Howard

I've just finished watching the last of the 30-minute interviews the BBC has conducted with the leaders of the 3 main parties this week. You can see them all online on demand. The last one was with Conservative leader Michael Howard, who most people in Oxford, Stellito tells me, find rather terrifying. Well, that's Oxford. I find him rather terrifying too, but after watching him for 30 minutes, I've found him to be terrifyingly impressive. Quite simply, Michael Howard's 30 minutes of prime-time on BBC1 (probably about 3 million people watching) involved the best display of being interviewed and debating in public I think I have ever seen. Anyone who wants to know how to win an argument should watch closely. Everything was right on target - anticipating his interviewer's (the famously difficult and challenging Jeremy Paxman, who once asked Howard the same question thirteen times in the course of an interview) attempts to interrupt him; ensuring that his answers were clear, concise and comprehensible; and using a technique I don't think I have seen before - Howard and the Tories are campaigning on 5 main issues - police, hospitals, school discipline, tax and immigration - and Howard rattled them off very quickly, so that the viewer would focus on the two or three that mattered to them, and forget the rest (very useful for appealing to prospective conservative voters who want less tax and cleaner hospitals, but aren't quite down with the xenophobic overtones of the campaign).
Now, why should we care if Michael Howard is a good interviewee?
The reason is that if Howard can utilise his strengths and get his message across personally to enough voters, then the Conservatives could do very well indeed. Maybe not this time, but in four years, they could be electable. Howard is the strongest Tory leader since Thatcher in my view. And we ought to beware. In 2009, he could be posing a real challenge.
Is it a reason to vote Labour? Absolutely not.
I've been finding out about St. Albans' Independent candidate Mark Reynolds in the last couple of days. He won't win, but I think I'm going to vote for him. He promises to hold open surgeries for constituents all weekend, every weekend. He won't win, but campaigns like this could make lazy MPs much more responsive to their constituents - which is, after all, their job.