Polls -gap widening but still looking hung up

An Independent poll tonight has Tories steady on 37%and Labour down two points to 30% and the Lib Dems on 20%, up one point. Other parties are on 13%.

This leaves David Cameron 31 seats short of an overall majority in a hung parliament.

Ironically that's about the size most of the experts thing Cameron will achieve as a majority.

There's not much to add on the Chancellors' tv debate, if you saw it for yourselves.
All three men looked nervous at the beginning of the first big tv debate of the election but the encounter ended without any of them making a major slip up.

Vince Cable, sainted for his foresight in seeing the economic crash coming, managed to draw some applause and a laugh or two for attacks on the “pinstriped Scargills”, his term for the bonus-rich city bankers.

Darling, whose solid reputation is now one of Labour’s prime assets, showed a flash of political anger and the steely determination that took him and the country through the worst crash in a generation.

Sure enough Osborne’s tax cutting promise, to be paid for by shaving £6 billion of "waste" from public spending in the coming year, came in for a mugging from the more experienced players, Darling and Cable.

Darling said: “You have not got a single penny in the bank to pay for that. You are going to be forced to cut even deeper or put other taxes up to pay for that.”

Vince Cable simply mocked Osborne saying: “I thought your tax priority was taking millionaires out of inheritance tax “

Osborne, who had looked tense and pasty at a morning press conference, managed to come through by referring constantly to his boss David Cameron rather than himself. He only sneered once, when Cable landed a blow against the rich who will benefit from Tory inheritance tax plans.

Last night the Tories took pride from the fact that the debate was mostly about their tax cutting proposals - but the one-two jab from Darling and Cable left the policy floored and Osborne’s credibility exposed.