The Treasury Select Committee has produced one of its most insightful reports this week on the accountability of the Bank of England. It puts the issue of accountability so firmly on the agenda that it actually goes much further and raises the question of whether a central bank should be independent of political control.

This has been the conventional wisdom among the major political parties for the last 15 years and when Gordon Brown moved quickly to cut the Bank free of political control in 1997 he was loudly applauded by the Liberal Democrats and quietly encouraged by the Tories. I have never supported the independence of the Bank of England and the Treasury Select Committee report's insightful analysis thoroughly vindicates that stance.

Of course the headlines this week have focused on the proposal that future governors should serve only a single eight year term - they are currently appointed for five years which can be renewed - and that the appointment should be subject to scrutiny and potential veto by the Treasury Select Committee. This has been sold by the committee's chairman Andrew Tyrie as a way of ensuring that, once appointed, the governor would be free from political interference: the rest of the report, however, sets out an aggressive agenda for future political engagement with the Bank.

Mr Tyrie summed it up well when the report was published on Monday: "Scrutiny of the Bank should reflect the needs of 21st century democracy. That means clear lines of accountability and more information made available to Parliament. It should be crystal clear who is in charge at a time of financial crisis. On all of these issues the government's draft legislation would benefit from improvement". It is in time of crisis that the select committee sets out a case for the Bank submitting to direct political control and it is these recommendations that I expect to meet the fiercest opposition from the Bank after the proposed veto on the appointment of the governor.

The recommendations on page 54 of the report do not leave much doubt as to who the select committee thinks should be in charge when there is a crisis:

"We strongly recommend that the definition of what constitutes a "material risk" for the purposes of Clause 42 of the draft Bill be contained in the forthcoming legislation. This definition should also take account of the fact that major liquidity operations by the Bank require Treasury approval--the material risk of these too must require notification to the Treasury....

"We further recommend that the Draft Bill be amended so that this early warning triggers a discretionary power for the Chancellor to be able to direct the Bank if he or she so chooses. The Bank should be required to provide such an early warning to the Chancellor as soon as the FPC becomes aware of a possibility of a material risk to public funds...

"To ensure proper accountability to Parliament, the responsibility of the Chancellor for all decisions involving public funds or liabilities in a time of crisis should be stated in the draft Bill".

These recommendations should start the debate about independence and political control of the Bank of England, one that should have been had a long time ago but which, with people pitching tents in the City to protest about their lack of influence over the financial world, is very much a debate for our time.
 

I have long been of the view that when economic historians review the last 20 years they will condemn Gordon Brown as one of the worst Chancellors (and Prime Ministers) we ever had. I struggle to see how any coherent case can be made for him to be considered as the new head of the International Monetary Fund in the wake of the departure of the disgraced Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

Whatever the outcome of the increasingly frenzied negotiations between the political parties at Westminster today, I think we have started to see how influential social media can be in modern political debate.

The gentle recovery in the Tory vote since David Cameron's relatively poor performance in the first Leaders' Debate two weeks probably gained some important momentum tonight. We could yet see a Conservative government heading for Downing Street this time next week, albeit with a very small majority.

David Cameron made this his most assured contribution of the three debates and the instant polls seem to be confirming this. More assured it may have been, decisive it wasn't. There is still alot to play for over the next week, although I think we can finally start ruling out another term in office for Gordon Brown. He looked and sounded like a man with no future by the end.

In his final speech the Prime Minister did not offer a single positive reason why anyone should vote Labour. Instead, he used it to attack both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats and, by implication, the British public for daring to contemplate change. At least both David Cameron and Nick Clegg tried to offer people some reasons for supporting them, although both their closing speeches were longer on rhetoric than substance.

So, where does this leave us after the three debates? Somewhere very different from where we started, that's where.

Just over two weeks ago this election was a fight between a stuttering Conservative Party with a decent poll lead and a surprisingly resilient Labour Party with the Liberal Democrats out in the third place where they have been for two (if not three) generations. It was, for most people, a two-horse race.
 
It is probably still a two-horse race, just with a dramatic change in the identity of one of the horses. First Nick Clegg came up on the rails, then he held off a challenge from Brown and now he has left him trailing back in the third place Clegg himself occupied just 15 short days ago. It is a fight between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for the largest share of the popular vote now. Cameron acknowledged that to-night by reserving his most ferocious attacks for Nick Clegg over immigration and the Euro. He knows that it is now the Liberal Democrats who are the main threat and who can prevent a Conservative victory. Gordon Brown seemed stuck in a past era, fighting the battles of yesterday and not adjusting well to the changed reality.

Clegg did well under pressure, getting none of the help he received two weeks ago from Gordon Brown who most definitely wasn't going to agree with Nick over anything. There were times when Clegg looked abit flustered and he occasionally struggled to move the debate on but, equally, Cameron didn't shine consistently through the 90 minutes.

The key question now is: have Labour got a comeback strategy? Is there anything they can do this weekend to rescue their rapidly crumbling campaign. If they haven't then we may see their vote drop to the low 20s which is much more likely to benefit the Liberal Democrats than the Tories.

The Tories will, however, be buoyed up by their leader's performance to-night and do have the advantage of having already built up a little momentum in their favour over the last week. That sort of momentum can be crucial at this stage in an election campaign. It may just be enough.
 

I am going for the instant reaction again, rather than wait until the morning to see which way the wind is blowing. So here goes.

The second leaders' debate was much closer than the first and for that reason I imagine all three parties will be taking some satisfaction from the performance of their leaders. I wouldn't be surprised if the polls end up making it a score draw. If they do, that means that the big loser, once again, is David Cameron. If he and the Conservatives cannot pull away and consistently register on or around 40% they are not going to get the overall majority that has seemed a sure fire certainty for the last three years. I thought Cameron was appealing strongly to the core Tory vote on the big issues that came up like immigration and Europe but doing very little to reach out to the middle ground he needs if he is going to win. I wouldn't have thought that he has to worry about the core vote in this election. Surely, his job is to reach out well beyond that and he showed little sign of doing so in tonight's debate.

He gave one slightly bizarre answer when 84 year old Grace wanted to know what the parties would do for pensioners on the basic pension when he hold her that she would have to wait until 2016 at the earliest for any improvements. He did, however, rattle Gordon Brown on the pensions issue by attacking him for some false claims about Tory policies he alleged were appearing in Labour leaflets.

To Gordon Brown then. He did better than last week and, again, probably exceeded expectations but it was a very uneven performance. There was none of the "I agree with Nick" statements of the previous week, in fact quite the opposite as he kept attacking him for not wanting to replace Trident and for the Liberal Democrats' immigration policies. On both these issues, Brown found himself very close to Cameron although he stopped short of uttering what would have been the fatal words "I agree with David". Brown sounded good on pensions but you have to remember that you are looking at the man who in a decade as Chancellor did untold damage to our pensions system. He was genuinely effective on areas such as gay rights and religious tolerance than could easily have been captured by Clegg if he had slipped up.

For Nick Clegg it was probably job done. He was very unlikely to run away with it as before but he performed very soundly under alot more pressure and scored some good points. He stuck to his guns on the potentially unpopular - for his party - issues of Europe and immigration and came out with the best line of the night when dismissing Brown's demand to deport illegal immigrants: "We are talking about 900,000 people and you don't even know where they live". At that point the audience couldn't help themselves and slipped out of their straightjackets and laughed.

All Clegg had to do this week was hold his own and not wilt under the pressure. Even when Adam Boulton tried to force the Daily Telegraph's smear campaign against him into the debate, Clegg confidently swatted it away. Just by keeping up with the others he has ensured that the election remains firmly a three horse race.

This was potentially the most difficult debate of the three for Clegg because the popular assumptions are that Europe is loathed, immigrants are barely tolerated and people demand strong defence, all issues that the Liberal Democrats differ with popular opinion on. Clegg may not have scored heavily on these issues but neither was he hurt over them.

I thought the most disappointing aspect of the evening was Sky's coverage. They kept an annoying and irrelevant ticker running all the way through, chose poor, ill-focussed questions, allowed Boulton to intervene with a question to just one candidate that hadn't been asked and then came up with an instant poll for the Sun that suggested - surprise, surprise - Cameron had won. I look forward to the professionalism of the BBC next week.

As I write this the first wave of post-debate polls have just been published and they all give the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg a huge margin of victory in the first of the three leaders' debates. Does that make to-night a game-changer?
There will be endless analysis, reaction, rebuttal and spin over the next few days. Some of it will cause people to re-assess what they have just seen but it is hard to believe that we haven't just witnessed a key moment in this campaign, maybe in a key moment in British politics. The debate has made the Liberal Democrats and their leader serious contenders. I believe it will finally dispell alot of the fear of a hung Parliament as people will say they could, at the very least, trust Nick Clegg to hold his own with the other two leaders. Indeed, most people will come away from the debate thinking that he could do much more than that should he find himself involved in the negotiations over who forms the next government.
So, Nick Clegg was clearly the big winner of what was round 1 of a three round contest. David Cameron was the big loser. Some polls had him a distant third, others had him ahead of Brown although that must still be seen as a disaster for him and the Conservatives as he went into this as the favourite. He fell a long way in just 90 minutes.
For Gordon Brown this was a similar outcome that experienced by Alistair Darling in the Chancellors' debate - he did better than expected and came across as a decent politician of substance. That will help him. What won't help him is that he too often sounded like he should have been in the Chancellors' debate, especially in his opening and closing statements.
Cameron's weak performance is all the more worrying for the Conservatives because the first two questions  - on immigration and crime - were on subjects that are usually very good for the Conservatives. He should have got off to a flyer but, instead, seemed to stall on the starting grid, never really recovering.
Of course, for next week's debate on foreign affairs the expectations on Clegg will be very high and he will be the one that will have most to lose. Europe will figure strongly and that, in theory at least, should be a strong issue for the Tories. But Clegg took Cameron on over immigration so expect him to do the same on Europe.
For Labour next week will be tricky. Do they carrying on appearing to agree with the Liberal Democrats whenever possible (perhaps looking towards the discussions they will have to have in a hung Parliament) or do they start to attack them? It didn't go as badly for them tonight as some feared so they may be reluctant to change tack. If one consequence of Clegg's personal triumph is a slide in Conservative support overall then Labour might settle for that, at least for another week.
This may have been a game-changer but there is still a long way - and two more debates - to go. Also, support for the Liberal Democrats and their predecessor parties is notoriously volatile so any sudden leaps in their support in the opinion polls over the next few days have to be treated fairly cautiously. That said, I know which party HQ I would rather be walking into tomorrow morning.
 
  

Just how important is social media going to be in the forthcoming General Election campaign? After the huge excitement generated by the Obama campaign's use of social media during his successful campaign in 2008 all three main parties in the UK have been gearing up to exploit these new channels - and all three have proved very keen to talk about what they are doing.

Today seems already to have been declared the official start of the General Election campaign with a barrage of announcements from all the major parties. I wonder how this will play out with the electorate?