Image source, Press Association Images

With the finish line of this year's gruelling general election still far off in the distance, five MPs will be exchanging the contest for their House of Commons seats for a different kind of race - tomorrow's London Marathon.

Four Conservatives are taking part: children and families minister Edward Timpson, Richard Drax, and two Wales Office ministers Alun Cairns and Graham Evans. Labour is represented by shadow justice minister Dan Jarvis.

In past years the marathon field has included even more MPs - shadow chancellor Ed Balls ran the 26-mile course three times and was joined last year by shadow cabinet colleagues Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham.

About 35,000 fundraisers, amateur runners and elite athletes will take part in the 35th London Marathon tomorrow. Forecasters have warned that the 26.2-mile race could be hit by heavy bursts of rain.

Labour's former deputy leader Roy Hattersley has claimed that it will be the SNP, and not Labour, which will find themselves under intense pressure to make concessions in the event of a hung Parliament.

Rather than holding the whip hand in a hung Parliament, he believes the Scottish nationalists would be in the weaker position because they would be ''decimated'' by voters at the 2016 election to the Scottish Parliament if they were seen to be responsible for bringing down a left-of-centre government.

In an interview to be broadcast on Sunday on BBC1's Andrew Marr Show the Labour peer advises Ed Miliband not to seek a deal, or offer concessions, to the SNP but instead sit tight and ''dare'' Nicola Sturgeon's party to vote him down.

Nigel Farage has said it does not matter if Nick Clegg has ruled out a deal with both the SNP and UKIP, because if UKIP wins enough seats the Liberal Democrats and other parties will want to talk to them.

Following his speech in north London, the UKIP leader said: ''At the end of the day this isn't about what people think, this is about arithmetic.

''I feel the UKIP campaign is strong, I feel we're picking up support in our target areas and if we win enough seats, whatever they've said about us they might just want to talk to us.''

Image source, AFP

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond has issued a statement, external on the deadly earthquake in Nepal.

"My thoughts are with the people of Nepal and everyone affected by the terrible loss of life and widespread damage caused by the earthquake," he says. "We are in close contact with the Nepalese government.The British Embassy in Nepal is offering our assistance to the authorities and is providing consular assistance to British nationals."

Image source, EPA

Nigel Farage is the latest person to have a dig at David Cameron over the #villagate saga. The UKIP leader says he has a family connection with Crystal Palace but hits out at what he calls "pretend" loyalties.

"My grandfather was a Crystal Palace supporter, my grandmother was, my eldest son is a season ticket holder, he's there this afternoon, there's a match against Hull today. "Football's not a big part of my life but I don't make pretences about teams I support and then chop and change them."

Image source, AFP

The prime minister has been asked about his football team blunder, trending as #villagate on Twitter, in an interview with Sky News's Dermot Murnaghan to be broadcast tomorrow.

Asked to confirm which team he actually supports, Mr Cameron said: "I've been an Aston Villa fan all my life, I literally opened my mouth and I was going off-piste about the fact that in Britain you can be a supporter of the West Indies, a supporter of Manchester United, and a supporter of Team GB.

"I was then busking about other things you can support and was ... I don't know what happened to me, it was just one of those things.

Asked if the mistake was on his script, he said: "No, it wasn't on the script, I was going off-script to add to the examples, and I suppose it is just the campaign.

"By the time you have made as many speeches as I have on this campaign all sorts of funny things start popping out of your mouth."

Image source, Getty Images

#Villagate isn't the only story today gaining traction on social media. Following a BBC story last year in which Nicola Sturgeon's sister said she "used to cut the hair off my Barbie dolls" in their childhood, the Sun, external today had a story that Ms Sturgeon “devilishly hacked the hair” off her sister’s beloved doll and that this was "an early sign of the ruthlessness which has propelled her to the top of Scottish - and potentially British - politics."

This story contributed to the #Dollgate hashtag taking over a small part of Twitter today, external.

Nicola Sturgeon owned up to the deed on Twitter:

Image source, Reuters

Lord Ashdown, the Liberal Democrats' election campaign chief, has confirmed there will be no "formal deal" with either a party that would "break up the United Kingdom", or take the country "out of Europe".

The Liberal Democrats, he said, "would not do what the Tories want to do, which is break away to the right and dump £30bn of deficit on the poor and on our public services".

Neither would they allow Labour "to wreck our economy again". He said the Liberal Democrats would "put the nation first" in order to provide "stable government".

BBC Radio 4

The fog of politics, the meaning of austerity, and the secret language of politicians, plus how do those apps which advise people which party is closest to their views actually work? BBC Radio 4's Campaign Sidebar is a quirky, irreverent take on the twists and turns of the election campaign so far, presented by Hugo Rifkind. Click here to listen now.

On David Cameron's "brain fade" when he asked people to support West Ham when he is a professed Aston Villa fan, Labour shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said: "I think from an Aston Villa point of view, the news just gets better and better, doesn't it?" Referring to Aston Villa beating Liverpool last weekend to get through to the FA Cup final, Mr Burnham said: "First Wembley, and now this. They will feel that things are looking up for them today."

Labour shadow health secretary Andy Burnham has said the NHS is being "broken up and sold off" under David Cameron.

"He's put market forces at the heart of the NHS, and we've got to get back to an NHS that puts people before profits.

"Nobody gave this Prime Minister their permission to put the NHS up for sale. He promised no reorganisation, he brought forward the biggest ever."

Nigel Farage said: "There is a consensus amongst our political class, there is a consensus amongst much of our media class, there is a consensus amongst the CBI and many of the big corporate businesses and their view is that Britain needs to be part of a political union run from Brussels and Frankfurt and Luxemburg...I would like to give you completely the opposite alternative argument.

"You only have to look at the statement that came from HSBC yesterday to be increasingly worried about what the regulatory regime is doing to Britain's financial service industry."

"For all of you in this industry, it makes little or no difference who gets the keys to Number 10 Downing Street, because all of the rules and regulations that affect your lives and affect your businesses are decisions that will be taken somewhere else, and over which the Biritish government, and British parliament, have no say."

Adding that he is one of the few politicians who has actually had a job Mr Farage said: "Surely the point about the City, the point about the financial services industry is that we should not allow our politicians and our Eurocrats to denigrate the industry, to paint it out as a handful of people who all make a fortune."

Speaking to an investor conference in Islington, Nigel Farage said he had concerns about new pensions freedoms: "I'm also concerned that the change to pension laws - the ability of people now to draw down the total sums in those pensions funds.

"I'm concerned that a lot of people out there frankly are not sophisticated enough to understand what that means and I am deeply fearful that the scammers and the conmen are going to have an absolute field day at the expense of people who have been prudent over their lives."

On the question of energy production, UKIP leader Nigel Farage says:

"We have fallen in love apparently with wind energy," he says.

"Now I have to say that I haven't fallen in love with wind energy.

"I think these giant bat and bird chomping monsters are despoiling England's green and pleasant land and our seascape, but that's purely a subjective comment perhaps from me.

"But what we have done is we've lumped on now over 10% on our energy bills, and with the future increases that are written into the system that will be 20% by 2020."

Mr Farage suggests halting the subsidies for wind energy in favour of "the cheapest possible source of energy".

UKIP leader Nigel Farage is giving a speech at a retail investor show in London. He says that the UK national debt now stands at £1.5trn. "They have doubled the national debt in five years - and that if you think about it that does take some doing," he quips.

"Our debt repayments are already bigger than our defence budget," he adds.

Image source, PA

Former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown has accused the Scottish National Party of a "completely chilling" plan for a second referendum on independence.

Mr Brown said the SNP candidate for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, Mhairi Black, had "told the truth that Nicola Sturgeon won't admit in public," quoting Ms Black in a YouTube video as saying that the election of SNP MPs would be used to secure another referendum.

In the video posted on 5 March, external, Ms Black says the Westminster establishment would not grant Scotland another vote and "if we can send back that many… SNP MPs to Westminster that is the power to twist their arm and to get that other referendum."

Mr Brown said the SNP wanted to win seats in the House of Commons "not to deliver social justice" but to "deliver the chaos and constant crisis" that would "as she said, force a second referendum."

Returning to Labour's claim that the Conservatives would oversee the "stealth privatisation" of the NHS, Lib Dem campaign spokesman Lord Paddick said: 

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UKIP leader Nigel Farage said his party could "make history" in Thurrock, Essex, where a poll for former Conservative treasurer Lord Ashcroft suggests the party has a four-point advantage in a three-way race. Conservative Jackie Doyle-Price is defending a wafer-thin majority of just 92 there. According to the poll, UKIP had 35%, with Labour's Polly Billington - a former adviser to Ed Miliband - in second place on 31%, with the Conservatives on 30%.