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The Guardian

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Five years after declaring a new era of coalition politics was getting under way, Nick Clegg is now claiming the British public are realising that the real question in this general election is what kind of coalition the UK ends up with. The options are one of “grievance” - featuring either the SNP or UKIP - or one of “conscience” involving the Liberal Democrats, he’s told the Guardian, external. “The last thing the British economy needs is the instability and factionalism that those coalitions of grievance of right and left represents,” he says. Mr Clegg, who’ll be launching his party’s manifesto later this morning, adds that the Lib Dems are now a “proven rock of stability, continuity and conscience”.

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BBC Radio 5 Live

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David Laws gets a good grilling on 5 Live about just how cast iron the Lib Dems' cast iron guarantees on education really are. "I can't foresee the circumstances in which we would go into coalition..." the education minister says, before he's cut off and picked up on that classic politician's phrase. "We would expect to deliver" these priorities in any coalition, he comes back - but that isn't good enough either for presenters Rachel Burden and Nicky Campbell. So he tries again: "Look we have learned some lessons from this parliament, not least on tuition fees... and I think you can rest assured that if we put these things on the front page of our manifesto we are going to deliver these things if we're in government."

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UKIP might insist that their numbers add up, but the Conservatives are claiming quite the opposite. They’re pointing out UKIP have a £37bn “black hole” in their spending plans. A spokesperson says: “UKIP saying their numbers add up is like Labour saying they’re not going to raise your taxes. We all know that Nigel Farage doesn’t have a credible plan for Britain - he just makes it up as he goes along.” The Tories are also claiming that a vote for UKIP will help “put Ed Miliband in Downing Street by the back door”. They cite Mr Farage telling the Staggers blog last November he wouldn’t rule out doing a deal with Ed Miliband.

BBC Radio 4 Today

Suzanne Evans has been telling Today that UKIP has moved on rather well from the “drivel”, as Nigel Farage put it, of their 2010 manifesto. “We've done extremely better,” she says. You can hear her smiling as she says it. Asked about immigration and the possibility of a cap, Ms Evans confirms the manifesto talks about a target of 50,000. “It is the only immigration that is fair, equitable and doesn't discriminate against the rest of the world,” she says. The UKIP approach is to impose a five-year ban on unskilled labour - but if it’s decided farm workers, for example, are needed, the rules would change. “UKIP is the party of common sense,” Ms Evans declares.

BBC Radio 5 Live

For the Lib Dems, just being centre stage is as important as what they say when they get there because they've definitely been squeezed a bit by the other big parties. This is their moment for some attention and they're hoping to cash in on the disillusion people may feel with the Tories or Labour.

BBC Breakfast

What's the difference between a priority and a pledge, David Laws is asked. "The priorities are a clear indication of the most important policies in our manifesto - those are the ones we're committed to delivering in a coalition environment," he says.

BBC Breakfast

"We've really thought in incredible detail about what our main priorities are, as we always do," Mr Laws says. The Lib Dems have stuck their most important policies on the front page of the manifesto - and that's what will virtually non-negotiable this time round. After all, Mr Laws points out, all their 2010 front page pledges became reality in the coalition.

BBC Breakfast

The Liberal Democrats' plans rely on continued economic growth - but David Laws says his party have come up with a "contingency" of several billion pounds which will help protect them. Their spending plans are "extremely prudent and cautious", he tells Breakfast, claiming the Lib Dems have published their figures in more detail than any other parties. 

BBC Breakfast

David Laws, who led the writing of the party’s manifesto, is on Breakfast now talking about the Lib Dems’ masterplans. After dealing with the deficit by 2017/18, he explains, “what we’re saying is unlike the Conservative Party who want to go on cutting public spending and building up a surplus, we’re going to put more money into public services”. This includes the £2.5bn of extra funding into education which is the centrepiece of their manifesto launch today.

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David Cameron’s hopes of conducting a successful referendum negotiation before his planned in-out vote in 2017 face a bit of a setback this morning. An official in the office of Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, has ruled out any treaty negotiations until after November 2019, the Times reports, external. This is bad news for the PM because he’s made clear he wants to win over British support to remain in the UK on the basis of a successful renegotiation with Brussels. So now we know why Mr Cameron was so desperate to stop Mr Juncker getting the top job. As the picture above suggests, many believe things have never been the same between them since...

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BBC Radio 4 Today

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The nationalist Northern Ireland SDLP party, led by Alasdair McDonnell (pictured above), launches its general election manifesto today. The party had three MPs at the last election and could be involved in coalition discussions in the event of a hung parliament. So what are their policies? “We expect them to talk about rebalancing the Northern Ireland economy, to make it one-third dependent on the public sector,” Ireland correspondent Andy Martin tells Today. They want a "prosperity process" to follow the peace process and are calling for a new technical college. The SDLP MPs, after a bit of flip-flopping, are “absolutely going to support Labour”.

Yesterday's "Good Life" promise from David Cameron at the Conservative Party manifesto launch makes the front pages of a number of Wednesday's papers. There are also stories on offer about the Lib Dem and UKIP manifestos, too - more on those shortly... in the meantime, cast your eye over them all in one place here .

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BBC Breakfast

Suzanne Evans is very keen to point out that her party is the only one to have attempted to rubber-stamp the numbers in their manifesto with approval from a separate organisation. “The manifesto we’re releasing today is the only manifesto that is fully costed and has been independently verified,” she tells Breakfast. “We have not just come up with these spending plans ourselves.” The Centre for Economic Business and Research has been doing the legwork, she says.

BBC Breakfast

UKIP’s head of policy, Suzanne Evans, is on Breakfast where she’s asked about her spending cut plans. She says withdrawing from the EU, scrapping HS2, finding a new way of funding the devolved nations, cutting the cost of government and reducing the foreign aid budget will together save £32bn every year by the end of the next parliament. But she plans to spend an extra £4bn over the course of the parliament on defence.

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