With under a week to go for the General Election, the PRCA has been asking senior public affairs practitioners to comment on how the General Election campaign has been going so far. The panellists have been expressing their on views gaffes, the debates, performances by party leaders, and campaigning tactics.
This week we are joined by Gill Morris FPRCA, Founder and CEO, DevoConnect, Ian Wright MPRCA, Director General, Food and Drink Federation, and Lionel Zetter FPRCA, Managing Director, Zetter's Political Services and PRCA Public Affairs and Lobbying Group Chairman.
Gill Morris
If things went wibbly wobbly for Team May last week this week's efforts to make Theresa look strong and stable crashed and burned.
Her no show, U turns, #dementiatax, Manifesto relaunch and reports of squabbling at HQ make this look like the worst Tory General Election campaign in history. A snap election is one thing but snap manifesto pledges on big issues such as Policing, pensions, NHS and Social Care issues which simply haven't been thought through have left her flip flopping to the Ballot Box.
That's not to say that Team Corbyn have nailed it, far from it! But the contrast between May and Corbyn has worked in his favour this week. His TV performances show a man who is comfortable and strangely confident. Despite the clear problems Team Corbyn have with numbers, his little red book manifesto seems to resonate with the many not the few.
Theresa May now looks flaky and on current form you wouldn't trust her to negotiate her way out of a paper bag let alone Brexit. It seem her "no deal" mantra is a mistake and that being "a Bloody difficult woman" are working against her lead. Is it too late to rescue the Tories car crash campaign and win the keys to No10?
In the next few days Teams Corbyn and May will be quick to say the only poll that matters is the one on 8th May and all pollsters will be desperate to get it right this time. I am not sure they can. Whilst Jeremy's free style campaigning continues to confound his critics and Theresa goes from hero to zero it is impossible to predict how this will play out at the ballot box but anything could happen between now and then and I suspect she will snatch a reasonable victory from the jaws of defeat.
Ian Wright
Jeremy Corbyn, the Party Leader most entitled to feel secure about keeping his job? Who would have guessed it? Yet that may well be the case. Mrs May has endured a difficult week. The Dementia Tax won't go away, she was edgy with a splenetic Paxman and her no-show for the BBC Leaders Debate may have very long term consequences (a slip of the tongue or a taste of things to come that had Amber Rudd talking about 'my manifesto'). Today's news about Tory candidates being charged for malpractice in the 2015 election won't calm Tory nerves. Tim Farron had a mixed week. The polling suggests he made a big impact in the Leaders Debate, but he had a testy encounter with Andrew Neil and really needs a strong last weekend to inject momentum into the Lib Dem campaign. Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn appears to make up ground on the PM day by day. All those nights speaking to two dozen true believers in church halls up and down the country have paid off. He's a strong campaigner who connects naturally to people across the social spectrum. They may not agree with him, they may not vote for him but increasingly they respect him for his dogged determination to give it a go. He reminds me of John Major in 1992, though whether he can deliver the same result I doubt.
Lionel Zetter
WOBBLY WEEK FOR THE TORIES
The days when the Tories had a 20 plus point lead over Labour are now a distant memory. The debacle over the so-called 'dementia tax' - and the resultant u-turn - have hit the Tories on the doorstep and in the polls.
In reality Theresa May was never going to be able to live up to her stellar poll ratings, and equally Jeremy Corbyn could hardly fail to perform better than his dire starting-point ratings. There is now a lot of talk about the Tories losing seats, and even of a hung Parliament.
This is all excitable Westminster-bubble nonsense. The story of this election will be that the smaller parties will get squeezed, and the Tories - and possibly Labour - will benefit from that process. The SNP will lose seats, the Lib Dem revival will be still-born, and the UKIP vote will collapse.
So like I have always said the likely result is a comfortable Tory majority, but no landslide. My money - placed right at the start of the campaign - is on a Tory majority of 60-80.