Depending on what paper you read, the Leaders Debate was either the night Labour’s Ed Miliband lost the election or established himself as a credible alternative to David Cameron. While the predictable left and right divide in the British press bickers over who will be living in Number 10 after May's vote, the one consensus was the universal praise for SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon’s performance.
Polls across the whole of Britain, which give her a clear margin over the six other participants, will have surprised no one who followed last year’s Scottish independence referendum.
Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister, has always excelled as a communicator in the Holyrood parliament and on the campaign trail as a friendlier face than the combative Alex Salmond.
She has, until now, been ignored by the Conservatives who have sought to strike up fear among the English electorate that a vote for Labour will see Alex Salmond pulling strings in a minority government.
Sturgeon herself has had to field awkward questions about her predecessor’s role and whether she is really in control of a party which has seen its membership grow from 25,000 on polling day last year to well over 100,000 as of last night.
The former solicitor has handled those questions comfortably, pointing out that she was brought into politics by Mr Salmond in the first place and describes him as a friend and mentor, but only one part of the SNP’s Westminster team. Salmond, for his part, says Sturgeon was a much-needed calming influence who knew when to tone down his ‘rough and tumble’ style.
That diplomatic prowess was immediately apparent last night.
Far from being the fire and brimstone Scottish nationalist many commentators expected; from her opening statement, Sturgeon struck a harmonic chord, offering “friendship” to all parts of the United Kingdom.
She made no secret of her desire to see an independent Scotland. However, her appeal to traditional left-leaning voters in England was a canny game plan.
Labour’s own leader Ed Miliband, whose camp came out of the debate satisfied after beating poll expectations, will privately be kicking himself for missing Sturgeon’s directness on austerity, the NHS and the economy.
In a tense two hour debate, the First Minister brought a light touch; even raising some of the few laughs of the night when she put it UKIP’s Nigel Farage that there was nothing he “won’t blame on foreigners” and scolded Prime Minister Cameron for acting like a “petulant schoolchild”.
The Leaders’ Debate was the first time many people in the rest of the UK will have come across Sturgeon. Whether or not her party ends up supporting a Labour minority government is unclear but the fear factor of the SNP will have been banished by her comfortable performance.
Last night, Sturgeon pledged to break up the “old boys network of Westminster”, and with her party on course for the best part of 50 seats, she could well be the person to do it.
