will switch to him in the last week and I think the Tories will scrape out an overall majority. Then - or after the Queen's Speech - we'll wake up, and with the mother of all hangovers. 

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jon stewart on the british election

Funny throughout, especially the very last image. And good to get some perspective on our eccentricities.

numerology

As regular readers know, I have the highest regard for Nate Silver and his team at 538, who predicted the results of the 2008 primaries and general with an uncanny degree of accuracy. As well as being statistical savants, they're brilliant political commentators: perceptive, wise and wary of conventional wisdoms. So whilst this isn't their home turf, I'd suggest it's worth taking their projections of our election outcome very seriously indeed. Suspicious of the widely used "uniform swing", they've come up with their own model for translating poll numbers into seats. This is what it predicts:

Tories 299, Labour 199, LibDems 120.

(My completely unscientific feeling is that a lot of wavering voters will swing behind Cam & Co in the last week, and they'll crawl across the overall majority finish line.)

Read the whole analysis.

anger works - when it's controlled

Further to my recent post on Steve Davis, this is from an interview that took place just before his triumph against John Higgins:

Davis continued to dominate snooker throughout the 1980s and, even now, he has won more professional tournaments than any other player in the game. He has also not forgotten what shaped his extraordinary drive. "You need to be intense, single-minded and angry. It's not necessarily a chip on your shoulder but there is a testosterone-fuelled anger in the best sportsmen. As you get older you get softer in the centre and all you can do is attempt to relight the flame every now and then."

It's great, revealing insight. Nobody ever thought of mild-mannered Steve Davis as an angry man, but it was there, just beneath that placid surface, and it drove him on. One of the surprises of Alastair Campbell's diaries is the extent to which Blair comes across as a much more intense character than he seems in public - there is or was a kind of determined fury in him too. But Blair, like Davis, knew how to control and channel that anger to great effect; neither let their anger get control of them.

Not with the mic on anyway.

if the cap fits

President Obama tours POET Biorefining with plant manager Steve Burnett, Wednesday, April 28, in Macon, Mo. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

(via Ben Smith)

UPDATE:  Elemjay's comment reminds me to repost this wonderful slideshow of Obama feigning interest in mundane things.

will there be a duffy effect?

Gillian Duffy now has a PR spokesman and a £50k deal with a national newspaper. She's famous around the world. After the X-Factor-style debates, the Susan Boyle moment. This is an election campaign as masterminded by Simon Cowell.

So will bigotgate actually have an impact? Yes, although only a small one. Unlike John Rentoul, I doubt this story will have any direct effect on the polls, because I don't think one-off incidents shift preferences. Particularly if they reinforce rather than cut against existing perception. Everyone knows Brown is socially awkward, rough and rude; for viewers, this is a laugh and a wince but it's not shocking or even surprising. Indeed, as with the saga of Brown's letter to a bereaved mother, there may be a counter-wave of sympathy after the papers pile on with both boots tomorrow; many people will watch the footage tonight with a feeling of "There but for the grace of God..." remembering all the times they've nearly been caught badmouthing someone, and Brown's look of utter abjection in that radio interview makes you feel sorry for him.

Even if its direct effect is neutral, however, it matters, because it cancels the (slight) possibility that Brown and Labour mount a rearguard recovery in the last week of the campaign. It's also just a sad, undignified way for Brown to enter his last week as Prime Minister.

UPDATE: Reports vary but it seems Mrs Duffy has not taken The Sun's money. Good for her. Hope she's left alone by media now.

doh!

This is one of those cases where I do blame the advisers. What GB said isn't remarkable. In fact given the stress he's under and the chaos of an election campaign, I think he was very mild. But it's the job of his advance team to worry about things like open mics. They should have ripped it off him at the first possible opportunity. Or - better - not let him wear it. Apparently Blair's team wouldn't let him wear TV mics, insisting on their own, for full control.

Still at least he has a good personal story for the debate: "When I was in Rochdale I met a fifty-year-old bigot..."

UPDATE: Finkelstein agrees.

backing the green revolutions

There is, in theory, a confluence of interest between left and right in American politics when it comes to climate change and green energy. Weaning America off its dependence on oil isn't just good for the planet but (and this applies even if you don't believe or care about the latter) it reduces the country's dependence on Middle-East oil. Climate change campaigners haven't made much of this so far, perhaps out of squeamishness. This ad, in support of the climate-change bill that's currently languishing on Capitol Hill, will offend some liberal sensibilities, but it's a pretty powerful way of making that connection:

(Via Ben Smith)

sign language

These Malaysian ladies appear to have learnt English from watching Coronation Street or maybe The Royle Family:

Actually for some reason this sign reminded me of that priceless clip from Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home, in which a fan at the notorious "Judas" concert in Manchester explains to an interviewer that "Bob Dylan was a bastard in the second half." Of course, for many Labour voters this applies to Tony Blair's tenure as Prime Minister.

(Picture via the Daily Mail)

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the conservatives have chosen the wrong opponent

Not satisfied with inventing new policies, the Tories have now launched a full-bore attack on a party that doesn't exist: the "Hung Parliament Party". They've cancelled the PPB they were going to show on Tuesday night and replaced it with this.

It is, I think, a crazy tactic. First of all, people vote for real parties, not imaginary ones. It's a mark of how difficult the Tories think it is to attack the Lib Dems that they've had to invent a fourth party to stop people voting Clegg. But really, if that's their aim, they'd be better off going the direct route.

Second, it's patronising. In an election campaign it's essential to ask for votes for your lot, and perfectly acceptable to point out the shortcomings of the other lot. But - especially in the current climate - it's suicidal to assume that voters can be bossed around.

Third, it's entirely counter-productive. The Tories think that if they carefully explain the hazardous instability of a hung parliament, wandering voters will see sense and vote for them, even if they do so grudgingly.  But this is to massively misread the mood of the electorate. The voters want some instability. They are disgusted by a stability that bred the culture of expenses, and by the old two-party choice. The replacement of one lot by another at this election simply isn't going to satisfy the thirst for a cathartic event, a flood, a cleansing catastrophe that marks a juddering rupture with the past. The more the Tories build up the prospect of a hung parliament as a disaster, the more people will think, bring it on. (The mood is similar, by the way, to that of Democratic voters in 2007/2008, for whom the replacement of Bush by Clinton came to seem inadequate to the size of their anger. In these circumstances, Obama's very "riskiness" became his appeal).

Yesterday one of my friends told me she was thinking about voting Lib Dem for the first time, with the intention - eloquently expressed, I thought - of "stirring shit up". Conservatives shouldn't under-estimate the "stir shit up" motivation, even if they deem it irrational. If voters want to wreak some havoc on May 6th then they bloody well will, despite politicians telling them not to. Because politicians are telling them not to.

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time well spent

There are fewer outlets than there used to be for long articles of several thousand words. The New Yorker and the Atlantic still regularly publish them but there's a perception that people have less time and inclination to read such pieces these days, and with so much reading being done a screen, the trend has been for short, bite-sized chunks of info and analysis.

There is and always will be, however, a desire for sustained journalistic stories that unwind and enfold. Reading them requires concentration, but when they're good, they're highly rewarding; I bet you can think of two or three immediately that have stayed with you. When the writing's brilliant, petty concerns about time management tend to evaporate. Try reading the first page of this, for instance, and see if you can stop.

And actually, it may be that such pieces are coming back into vogue, as technology moves on again. The advent of the Kindle and the iPad means that long pieces will start to be a real pleasure to read on-screen. Even better for publishers, the best of them will be worth paying for directly.

All of which is to say that I think this new website is welcome and timely. It gathers together the best longform articles of recent years in one place. You can read about the background to it here.

is labour being seduced by the "uniform swing"?

American number-genius Nate Silver has applied his very considerable smarts to the British election. He writes to warn of the inadequacies of translating vote shares into seats via the notion of a "uniform swing". The BBC and other media outlets like the notion of the uniform swing because it's very easy to calculate, and makes it simply to turn polls into headlines. You just take the projected share of the vote, work out the swing from the last election (eg Labour seven points lower) then apply it to every constituency and see what comes out the other end. This works quite well when you're talking about transfers of votes from one party to the other. But when you're in a three-way-race - actually a four-way-race, with "others" taking up much a larger share of the vote - it can become very unreliable.

Silver's initial conclusion is that Labour's structural advantage in this election - which many in the party seem to be hoping will save them from devastation on May 6th - may be being overestimated because of overconfidence in projections based on uniform swings.

gay scientists isolate christian gene

squeaky bum time

(Photograph: Observer/Karen Robinson)

What is it - just the smoothness of his skin? David Cameron has this uncanny, computer-generated  quality in photographs - he's like a Pixar politician. It's unfortunate, is all I'm saying.

Anyway, that's not my point. My point is, I'm starting to think that all those Cameron supporters who claim he's great under pressure (a view I've subscribed to myself) may want to reconsider. He is showing signs of panic. Today he conjured up a constitutional change from nowhere:

This morning, Cameron has suddenly launched a new idea: a proposal that, if the premiership changes between elections, an election has to be held within six months. That is very clearly targeted at Gordon Brown. It also flags up a Tory fear that Labour could ditch Brown for a new leader in order to facilitate a post-election coalition with the Lib Dems: "You could have someone as prime minister who wasn't even in the televised debates." His latest proposal would be a major rule change to Britain's democracy, which is, we remind him, parliamentary, not presidential. The policy features nowhere in the Tory manifesto.

So under this law, Churchill would have been forced to call an election in 1940. This is a policy that manages to be at once carelessly radical and hopelessly irrelevant. On the one hand, it's a pretty significant change to the way the country is run (and not very conservative at all); on the other, it doesn't address the underlying flaws of our electoral system. Whether it was dreamt up over cornflakes as Peter Mandelson suggests, or a cappuccino-fueled brainstorm with Steve Hilton the night before, it should never have seen the light of day.

Even if you like the idea, it's shockingly ill-disciplined to start throwing out new policies in the middle of an election campaign. At a time when the Tories need to be conveying calmness, strength of conviction and maturity, it makes them look shallow, jumpy and desperate for attention. Is Armando Ianucci writing Cameron's script?

how steve davis kept his head

It was fascinating to hear Steve Davis give his post-match analysis today after a magnificent, highly improbable victory over John Higgins in the World Championship. Davis has won that tournament six times, of course, but the last one was in 1989. Now 52, he still plays a decent game but isn't anything as formidable as he was. Higgins is the strongest player in the world right now. So this is a big deal.

In his interview Davis said that his game had improved recently because he'd concentrated on something very basic in his technique: keeping his head still. All young snooker players are told to keep their head still when making a shot, because when you move your head, you move your spine, and thus your whole posture which disrupts your cue action. Experienced players usually do this automatically, but Davis said a friend had texted him after watching him on TV to warn that he'd developed a bad habit of moving his head on a shot. So during the tournament, and in this match in particular, Davis kept focused on this very basic point of technique, rather than all the other tiny things that affect a cue action. It was his "one thought" on each of the key shots he had to make to beat the world's number one.

What's interesting is that I suspect this worked so well for Davis not just because it kept his head still - but because it kept him focused, blocking out all the other uncertainties that can creep into a player's head on big shots. In games like golf and snooker, players can carry on playing at a high level for years after their peak has passed, but they rarely get back to it. Partly this is down to physical ageing - even these relatively sedentary games require a degree of physical stamina and suppleness that is difficult to maintain. But the biggest deterioration is psychological; they lose that extraordinary mental strength, the ability to focus under pressure, that champions possess.

When I heard Davis say that I thought about a Jonah Lehrer piece on what happens when sportspeople "choke" at big moments. The problem is, they think too much:

Beilock's data further demonstrate the benefits of relying on the automatic brain when playing a familiar sport. She found that when experienced golfers are forced to think about their putts, they hit significantly worse shots. All those conscious thoughts erase their years of practice. "We bring expert golfers into our lab, we tell them to pay attention to a particular part of their swing, and they just screw up," Beilock says. "When you are at a high level, your skills become somewhat automated. You don't need to pay attention to every step in what you're doing." This is what happens when people "choke". The part of their brain that monitors their behaviour starts to interfere with actions that are normally made without thinking. Performers begin second guessing skills that they have honed through years of practice.

The best athletes deal with this by fixating on "banalities and cliches" at key moments: deliberately vapid phrases like "stay strong" or "never give up" that crowd out dozens of other niggling thoughts. Steve Davis chose to focus on a physical action, but one that was simple and basic enough not to undermine his focus on the shot. That must have helped to exclude all those other thoughts hammering at the door - like, "I'm too old for this shit" - from getting in and unsettling him.