THE leaders of Britain's three main parties kept their nerve on Thursday as they clashed politely on a series of subjects, ranging from immigration to the cost of a Lexus police car, in the first television debate of the general election campaign. The odd joke peppered their exchanges as Gordon Brown thanked David Cameron for giving him the best publicity for years by putting his smiling face on posters across the country.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, cast himself as a middle man above the fray. At one point he said of his two opponents “The more they attack each other the more they sound the same.”

The most animated discussion of the evening was when Brown and Cameron had a one-to-one exchange on Britain's £167bn fiscal deficit.

The prime minister warned that Tory plans to cut government spending by £6bn, as part of efficiency savings, risked tipping Britain back into a double dip recession. The Tory leader mocked the prime minister for defending spending on waste — he joked that rejecting wasteful spending was like saying that stopping smoking was bad for your health.

— The Guardian, London