Gus O’Donnell, the former cabinet secretary who oversaw 2010’s coalition talks as the head of the civil service, says last time round was “a piece of cake compared to what might happen this time”. He says the civil services will be preparing for different scenarios - including supply-and-confidence deals and minority government options, too. “What you’re trying to get to is a stable, effective government,” Lord O’Donnell says on the Today programme. “For each option, how do you turn that into effective government?” He points out there were more minority and coalition governments than not in the first half of the 20th Century. “How do you manage government when you don’t want to go to the Commons with fewer contentious votes? You might have fewer laws… it could be good.” Appearing on the News Channel, he adds that “you just have to ensure there’s some kind of agreement at the start on the areas where the different parties will back each other.”

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BBC News Channel

"I think it's the most sensible, well-funded manifesto we've seen," Helen Lewis, of the New Statesman tells Election Today, of the Lib Dems' missive. And there's a reason for that, she argues - "it's a strategy of retrenchment". "They're not going to win over any new voters, this is all about what they'd do after the election. And they are so bruised by tuition fees that they're determined this time they are only going to make promises they can really stick to."

David Wooding, from the Sun on Sunday, agrees, but he suggests that maybe from now on parties need two manifestos - one containing what they’d do if they won an outright majority and the other containing their red lines for any coalition.

BBC Radio 5 Live

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Steven Woolfe confirms to BBC Radio 5 Live that his comments about Suzanne Evans - the party’s policy chief - not understanding UKIP’s migration policy which are quoted on the front page of the Telegraph, external today are accurate. “It was during the course of the negotiations on what was going on into the manifesto,” he says. “That was weeks ago. Suzanne and I are absolutely on board.” He says he was trying to distinguish between a cap on net migration and a target of 50,000 highly skilled workers arriving in Britain every year.

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BBC Radio 5 Live

UKIP, Steven Woolfe hopes, might just be able to win 10 seats at the general election. “We’re a relatively small party, we don’t have all the finance of the unions supporting the Labour party or the big money supporting the Conservatives,” he tells BBC Radio 5 Live. “I think we’ve done really well to get to where we are now. If we get 10 MPs… that would be a significant achievement in a first-past-the-post system.”

BBC Radio 5 Live

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Steven Woolfe, UKIP’s migration and economics spokesman, has been interviewed on BBC Radio 5 Live about his party’s manifesto. He says voters will be attracted by more spending on defence, no-one on the minimum wage having to pay income tax (sound familiar?) and £12bn more spending on the NHS over the period of the parliament. But won’t many right-leaning voters be more tempted to back the Conservatives , who have guaranteed an in-out referendum on Europe? The problem is Jean-Claude Juncker has made clear a renegotiation won’t happen until 2019, as the Times has reported, Mr Woolfe says - and David Cameron has only promised a referendum after a renegotiation takes place.

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BBC Radio 4 Today

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One possible sticking point in coalition talks with the Tories might be an EU referendum. As David Laws makes clear, the Lib Dems don’t think much of the Conservative promise of an in-out vote by 2017. “When you see the manifesto today you’ll see we make very clear the government legislated in 2010/11 that there should be an in-out referendum when there’s a major constitutional change in Europe,” he says. “To have some sort of British-inspired referendum on a random timetable determined by the Conservative Party is not sensible, it would cast a blight over our economy.” Does that mean it’s a red line, then? Not necessarily, Mr Laws replies. “It’s just not sensible for anybody to negotiate that way,” he finishes.

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BBC Radio 4 Today

Now David Laws faces questions about the Lib Dems’ spending plans. He says once the books have been balanced public spending as a whole will grow. “By 2020 we’ll actually be spending £5bn more on education than the Conservative Party,” he says. The Liberal Democrats have faced criticism for relying on economic growth to ensure their policies will be paid for - but Mr Laws insists that approach is taken by all parties and governments.

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BBC Radio 4 Today

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What voters will "see and recognise", David Laws says, is that in a coalition government no party can deliver 100% of its proposals. “If people are fair to the Liberal Democrats they will recognise we’ve achieved a huge amount of our manifesto,” he tells Today. Lib Dems on the campaign trail have been pointing out the party actually got a higher percentage of its manifesto through than the Tories. Those front page policies, though, are virtually red lines, Mr Laws goes on - they are "the very clear priorities we would expect to deliver", anyway. Specifying red lines more explicitly, he says, would be nothing more than an “idiotic way of negotiating”, he adds.

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BBC Radio 4 Today

Now David Laws is on the Today programme. Coalitions are definitely the way forward, he says, because “a minority government probably wouldn’t be good for the country, it wouldn’t be able to deliver policies in a reliable way”. But would a reduced Lib Dem parliamentary party really be justified in returning to power? “We would have a responsibility on behalf of the wider country to deliver everything we could to deliver a stable government and… to deliver the things in our manifesto,” Mr Laws replies.

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Top of the list of Labour’s women’s manifesto policies is the idea of extending parental leave to grandparents. "Public policy has not caught up with the reality of families’ lives,” Harriet Harman tells the Independent. , external“Many mothers need to go back to work to maintain the family income while their mums are working longer, often to 67.” So a Labour government would consult on the idea of allowing granny or granddad to share in parents’ unpaid leave without the fear of losing their job.

Other policy proposals in the women’s manifesto include:

• Providing 25 hours of free childcare for working parents of three- and four-year-olds
• Strengthening the law on maternity discrimination
• Appointing a new commissioner to set minimum standards on tackling violence against women and girls
• Setting a goal of 50% of ministerial appointments to public boards being women

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The Daily Telegraph

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Nigel Farage has written an article for the Telegraph, external highlighting his party’s policies on the armed forces and national security. He cites UKIP’s commitment to spending at least 2% of gross national income on defence, the pledge to create a “dedicated minister for veterans” and a new, dedicated military hospital. Civilian jobs for soldiers emerging from 12 years’ service will be guaranteed, too. He writes: