Political Times: Pledges galore, a Cleggxit and Joey Essex in Westminster

Welcome to week one of the election campaign. The starting gun was fired when David Cameron asked the Queen to dissolve parliament. We've now got just 35 days to go before polling day and we've already had a load of promises from the parties. Here are the highlights:

• Cameron promised to create an extra two million jobs over the next parliament.
• Ed Miliband said Labour would slash business rates for small firms but reverse the government's 1% corporation tax cut.
• Ukip, meanwhile, unveiled their pledge card and the Liberal Democrats will spend £3.5bn on mental health care in England.

Cleggxit

But it won't be a Happy Easter for the Liberal Democrats as the party faces decapitation at the general election, according to a Lord Ashcroft poll. The survey, of key Liberal Democrat marginals, found that Nick Clegg is set to lose his Sheffield Hallam seat to Labour's candidate, Oliver Coppard.

Coppard holds a two-point lead over the deputy prime minister, who is facing a Michael Portillo type defeat in May. The Liberal Democrat leader retained the seat at the high of Clegg-O-Mania in 2010, with a majority of more than 15,000 votes.

But Ashcroft's research shows that Coppard is projected to take Clegg out with a 19.5% swing from the yellow party to Labour.

Essex investigates

However, it's not all bad news for Clegg this week. The Liberal Democrat leader did get to meet up with The Only way is Essex (Towie) star Joey Essex.

The 24-year-old celebrity quizzed the deputy prime minister about the forthcoming general election and the pair even took a selfie together. Essex even revealed that he had got Clegg's party's name wrong – calling them the Liberal DemoCATS.

The admission was seized upon by the Liberal Democrats, who promptly put a picture of a cute cartoon cat on their website.