While Cameron and Osborne are under pressure over the top rate of income tax, the Tories are trying to get a story going about Chris Leslie, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, confirming the party wants to raise taxes. This is what he said on Sky’s Murnaghan programme:

We believe that we can deal with the deficit through a combination, yes, of some spending cuts and fairer tax changes’.

The problem with this line of attack is that Labour has already set out some of the tax changes it would do - eg. raising the top rate to 50p and a mansion tax on homes worth more than £2m.

Fraser Nelson of the Spectator writes it up here as “Chris Leslie confirms: Ed Miliband is planning more tax rises”.

In case one picture of David Cameron and a lamb wasn’t enough, he’s now tweeted a montage:

Odds on home secretary Theresa May becoming the next Tory leader have been lengthened following a story that appeared in the Independent on Sunday, according to William Hill.

The story says:

Theresa May is embroiled in an embarrassing controversy over how a convicted criminal obtained a £500,000 government-backed loan for a business in her Berkshire constituency that has now gone bust, amid suspicions of financial misconduct.

The Home Secretary has admitted that she lobbied various bodies on behalf of Charles Henry Mogford, a Land Rover dealer in Maidenhead. Mogford, 52, wanted a substantial bank loan for his business, Auto Ex Limited, after it was relocated to make way for a high-speed rail link. The salesman had achieved some fame locally from supplying specially modified Land Rovers for the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall.

May denies giving him any assistance to Mogford in helping him obtain a loan but admits raising concerns, where appropriate, as she would do for any constituent or local business.

However, Labour have jumped on the tale, with Yvette Cooper, shadow home secretary, saying:

I’m afraid its not good enough for Theresa May to refuse to answer questions or provide any details about her lobbying activities on behalf of Charles Henry Mogford.

The position of home secretary demands full public confidence and she should provide details of who and what organisations she lobbied to obtain loans from the government for her constituent and whether any checks were done before she did so.

William Hill said the odds on May succeeding Cameron have now lengthened from 9/2 to 11/2. The bookermaker has Boris Johnson as 9/4 favourite.

An unexpected City voice sticking up for Labour this afternoon is Guy Hands, the private equity boss. He told the FT (£):

There’s no question that for the renewable business as a whole, an SNP-Labour party majority would be far better than the Conservatives based on what the Conservatives currently say, which is a policy I don’t understand.

Hands runs Terra Firma, which has major investments in wind energy. The Conservatives want a moratorium on further onshore wind development in a promise that looked designed to placate the Tory right and win back voters from Ukip.

We’ve covered another story from the Sunday papers about Miliband’s relationship with business. Jennifer Rankin writes that a poll of 35 chairman of the UK’s biggest companies found that 90% thought David Cameron would be the best prime minister for corporate Britain, while 70% of the chairmen polled said that the Labour leader would be a“catastrophe”.

The Labour high command does not believe this kind of story - like the letter to the Telegraph from 103 company leaders - is necessarily bad for them because they want to portray Miliband on the side of workers and Tories as the party of big business.

But Chuka Umunna, the shadow business secretary, also argued in response that a Labour government would be good news for business because it is not risking the UK’s membership of the European Union.

I’ve just got round to watching this video interview with Ed Miliband in the Sunday People. It’s a little on the awkward side, maybe because it seems to be conducted in a bare office, but the Labour leader is quite good at challenging things he doesn’t agree with, like banning all benefits for immigrants and introducing charges for drunks in A&E. He also has some pretty strong words on the bedroom tax.

This is the cruellest, most iniquitious, most unfair, most appalling, most disgraceful thing this government has done. And I must say, I don’t know how David Cameron can look in the mirror, as he gas done, and justify this tax because it is hitting some of the poorest people in our society and some of the most deserving people in our society.”

If you’re into Milibandology (as I am), this is a good read from Mark Ferguson on Labour List about the leaked notes: a cry of anguish about the fact they were left around and then five interesting things we learned from them:

1) The answers were as scripted as we thought they had been

2) There is a Miliband doctrine (of sorts) on foreign policy

3) He had lines to attack Sturgeon (and Farage) with – but he didn’t use them

4) Miliband was willing to defend Labour’s economic record in robust terms

5) His handwriting is a nightmare

My colleague, Patrick Wintour, the political editor, has written a story about Cameron and Osborne’s stance on the 45p income tax rate. This is what he says about the chancellor’s motivation for refusing to rule out a cut:

It was not immediately clear if Osborne was trying to hide backstop plans to cut the top rate of tax, or merely trying to keep his options open. He has firmly ruled out increases in the basic rate of income tax, national insurance and, after some hesitation, increases in VAT.

A quick bit of Ukip news: Diane James, one of the party’s MEPs who nearly took Eastleigh from the Lib Dems in a byelection, has said there are plenty of people “waiting” to succeed Nigel Farage if he doesn’t win South Thanet (see the poll from earlier putting him behind the Tories).

She told BBC Radio Five Live’s Pienaar’s Politics:

We have a very high calibre of individuals within Ukip. They are frequently on the BBC and other media outlets: Suzanne Evans, Patrick O’Flynn, Paul Nuttall. There are people there waiting.

When the leadership race is announced, I’m sure individuals will put their hats into the ring.

James herself may be a leading candidate as successor to Farage, but she withdrew from the race to be an MP because of family matters. However, none of the people she has named - Evans, O’Flynn and Nuttall - are likely to win the seats they are standing in.

It presents Ukip with a bit of a problem as Farage has said he would stand down if he doesn’t win South Thanet because he could not lead the party from outside the Commons.

Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless, the two former Tory Ukip MPs, have both ruled themselves out of the running. Among the people who have a chance of being Ukip MPs come May 8, party insiders are talking up Jamie Huntman, the candidate in Castle Point, with Evans potentially as a caretaker leader.

Here’s quite a clever spot from Labour. In November 2011, this was what Osborne had to say about cutting the top rate of income tax, which was then 50p in the pound for all those who earn more than £150,000 a year.

Well this autumn we’re not looking at the 50p tax rate, that’s, the priority this autumn is to get the housing market going, the priority this autumn is to get infrastructure underway and, of course, we’re absolutely committed to increasing the personal allowance for many millions of people in this country who have a tough time at the moment.

In the March Budget of the next year, he cut it to 45p in the pound.

Today, Osborne used similar language to his words in November 2011, saying seven times that it was not his “priority” to cut the top rate further.

Labour has said it would raise the top rate to 50p again for all those who earn more than £150,000 a year.

Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood has just been asked what must be now known as the “French Ambassador Question” - would she prefer Ed Miliband or David Cameron to be prime minister? She refuses to answer but claims to be doing everything she can to make the current Conservative government fall.

Also speaking on the BBC’s World This Weekend, Wood said she would push Miliband to the left in any coalition negotiations. Plaid Cymru currently has three MPs.

Labour former cabinet minister Peter Hain has been on the World This Weekend warning about the dangers of the SNP letting in a Tory government. He says their position is illogical because it amounts to:

Vote anything except Labour to get a Labour government. That doesn’t make sense at all. If you don’t vote Labour, the Tories are more likely to be the biggest party. If they are the biggest party, then they will form a government. [The SNP] would prefer to have a Tory government that would suit their independent separatist agenda.

Adding to all the image-softening pictures of Cameron going to church with Samantha, his daughter sitting in his red box, and his wife giving an interview in their kitchen, we now have this of clip him cuddling a lamb:

These are the full quotes from Cameron when he was asked about lowering the 45p top rate of income tax earlier by Sky News in Witney, Oxfordshire.

It’s not our policy, it’s not our plan. Our plan is to raise to £12,500 the basic rate threshold so we take another million people out of income tax altogether and cut tax for 30 million people. That’s the plan. We’re also going to raise the 40p threshold to £50,000 because too many middle-income families are being pulled into that tax rate. Those are our plans and they are the ones we’ll pursue.

It looks like the New York Post has got a bit excited about the suggestion that Michael Bloomberg could run for London mayor. David Cameron’s former campaign guru Steve Hilton, who is now in the US, appears to be backing it, which does not add a lot of credibility to the idea. Our Washington correspondent Paul Lewis tweets:

A quick update on what is really the most significant story of the election so far: Scotland. To recap:

• Nicola Sturgeon was mobbed by well-wishers in Edinburgh on Friday after a strong performance in the leaders’ TV debate
  
• A Foreign Office memo was leaked to the Telegraph suggesting she privately expressed a preference for David Cameron as prime minister and did not think Ed Miliband was made of the right leadership material
• She denied the story in the strongest terms, as did the French diplomat who was also in the meeting. SNP activists stuck labels on copies of the Telegraph calling the story a fabrication.
• Cabinet secretary Jeremy Heywood ordered an inquiry into the leak at the instigation of Sturgeon.
• The SNP leader set out her position in an article for the Observer and called on Miliband to form an anti-austerity bloc with her party.
• Labour has not formally responded to this offer. But the party has seized on the leaked memo as evidence of the “unholy alliance” between the Tories and SNP. Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy said it was a “devastating revelation that exposes the uncomfortable truth behind the SNP’s general election campaign”.
• The SNP is still on course to take dozens of seats off Labour in Scotland, reducing Ed Miliband’s chances of a majority.

George Osborne confirms he was indeed being interviewed live from a garden centre. This is obviously how ordinary hardworking people spend their Sundays.

David Cameron has been snapped on his way to church with his wife Samantha.

Ed Miliband has been keeping a low profile today but was yesterday out campaigning in Doncaster with his wife Justine and Labour frontbencher Caroline Flint.

I’m told Nigel Farage is having a day off spending Easter with his family after a full-on day of campaigning on Saturday.

Let’s just have a quick look at the leaked Miliband briefing notes from his appearance at the leaders’ TV debates.

It’s a great scoop for the Sun on Sunday, after the documents were apparently left in the make-up room. But despite its attempts to spin the notes as “bizarre” and a plot to make him look less robotic, actually the briefings are pretty standard stuff.

Even the note about being a “happy warrior” is easily explicable. It’s the subject of a Wordsworth poem that is common currency in US politics, conveying the idea of a noble and moral fighter.

All in all, it doesn’t look very damaging, apart from creating an impression that his minders have once again not been doing their job properly (like the times he was allowed to be pictured with a copy of the Sun and eating a bacon sandwich not very gracefully).

Here are some extracts:

Sorry to post about something so trivial as clothing but in the context of a general election campaign, image matters.

Buzzfeed has noticed that all the leaders seem to be dressing in a very similar way (although Nick Clegg is boldly going for collar tucked out). If nothing else, this will give more fuel for Ukip/SNP leaflets claiming the main Westminster parties are all the same:

Our data editor, Alberto Nardelli, has a further observation:

Tim Farron, former Lib Dem president and favourite to succeed Nick Clegg, is next up on Murnaghan.

He optimistically says “the polls are beginning to go in an upward direction” for the party.

(Err not in today’s YouGov - down one to 7% - or Opinium - also 7%).

He says of course there has been electoral damage but people are seeing the coalition has been in the national interest. It will be in the national interest again to have the Liberal Democrats in government, Farron adds.

Like Laws, he rejects the idea of retreating to opposition.

Going into opposition to recuperate never works... You should want to be in power and there is nothing grubby about being in power.

Murnaghan ribs him gently over his commen ts that the Lib Dems were like cockroaches, saying Farron may be one of the only senior cockroaches left after the election with a seat. Asked if he would want to be leader, Farron says:

The election we’re facing is the biggest one for this country and the hardest for the Liberal Democrats.

If I give any headspace to what happens afterwards that would be foolish and disloyal.

Speculation about Farron’s leadership ambitions has grown after he said he would give the party 2/10 for handling the coalition.

Murnaghan then makes him squirm by replaying him a clip of former leader Lord Ashdown slapping him down with a withering remark that “judgement is not his strong suit”. Farron responds:

I hold my hands up being quoted out of context. We’re not getting distracted by that. Paddy is a mate of mine.

Ukip’s economics spokesman Patrick O’Flynn is on Sky now saying the chancellor’s schedule for reducing the deficit is “reasonable”.

He said he wants to cast Ukip as the party of greater fiscal responsibility than the Tories.

Pressed on Farage’s controversial comments about excluding foreigners with HIV from entering the country, O’Flynn said the party wouldn’t apply it retrospectively.

“It’s being generous with other people’s money,” he said, at a time when NHS resources are under pressure.

We’re likely to see more of him and other Ukip spokesmen and women over the next few weeks as it has been designated a major party by Ofcom, giving it more airtime on the broadcasters.

As an aside, does anyone remember when Ed Balls ambushed George Osborne with a challenge to a TV debate live on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show? That now appears to be in doubt over a row about whether O’Flynn will be allowed to join them and Lib Dem finance spokesman Danny Alexander. Both Labour and the Tories are trying to blame each other over who is blocking the debate.

The big political interview of the morning is George Osborne on Murnaghan at about 10.30am.

But before then, we’ve got senior Lib Dem politician David Laws rejecting the idea that his party needs some time out of coalition to recharge its batteries - a suggestion made by former Liberal leader Lord Steel.

He told the BBC Radio Five Live’s Pienaar’s Politics: “The party wants to be a serious player in national politics.”

Laws also said the Conservatives have shown “unbelievable cheek” in taking credit for rises in the personal tax allowance: “There hasn’t been a single budget or Autumn Statement in this parliament where the prime minister or the chancellor have ever made this a Conservative ask.”

He added the Liberal Democrats would “go far faster than the existing trajectory for increasing the personal tax allowance” and would ensure that when the personal tax allowance rises, “upper rate taxpayers gain as well”.

Meanwhile, the two national polls published today do not seem to take us anywhere very new.

YouGov for the Sunday Times showed the Conservatives overtaking Labour to move into a one point lead by 34% to 33%.

But the latest Opinium/Observer poll put both Labour and the Conservatives on 33%.

Will anything break the stalemate now?

The mysterious case of the South Thanet ComRes poll is really very interesting.

It is reported in the Mail on Sunday that it was commissioned by Ukip donor Arron Banks and shows the Tories one point ahead of Labour on 31%, Ukip on 30%, and Labour on 29%.

This is significantly different from the Survation poll in February paid for by Alan Bown, which showed Farage 11 points ahead on 38.6%, Labour on 27.6%, and the Conservatives on 26.6%.

A previous poll by Lord Ashcroft from November is more in line with the ComRes one. This had the Tories on 33%, Ukip on 32% and Labour on 26%.

All of this matters because Farage’s political career - and potentially the future of Ukip - rests on whether he wins South Thanet after multiple previous attempts to become an MP. He has said he will resign if he fails.

Ukip is quietly confident he will win the seat. But they are also keen to confuse potential tactical voters about who is in second place in the seat. Most seat-watchers think the Tories are doing better than Labour, but the Survation poll called this assumption into question. This makes it tricky for those who are voting to stop Farage to know where to put their anti-Ukip vote.

The party is strongly denying Farage tried to suppress the poll, as claimed by the Mail on Sunday. They are also arguing the interpretation of the numbers is wrong, and Farage is seven points ahead, as they have been weighted according to past vote share.

But if Farage was happy for it to be made public, it is difficult to explain how the numbers made their way into a Sunday newspaper rather than being released in the normal way.

It may also tell us something interesting about relations between Farage and Banks, who pledged to give £1m to the campaign last October but has given most of his support in “consultancy” rather than hard cash.

There’s also a few comment pieces that are worth a look before the Sunday broadcast shows begin with Sky’s Murnaghan at 10am.

Gordon Brown’s former spinner Damian McBride, who resigned over a plot to smear Tories, writes in the Sunday Times about how Cameron is making empty promises.

It dawned on me that we are witnessing something very strange at this election: a total reversal in the roles of incumbent versus challenger.

Usually, it is the opposition that promises the unaffordable, unachievable or plain impossible, hoping it will be enough to get them elected, after which they can declare that – due to the wretched mess or ill-considered notes they have discovered on taking office – those promises may be rather difficult to deliver.

Incumbent governments do not have that luxury. They cannot blame the same mess twice; not if they’ve had one full term in office to work out what can realistically be achieved in the next. So their pledges tend to be more careful, costed and credible, unlike the charlatans on the other side.

Now we come to 2015, where we might expect an incumbent Tory Prime Minister chastened by missed targets and broken promises to become responsible and realistic in what he pledges to do next time round. Not a bit of it.

This is no manifesto we are promised by David Cameron; it is a latter-day Book of Miracles: the ‘tens of thousands’ migration target will be met after all; the deficit will be erased within four years.

Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer is also sharp about how David Cameron and Ed Miliband are not passing the voters’ “smell test”.

As they stood on the stage on Thursday night, I looked at Mr Cameron and Mr Miliband as these leaders of the former giants of British politics were forced to compete with the smaller parties. I wondered if either asked himself: how did it come to this? What am I doing scrapping for airtime with a Welsh nationalist and a Green who aren’t even MPs and a Ukip leader and a Scottish Nationalist who have never won election to Westminster either? The answer to the question comes in many parts, but central to it is that neither of the big two have overcomes their negatives. Neither passes the impressionistic voter’s smell test.