Of the 270 minutes of debate some of us enjoyed, or perhaps endured, over the last three weeks, precious few produced moments of real tension. Yet it’s inconceivable that leaders in future elections will be able to refuse to participate, so the landscape of our future general elections are now radically changed and the skills needed to lead a party through a campaign have changed with it.

I wonder if those who so keenly pushed for the debates realised this would happen? The question, ‘how will they cope with the debate?’ has killed any hope of the leadership for some of those who presently think they have what it takes.

Ben Page of IPSOS Mori tells us that hard policy only accounts for 7% of the impression made on viewers. Body language, demeanour, vocabulary, and interaction with other leaders and the audiences are far more prominent in forming opinions. This seems to explain why, in true Nixon/Kennedy fashion, those listening on the radio seemed to be far more disposed to Gordon Brown than the other leaders.

While the quality of debate last night was probably the highest of the three, a factor which played to Gordon’s strengths, it received almost three million fewer viewers than the first. The majority of people will therefore find out who ‘won’ the debate from Rupert Murdoch, not a good sign for Labour or the British public as Murdoch is the one man who has more to lose in this election than Gordon Brown.

The debates have proved just too delicious for the media, and planning for future elections will have to take this into account. The two days before each debate are dominated by the ‘buildup’, read: journalists interviewing journalists. And the day after is dominated by ‘analysis’, by which I mean journalists interviewing more journalists with the addition of crackpot body language experts. Alastair Campbell despairs at this focus on process, but it’s dominated the media’s approach to this campaign and the Tories have played it very well. Their campaign needs the tagline ‘inspired by ‘Hello’ magazine’.

With more than 45% of the electorate still reportedly willing to be persuaded, there is all to play for and the role of volunteer campaigners in the next six days is, when all is said and done, going to have far more impact than last night’s debate in determining the outcome of the election.

I know this from experience. I’ve never seen such an energised and determined set of campaigners as in Hove in 2005. Very few people thought we could pull it off, which made us work even harder. I remember the team collapsing after the last car-full of voters had been shuttled to the polling station and the look on their faces five hours later when we’d won…by 420 votes.

Photo: UniBirmingham 2010