Overall, the English debate was a much more mixed event to me than was the French debate last night. There was no clear winner, a lot of the discussion was a repeat of the French debate, and the discussion was less ideas-based and more argumentative.

I would like to note that, from my perspective, the moderator from TVO seemed to ask some rather offbeat questions and tended to favour Stephen Harper with both response opportunities and his biased, fringe queries.

1. Jack Layton and Stéphane Dion

To me, there was no clear winner. That said, these two made the most gains in the night.

Jack had two great one-liners. Calling out Harper on his lack of clear policies, he asked, “Where is your platform? Under the sweater?” and, in talking about the effect of the economic woes on average Canadians, “Either you don’t care or you’re incompetent. Which is it?”

Layton attacked Dion a few times, dropped the prime minister line a few times, surprisingly agreed with comments from both Gilles Duceppe and Elizabeth May, and continued to focus his talking points on raising corporate taxes to help pay for better infrastructure, R&D, healthcare, and child care.

Jack’s problem though was that he stayed the course. He comes across to me as far too scripted. Furthermore, I’m not too big on his “average Canadians”, “kitchen table” bombardments, so I’m a bit biased. He was strong, but he didn’t outright win it for me.

Stéphane needed a breakthrough here, and the delivery was mixed. I think once again, the language barrier was the problem. He was excessively stiff at the beginning, but at times throughout the debate he showed genuine caring and passion about his country and the issues we face in Canada. It was the same type of energy he gave off in the French debates, however, it wasn’t as well presented because of his lack of understanding for English vocabulary and the language’s rules.

Dion was quite solid in presenting a number of progressive Liberal policies, and did very good (with the help of Liz May and Gilles Duceppe) to properly confront Harper’s claims that the Green Shift was a tax hike. He explained several times he would lower taxes on what we want, like income, investments, and profits, and raise taxes on pollution. It will help to address a lot of the misinformation the Conservatives and the NDP have been spreading about the carbon tax shift.

Dion’s performance was enough to sway a few votes, but wasn’t what he needed to put himself back in this race. I don’t think he did well enough to really change things, unfortunately.

2. Gilles Duceppe, Elizabeth May, and Stephen Harper

Duceppe brought forth some good attacks on Harper, but tried too much to constantly put Québec first over the rest of Canada. He played a lesser role than in the French debates, and rightly so. His English is better than Dion’s, in my opinion.

Liz May didn’t produce the stellar performance I was looking for after her terrible French last evening. If anything, I feel she got less air time than yesterday, she put forth even less Green party policies than yesterday, and focused primarily on calling out Harper. I think it helped Dion and Layton, hurt Harper, but I don’t know if it will produce too many votes for the Green party. She did however mention Nova Scotia specifically a few times, and I think that may very well translate into more support for her personally in the Central Nova riding she’s trying to win.

And good on Liz for making electoral reform and proportional representation her number one priority!

Stephen Harper tried again at the beginning to attack the other parties, and the Liberals specifically, on “big government” policies and “raising taxes”. However, he quickly ceded and stayed on the defensive all night. It’s quite obvious his whole image was scripted by the Conservative war room. Part of this image though is having Harper refrain from attacking the other parties or leaders in an attempt to make him seem more warm and fuzzy – like a blue sweater!

I personally think that in doing so though, by allowing the parties to gang up on him, it made Harper look weak and I think will lower his numbers on “leadership”.