Democracy as we've never seen it before

Labour and the Conservatives are neck and neck in the latest UK opinion polls. Ed Miliband, who was written off as a hopeless geek who couldn't eat a bacon sandwich, emerged yesterday at his manifesto launch as a rather robust and capable leader.

The "happy warrior" staked his claim to the mantle of fiscal responsibility and Ed Balls rammed home the message by announcing that there "will" be cuts in Scotland in non-protected areas. This was an unfortunate blow for the leader of Scottish Labour, Jim Murphy, who'd been trying to argue that there wouldn't be any.

Meanwhile the Tories, who seemed to be coasting to victory a couple of months ago, are in difficulties over uncosted spending promises. The normally fluent George Osborne came adrift on the Andrew Marr programme on Sunday over his pledge to put £8 billion into the NHS and ended up sounding more like Natalie Bennett having a brain fade.

The Conservatives are in danger of undermining their own reputation for economic competence. David Cameron's claim has always been that only a Tory government could have cut the deficit, increased the number of jobs and presided over the lowest inflation in history. We'll hear more of that later today as he launches the Conservative election manifesto.

But while the leading parties couldn't be in closer contention in England, in Scotland they could scarcely be further apart. The latest TNS opinion poll yesterday had the SNP pulling even further ahead of Labour at 52 per cent to 24 per cent. According to Professor John Curtice, this would put Nicola Sturgeon on course for winning 53 out of 59 Scottish seats.

We have seen dramatic results before in Scottish politics, such as when the Tories were wiped out in 1997, but nothing like this. I keep reminding disbelieving colleagues in the UK media that, in 2010, the SNP returned only six seats in the whole of Scotland.

In desperation, Labour have been trying to reconstitute the Better Together alliance from last year's independence referendum and inviting Unionists from all parties to vote tactically against the SNP.

This might work in theory, but it is a very tall order in practice, not least because it is difficult to persuade hardened Tory voters to back Labour, and Liberal Democrat voters are pretty thin on the ground anyway.

Mr Murphy seems actually to have made Labour's plight worse rather than better. His hectoring tone in the TV leaders debates has gone down badly and people don't seem to believe that he is the real deal.

The television debates have been electrifying, even (unintentionally) the ill-disciplined BBC Scotland Sunday Politics effort that gave stairheid rammies a bad name.

We have seen UK politicians tested in a new multi-party setting with women leaders and minority parties represented at the top table. This is a refreshing change from the dull, old two-plus-one party ding-dong.

And social media seems finally to have come of age in this 2015 General Election.

Twitter and Facebook were novelties in 2010 and 2011, but they have become a mass participation sport allowing everyone with a laptop to become a commentator on political events.

In Scotland, social media might even be dominating this election as thousands turn away from the conventional media and onto the raucous and sometimes offensive chatter on the internet. It has certainly played a part in boosting the SNP's popularity to extraordinary heights.

Nicola Sturgeon is the first political leader in British history to use social media in real time, speaking spontaneously on Twitter without spin doctors and other intermediaries vetting her account.

The SNP leader is being hailed as the most popular leader in the entire UK, which is just as well because she could be in line to play a key role in the formation of the next UK coalition government.

The landscape of British politics is changing before our eyes. This is democracy as we've never seen it before. And hang onto your seats, because this amazing election campaign has only just begun.