Clegg -v- Farage

Nick Clegg has challenged Nigel Farage to a debate on the LBC radio station on whether we should stay in the EU or leave.

Farage has raised the stakes and told Clegg to get Cameron and Miliband on as well and make it a proper leaders' debate.

Even though Nigel Farage is the most popular party leader (on the odd occasion polling companies ask) and most people in the country want out of the EU, a debate on LBC would still be a tough gig because it's a London radio station and support for the EU and unfettered immigration runs high in a city where only 45% of the population are "white British".

That said, any credibility Nick Clegg might have had in an EU debate is destroyed by the fact that as a former EU commissioner he is obliged to promote the EU at all times and never to criticise the EU or its institutions publicly or he will lose his EU pension. And that's before you get onto his vacuous claims about millions of jobs and world peace relying on the EU.

Nigel Farage will undoubtedly wipe the floor with Clegg on the EU and any other topic for discussion that comes up because both Clegg and the Lib Dems are wrong on pretty much everything, as evidenced by their rapid decline into obscurity in opinion polls and at the ballot box. Although it would be nice to hold out for the other two europhile leaders to get in on the act it's not going to happen because whilst Clegg has nothing to lose, being about as popular as a dog poo sandwich, it would be electoral suicide for the other two to try and debate Nigel Farage. By saying no to a one on one with Clegg in the hope that Cameron and Miliband will join in, Farage will look weak. He should accept the offer, wipe the floor with Clegg and use Clegg's rare show of backbone to shame Cameron and Miliband into live televised debates with the three main parties plus the Lib Dems.

There is a poll on the LBC website on who you think would win the debate between Clegg and Farage. It's a fairly close-run thing but Farage is out in front at the moment.