Going, going...

Gordon Brown didn't 'lose' the debates (despite winning several of the arguments) because he's bad on TV: he lost, to put it bluntly, because some voters dislike him so much that they stop listening when they see him.
So the question for Labour's upper echelons isn't why they got suckered into a debate. It's why they sleepwalked into an election with a leader they knew was unpopular, ducking every chance to replace him.

This comment from the Guardian demonstrates rather neatly why GB won't be walking into No 10 on Friday, and why New Labour have lost the confidence of the electorate. In the new, all-consuming, Endemol-inspired reality show that is the 2010 General election, he's about to be the first housemate given the boot.  

For the past two years, Labour leaders have known Brown was an electoral disaster waiting to happen. From his strange little facial habit, to his unutterably boring drone, the real surprise is why his own party haven't lynched him long ago. Because they knew just how bad he was.

The surprisingly engaging Cameron and the astute Clegg, along with his fearsomely brilliant wing-man, Cable, however, ought to be streets in front.  But they're not. The well-organised and detailed polling being undertaken reveals that more than 40% of voters still haven't decided who they're going to vote for, which means there's everything to fight for.

In the UK, we elect a local, personal representative - not a party - but the reality-TV style of this year's election, coupled with the unparalleled ubiquitousness of broadcast media means we're actually being persuaded that we're voting for one man. And that's working against the least likeable.

There's a reason New Labour slaughtered everyone in sight all those years ago.  Tony Blair.  But that party's failure do do anything about the man who has the same effect on voters as a large dose of Vallium means a lot will be joining the dole queue very shortly.

Unless, of course, someone pulls off a master-stroke and they get rid of GB before Thursday.  Now there's a thought…