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The third week of the election campaign looks set to end with a day of reflection. Last night’s opposition leaders’ debate provided plenty of things to ponder, not least how messy any post-election coalition negotiations will be. To help guide you through the melée of stories and spin, here is a summary of today’s main election stories. 1. Nicola + Ed According to the snap poll, Ed Miliband ‘won’ last night’s TV debate, followed closely by Nicola Sturgeon and then Nigel Farage. That says all you need to know about where the action was. As James Forsyth summarised last night, Miliband’s gamble paid off. For the most part, he came across as statesmanlike; he

Ed Miliband managed to surpass expectations in tonight’s opposition leaders’ debate. In this View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the final televised debate with the party leaders — minus David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Did Nigel Farage target  his core base once again? How successfully did Nicola Sturgeon deal with Ed Miliband’s attacks? And did Natalie Bennett and Leanne Wood manage to have their voices heard? You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the player below:

Nicola Sturgeon has been described as a rock star politician. In Tuesday’s STV debate she looked like one who is suffering from second album syndrome. Having impressed a UK-wide audience in the seven-leader ITV debate last week, her reception at the Scottish version was far more muted, with some instant polls suggesting a narrow victory for Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy. A dispassionate observer might place Sturgeon third, behind Murphy and an impressively plucky Ruth Davidson. It takes something to stand before a Scottish audience, where the Tory brand isn’t just toxic but radioactive, and earn applause for making the case to reintroduce prescription charges. Ruth Davidson is unlikely to

Tonight’s Scottish leaders’ debate in Edinburgh is as important to the general election campaign as last week’s debate featuring Cameron, Miliband et al in Manchester. Both this debate and the second Scottish one tomorrow offer Labour a final opportunity to reverse the SNP advance. The polls indicate that the SNP are on course to take 28 Scottish seats off Labour in May. This would make it the largest Scottish party at Westminster. It would also make it impossible for Ed Miliband to win a majority. At the moment, nothing seems capable of halting the Nationalists’ momentum. The dramatic fall in the oil price, which has upset many of the calculations in the independence white paper,

On Thursday night, David Cameron didn’t eviscerate the competition. But nor did he suffer any damage and that, to Tory high command, meant that it was job done. The Tory leadership didn’t want any debates at all, they’d rather not have taken the risk. So, to get through this one debate with the dynamics of the campaign unchanged was, to their mind, a result. As Cameron enjoyed a late night drink with Samantha Cameron, George Osborne and his key aides on Thursday, he reflected on how much better he felt than he did after the first debate five years ago when he knew that he had not only underperformed but

If elections are job interviews, as party leaders like to say, then this interview has so far failed to assess applicants on the one part of the job description that most have no experience in – foreign policy and security. This absence was at its most conspicuous this week when the TV debate didn’t spare even a cursory nod to global issues. Maybe the lack of contention on foreign policy is an implicit tribute to the Conservatives’ steady hand on the tiller? If not, let’s hear why. If so, the Conservatives have been surprisingly, some might argue laudably, reluctant to invoke global insecurity as an issue. Security concerns, global instability, and

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