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They won’t do that again. Seven leaders lined up like skittles all nervously fingering their plastic lecterns. In charge was Julie Etchingham who’d spent many hours in wardrobe creating a fetishistic look. Severe blonde hair. A spotless high-necked tunic as white as sharks fangs. Heavy black-rimmed specs. She looked like the gorgeous physics genius who works for James Bond’s arch-enemy. During the debate she lacked authority. When candidates shouted at each other she joined in and tried to harry them or close them down. More coolness needed. And she was glued to a lectern like the speakers. Roaming among them with a single portable microphone, she might have umpired more

Tomorrow’s TV debate between the seven party leaders is the chance for the insurgent parties to muscle up to the mainstream leaders, make them look tired and old, and in doing so gain more supporters. But the leader with the biggest challenge is Nick Clegg, the insurgent in the 2010 debates, now coming to the end of five years in government. How does he fight Farage and boost the Lib Dem brand? The Lib Dem leader has been rehearsing with colleagues playing his rivals like all the other politicians, but I understand that his preparations for the debate have a rather more stellar quality to them than his opponents’ rehearsals. John

Few politicians can have gone into a debate with lower expectations than Natalie Bennett. After her ‘brain fade’ on LBC, the Green leader has been roundly written off. There have been murmurings that the decent thing for her to do would be to stand down in favour of Caroline Lucas, the party’s first MP and a far more accomplished media performer. But the one consolation for Bennett in all this is that it is very easy for her to beat expectations on Thursday night. She won’t have to do much to get the media to take a second look at her. If Bennett can unloose a zinger or two, she’ll

The order in which the party leaders will stand in this Thursday’s televised debate has been set as follows: Natalie Bennett, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Ed Miliband, Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron. So Ed Miliband will be in the middle, and David Cameron and Nigel Farage will be sufficiently far apart from one another to thwart Ukip’s ambition for their leader to land a good run of blows on Cameron. Still, Farage is next to Miliband, which means he’ll have a chance to land some blows on the leader of a party he’s trying to take votes from too. The standing order does matter a little, but what

The stakes have been raised, at least psychologically, for Thursday night’s debate. Today’s YouGov poll has Labour four points ahead, in contrast to a two point Tory lead in their last survey. This is being seen in Westminster as a Paxman bounce for Miliband. If this Labour leads is still in place at the end of the Easter weekend, Tory nerves will begin to fray. Thursday’s debate will be a crowded affair with seven leaders on stage. Despite it being a two hour debate, there’ll only be time for four questions. As I say in the Mail On Sunday, the debate will almost certainly turn into Cameron versus the rest as they

The treasurer of one of Manchester’s Conservative clubs is a lifelong Labour voter who votes only as a mark of respect for his father, who always voted Labour. He’s one of the few club regulars we met who bothers to vote, but he never watches the news and takes pride in knowing nothing about politics. I was in Manchester looking for disaffected voters with the World Service’s political correspondent Rob Watson; Manchester Central had the lowest turnout at the last election. We talked to a lot of people who had a similar attitude – ‘I’d rather be a hypocrite than powerless’, said one man in Wetherspoon’s. It’s a bit like

So both Labour and the Lib Dems have responded to the TV debates with caution and enthusiasm respectively. A Labour spokesman said ‘based on the broadcasters’ proposals we have accepted and plan to attend all three debates on April 2nd, 16th and the 30th. If the Tories have confirmed they are to attend one of these debates then that is progress. It is one down, two to go. But no-one should be fooled: David Cameron is running scared of a head-to-head televised debate with Ed Miliband’. The Lib Dems have also welcomed the move as ‘progress’, with a spokesman saying: ‘ ‘It’s good news that we are finally making progress

Is Jacob Rees-Mogg confident about reelection in North East Somerset? For the latest Mini Election video, I visited the West Country to speak to Jacob (and his son Peter) about his efforts to hold onto his marginal seat in the upcoming election. Although he was victorious in 2010 with a comfortable majority of 4,91,  the constituency was held by Labour — albeit under different boundaries — so he has been campaigning almost non-stop for the last few years. Does he think that British elections are generally becoming too American? We also discussed his long-held belief that the Conservative Party needs to have an electoral pact with Ukip and whether it is