Cameron challenged on special educational needs inclusion

By Alex Smith / @alexsmith1982

This sort of exchange used to be the norm in election campaigns: politicians challenged by the public on the street over policy proposals.

David Cameron handled the situation quite well, and as Joey Jones follows up in the report the actual policy seems to be a bit of a grey area.

But I’d like to see Gordon get a bit dirtier in this campaign, and have some more conversations like this. So far in the campaign, too many of our big hitters have not been visible enough, or have been giving big set piece speeches to the party faithful or press conferences. And if this is the week the campaign is supposed to be focusing on the economy, where is Alistair Darling, one of Labour’s best electoral assets?

Surely it would be better to have a real dialogue with the voting public: not staged, not flash, just proper policy conversations with ordinary voters on the issues at stake.