Still a roll of the dice. The Liberal Democrat bubble may not have burst, but there are some signs that (to switch metaphors) the tire may be slowly deflating. That could be good news for the Tories; then again, it might just allow Labour to hang onto more seats.

Meanwhile, here’s Rupert Darwall in the WSJ with a characteristically sharp take on the campaign so far:

With Labour’s Gordon Brown recording the lowest approval ratings of any prime minister since the second world war, Mr. Cameron’s theme of change seemed to be in tune with what voters were saying. It turned out not to be quite as straightforward. As Tony Blair remarked right at the start of this election campaign, “time for a change” is the most vacuous slogan in politics. Two weeks later, on April 15, the vacuum was filled. In the first of three prime ministerial debates, Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg’s performance led viewers to conclude that he, rather than Mr. Cameron, was the more credible change candidate. Of the three men on stage, he was the freshest; Liberal Democrat Party poll ratings surged, overtaking Labour and eating into Conservative support. British elections, normally dominated by two parties, deliver fairly predictable results. But with three parties running neck and neck, British politics appeared headed into a terra incognita of hung parliaments and coalition government. Mr. Clegg’s Liberal Democrats reacted like the British troops in the 1915 Gallipoli campaign. Having seized the high ground, they didn’t know what to do next. Instead of telling voters what a Liberal Democrat Britain would look like, Mr. Clegg speculated about potential coalition partners and repeated his party’s age-old demand for proportional representation. He thus demonstrated that if any party hadn’t changed in 50 years, it was the Liberal Democrats.

When it comes to Bigotgate, Darwall focuses away from immigration to what he sees as the real reason for Brown’s anger with Mrs Duffy, the voter who dared speak her mind:

Mrs. Duffy had confronted him with the central fact of his economic record. Since 2000, public spending in Britain has grown faster as a share of GDP than any other country in the 28-member OECD — up 17 percentage points to 53% of GDP, compared to 15 points for Ireland and 10 points for Iceland. By comparison, Spain’s grew by eight points and Greece by three points. If Gordon Brown had matched spending with tax increases, Labour would not have been re-elected twice.

Read the whole thing.