Yesterday evening was a very interesting one indeed. Political junkie that I (sometimes) am, I was glued to the sofa from eight onwards; I found the whole spectacle fascinating. I think last night we got the best look at our political leaders we will ever get, certainly in this election cycle, and I found what I saw really telling. Miliband performed better than I expected: he seems, thankfully, to be growing in confidence and getting more leaderly – Labour, as we already know, have good presentation coaches. As others are noting widely, CaMoron was quieter than we all expected; he didn’t seem to have much to say. The tories are claiming this morning that that is because he wanted to stand back, let the others scrap it out and thus seem leaderly, but that is bullshit. CaMoron kept stum because he couldn’t defend his record, and when he did speak out he just trotted out the same old greed-driven tosh about low tax being good that always makes me want to hit him, or tried to pedal the absurd fiction that Labour caused the economic crisis. Clegg, on the other hand, redeemed himself slightly, trying to justify his record and at least trying to come clean about getting a things wrong. He could and should have gone further mind.

Then there was Farage. That bigot was an insult to that stage; he should have not been there surrounded by the other real politicians. He was an embarrassing onetrack record, trying to blame everything on Europe, or constantly trying to take the conversation back to immigration. He aded nothing sensible to the debate. Most shocking of all were his comments on ‘health tourism’ by people with HIV: that he can countenance not treating people with such a condition just because they don’t come from this country is disgraceful, and goes against everything the NHS and this country stand for. He should apologise for his comments.

The big surprise of the evening, and one that causes me a dilemma, was how impressed I was by Nicola Sturgeon. I found myself agreeing with her on most things; at one point I began to wonder how I could vote for her. The problem is, I can’t vote for the SNP: they have no candidates down here, nor do I want the UK to break up. Yet I found myself agreeing with her left-of-centre stance. If only we had more politicians like her, but who stood for the UK as a whole. (Perhaps I better suggest to Lyn that we move to Scotland). Broadly the same goes for Leanne Wood of Plaid and Natalie Bennett of the Greens.

A fascinating evening, then. I must say I found it utterly gripping. Perhaps equally interesting will be what people say about it in the days ahead; no doubt the press will be going over it with a fine toothed comb. Already I see different papers calling it this way and that. No doubt I’ll disagree with much of what is written, as others will disagree with me, but then, isn’t that what debates are all about?