Lib Dem View: Not as good, but how could it be?

The nation's second date with Nick wasn't quite as exhilarating as their first night out. How could it be?

The surprise was not that Clegg failed to live up to the almost impossible expectations that had built up around him – only Obama might have done that – but that Brown staged such a comeback. Slightly amazingly, Brown was authoritative on everything from human embryology to Yemen – what the form book told us he should have been first time round.

Cameron also raised his game; now he looks straight into the camera, like Clegg did, and it worked, as did his anger about Labour's lies in their leaflets claiming the Tories would scrap pensioners' bus passes.

Clegg swiftly deflected arguments on his own expenses by dismissing the story as "nonsense", and wasn't floored when the great clunking fist knocked him around about Trident, being a risk to national security and told him to "get real". Near as it was, however, that was not the Americans call a "zinger" – a knockout verbal blow that would have changed the game in the way that Clegg's first performance changed the dynamic of the election.

Clegg did labour the point about "the two old parties", especially as they've got wise to how venerable the Liberal party is. But he defused the scare stories about the world melting down in a hung parliament, and his final pitch was strong, especially on "doing something different", which seems to be catnip for the voters. He's still standing.

Sean O'Grady is economics editor of 'The Independent' and a former adviser to Paddy Ashdown