UK Polls Debate Fails to Yield Any Clear Winners

The only televised debate between British Prime Minister David Cameron, opposition leader Ed Miliband and five others yielded no clear winners, making it more difficult for pollsters to predict the outcome of next month's election.

The seven-way debate, held last night, was the first and only time all the key UK leaders will share a common stage ahead of the general elections on May 7, and was watched by approximately two million people on TV.

Conservative party chief Cameron clashed not only with his Labour party rival and prime ministerial hopeful Miliband, but also with coalition partner Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg.

Snap opinion polls soon after the clash pegged Cameron and Miliband on level footing with Clegg far behind in the assessment.

But an overall mixed verdict failed to throw up any clear winner even at this late stage in the campaign of an election which has been described as the closest political race in decades.

However, the leaders of smaller parties seemed to fare well with the audience.

Nicola Sturgeon, who leads the Scottish National Party (SNP), Leanne Wood of the Welsh Plaid Cymru and Natalie Bennett of the Green Party impressed with their jibes at the bigger parties.

But it was the far-right UK Independence Party (UKIP) that was pleased with its leader Nigel Farage's performance as opinion polls pegged him at third or fourth place.

A YouGov poll of 1,100 people gave a clear victory to Sturgeon with 28 per cent, followed by Farage on 20 per cent, Cameron on 18 per cent, Miliband on 15 per cent, Clegg on 10 per cent, Bennett on 5 per cent and Wood on 4 per cent.

But a ComRes poll for ITV made it a dead heat between Cameron, Miliband, Farage and Sturgeon, although Cameron came out on top on the question of who was most capable of leading the country.

Miliband was judged best performer in an ICM poll for the Guardian, taking 25 per cent of support, just ahead of David Cameron on 24 per cent.

Some of the sharpest exchanges in the two-hour event came when Clegg clashed with Cameron, accusing him of wanting to cut the money going into schools.

Cameron denied this and accused Clegg of taking a "pick and mix approach" to decisions they had made together in Cabinet as coalition partners.

Miliband attacked Clegg for "betraying young people" over university tuition fees and a clearly angered Clegg attacked the Labour leader's "pious stance" and challenged Miliband to apologise to the British public for "crashing the economy".

The Labour leader said his party had admitted getting it wrong over bank regulation.

Sturgeon took a firm line against austerity and signalled areas, such as increasing the top rate of income tax, where she could work with Labour but said getting more SNP MPs elected to Westminster was needed to "keep them honest".

Wood and Bennett joined Sturgeon in stressing their anti-austerity credentials.

Farage, on the other hand, appealed to his anti-immigrant and anti-EU base and risked controversy by highlighting the number of foreign nationals with HIV whom he said were treated by the National Health Service (NHS), saying: "We have to look after our own people first."

He also clashed directly with Cameron on the issue of immigration, saying he stood no chance of getting agreement from other EU leaders to restrict the free movement of people.

The British PM rejected this and accused Farage of wanting to get a Labour government through the "back door".

Overall, the one and only real clash of the 2015 election campaign was a relatively even-tempered debate, with few examples of the leaders shouting across each other.