The third election TV debate in Birmingham last night did not fail to disappoint. This is even inspite of much talk during the day being about Gordon Brown's lose 'bigot' comments.

It was another well fought debate this time with more focus on economic issues as well as immigration. Gordon Brown did look a bit visibly rattled given the day's events. There was a lot of political point scoring between him and David Cameron. Brown brought up a lot of economic arguments but most seemed to be avoiding impending financial doom.

David Cameron was having a bit of difficulty in answering questions on immigration and other economic issues. At one point he could not even answer a simple yes / no question on his immigration policy.

Nick Clegg was of course trying to be the 'voice of reason' between the political point scoring of the other two. However, his policy on immigration came under attack. The others said his policy of the effective legalising and integration of thousands of illegal immigrants was sending out the wrong message to others who would try to get into the UK illegally. Nick Clegg pointed out that it was an issue that was not going to disappear and had to be dealt with immediately.

What happens over the next week is anyones guess but what is certain that Google searches in the UK for 'hung parliament' have overtaken searches for 'Britney Spears'. I don't think that has happened before!

When we are not not looking to the skies for volcanic ash we are talking about a UK election which has taken a slightly different tack. Since the TV debate polls of a certain Mr Clegg of the Liberal Democrats have soured so high that even the mighty Eyjafjallajokull could not hold him back.

Nick's debate performance was certainly a force to be reckoned with as he successfully tapped into many people's growing mistrust of politics as a whole. However, there was not much expected of him when he entered the debate. He was the underdog and just had to wait for Brown and Cameron to have a predictable slanging match. It was then a matter of pointing out how annoying they were and how the Lib Dems would somehow be less annoying. That being said he did come across much more honest and transparent and this has paid dividends. Who would have thought it? Being straight-up with people is the way to win support! This is very refreshing for British politics and by no means rocket science.

Since my previous post the figures have changed slightly too. The number of Twitter followers are as follows (excuse the pun!):

Conservative - 27,397 (increase of 1458)
Liberal Democrats - 15,128 (increase of 2698)
Labour - 14,825 (increase of 777)

While the Tories are still in the lead here the Lib Dems have seen the biggest increase in their number of followers. They have also overtaken Labour since the debate.

The Google searches of each party leader's name also shed more light on what is going on.

Searches for "Nick Clegg" have skyrocketed on Google since the debate. The Tories and Labour have a very similar number of searches but both are dropping.

It is clear that Nick Clegg is the 'boy wonder' right now but for how long. The other parties are now looking to deconstruct Lib Dem policies to regain ground. This means Nick Clegg will now be in the limelight and under much more scrutiny. Whatever, happens though he has certainly made a statement and a hung parliament looks like a distinct possibility.