Instant View - Reaction to leaders' debate

LONDON (Reuters) - The leaders of Britain's three largest political parties met in the third and final live televised debate on Thursday before the May 6 parliamentary election.

Following are reaction to the debate:

SIMON LEE, POLITICS LECTURER, HULL UNIVERSITY

"I think it was Cameron's best performance of the three debates and he won it narrowly from Nick Clegg. I thought he was much more careful tonight to focus on precise policy. It was 9.48 p.m. before 'big society' was mentioned." "Although Gordon Brown clearly was the weaker of the three, I thought he did manage to land some damaging blows onto Cameron, which may not persuade people to vote for Labour, but might persuade voters in marginal constituencies to vote tactically."

"Whoever wins the election, there will have to be an emergency budget because of the volatility of the financial markets."

THOMAS LUNDBERG, POLITICS LECTURER, GLASGOW UNIVERSITY

"On economic performance, I'm surprised Cameron and Clegg didn't make more of Brown's failures, although they did get some points in.

"Brown clearly lost, despite perking up later in the debate. While his presentational skills were poor, he also relied upon old sound bites that we've heard before and didn't really bring up anything new. His false smiles -- particularly at the very end -- didn't help him, either."

"I'm not sure this debate will do much for the undecided, but Cameron might see a bit more support."

ANDREW HAWKINS, CHAIRMAN, POLLING FIRM COMRES

"What was interesting this week was it was a lot more transparent what they were trying to do, Cameron and Brown trying studiously to ignore Clegg and squeeze him out of the debate."

"Brown was all about 'we, we, we' and our achievements, and Clegg was all 'you, you, you' to the audience. Brown really never stood a chance with this difference in style."

"We've seen the same pattern over the last two weeks. The debate gives the LibDems a boost for two days then they start to wane again. The challenge is for them to keep these plates spinning."

"Cameron scored in two big areas. One in education that really touched a chord, and on immigration he also did well.

"Tonight he struck the right balance for the first time between painting a big picture of what would happened if there was no change and a more optimistic tone of 'don't let them frighten you'."

"This was Brown's last stand and all he had got left is to say 'don't let the others mess things up' and that's not going to wash."

NICK ROBINSON, POLITICS LECTURER, LEEDS UNIVERSITY:

"I was quite struck by the fact there were a large number of similarities, where the phraseology used by the leaders was the same.

"I really did feel that Gordon Brown would excel and that his gravitas should have shown through, he's the man generally seen by the British public as one of the most successful Chancellors of the Exchequer in the post-war period, and I felt that that didn't come across at all."

"Yet again Nick Clegg won the debate by his personal performance and personality. When he talks about passion he doesn't need to use the word."

"It was interesting that the question about personal contact, none of them talked about that in any way. In other words, how do I as an isolated MP understand the people on the street, I don't think any of them did a remotely good job on that."

DAVID PAGE, UK ECONOMIST, INVESTEC

"I don't think we learned anything about economic policy that we didn't know before. It's not about bringing fresh policy to the fore, it's about bringing policy to a wider audience."

"In the first 45 minutes it seemed that Brown was in his stronger suit and performed relatively confidently, explaining government policy very well. It'll be interesting to see how the public respond to that bearing in mind yesterday's fiasco."

"I think as the debate moved beyond the pure economy and into the broader issues, then you started to see Clegg come under a lot of pressure from both Brown and Cameron, particularly on their amnesty for illegal immigrants."

"Clegg had a relatively lacklustre performance. But he was able to tap into the usual populist issues."

"I think this shows that the economy was also not Cameron's strongest suit. He was under a lot of pressure from the other two."