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WITH THE UK general election just three weeks away, David Cameron’s decision not to take part in a joint BBC/Sky News debate has been roundly criticised.

The Conservative leader refused the broadcasters’ invitations to take part in more than one debate in the run-up to the 7 May poll.

His deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said that he wasn’t invited.

During the debate, both Labour leader Ed Miliband and Scottish National Party (SNP) leader Nicola Sturgeon both attacked Cameron for “not defending his record”.

Miliband rejected any notion of breaking up the UK, with both the SNP and Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru with him on the stage.

With today’s polls showing Labour and the Tories neck and neck, the debate served as an analysis of which parties could go into government together.

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While Labour and the SNP are poles apart on some issues, Sturgeon struck a conciliatory tone with Miliband, whose own presumptive chancellor Ed Balls ruled out a coalition with the SNP.

“Ed, surely any differences we have aren’t as bad as the ones we both have with the Tories?”

The SNP were the clear winners according to an Independent/Brandwatch survey. People feel more positive about them than any other party.

While his rivals were drawing closer to one another, Cameron was at home and the British public wanted to know why – “Why is David Cameron not at the debate?” was the second-most googled question during the 90-minute showdown, after “What is austerity?”

UKIP’s Nigel Farage, meanwhile pledged to stop spending pounds “like confetti”, cap the number of immigrants entering the UK and to take on “corporate giants”. He was, however, on the end of a tongue-lashing by Sturgeon, who told him he could not blame the UK’s problems on immigrants.

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