Nick Clegg: It’s odd that I’m not in tonights debate

The Liberal Democrat leader has said: “It’s very odd that the debate tonight doesn’t have anybody from one of the parties that have been trying to govern.”

Ed Miliband has said that David Cameron has “has decided not to attend tonight’s debate. If you’re applying for the job of PM, you should turn up to the job interview.”

The Conservative leader says that organising a challengers debate was part of a deal to “unblock the log-jam” in negotiations over the events.

However the negotiations also resulted in Mr Clegg being left out of the debate to stop the risk of appearing to be “empty chairing” the Prime Minister.

It also enables it to be branded a “challenger debate” of the parties outside Westminster.