London:
Britain's main party leaders square up for a second pre-election TV debate tomorrow, with all eyes on whether Nick Clegg can repeat the star turn that won his Liberal Democrats a stunning poll surge.
Clegg outshone Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Conservatives' David Cameron in last week's domestic policy debate, pushing his centrist party from a distant third to pole position in some opinion polls.
But as this week's focus switches to foreign affairs, Clegg - a former European lawmaker who speaks five languages and is married to a Spaniard - faces tougher scrutiny, particularly of his pro-European views. "The Lib Dems are going to have a much tougher time being europhiles," Victoria Honeyman, a politics lecturer at Leeds University, said. "The British are not interested. They don't want to be members of the eurozone."
The debate is also likely to cover issues including the controversial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where 460 Britons have died since 2001 and which Britain was led into by Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair.
Cameron will be battling to restore his reputation as premier in waiting after last week's disappointing turn, which included a gaffe when he argued for retaining the Trident nuclear deterrent by evoking doubts about China's future.
The Conservatives had been ahead in opinion polls for over two years going into the May 6 election. But Britain's emergence from recession at the end of last year and the advent of "Cleggmania" in recent days has seen their lead chipped away.
A Guardian/ICM poll yesterday put the Tories down four points on 33 per cent, the Liberal Democrats up ten to 30 per cent and Labour down three on 28 per cent.
Cameron is likely to come out "all guns blazing" against Clegg, Honeyman said, but must negotiate European policy with care: it has been a minefield for his party since the days of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. He will want to appear eurosceptic, but not too much so for fear of scaring off swing voters he has worked hard to cultivate, and who will be key if the Tories are to end their 13 years in opposition, she added.
The Conservatives' decision last year to pull out of the European Parliament's main centre-right grouping was sharply criticised by Labour, who charge that Britain under the Tories would be isolated in the 27-nation bloc.
Clegg outshone Prime Minister Gordon Brown and the Conservatives' David Cameron in last week's domestic policy debate, pushing his centrist party from a distant third to pole position in some opinion polls.
But as this week's focus switches to foreign affairs, Clegg - a former European lawmaker who speaks five languages and is married to a Spaniard - faces tougher scrutiny, particularly of his pro-European views. "The Lib Dems are going to have a much tougher time being europhiles," Victoria Honeyman, a politics lecturer at Leeds University, said. "The British are not interested. They don't want to be members of the eurozone."
The debate is also likely to cover issues including the controversial wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where 460 Britons have died since 2001 and which Britain was led into by Brown's predecessor, Tony Blair.
Cameron will be battling to restore his reputation as premier in waiting after last week's disappointing turn, which included a gaffe when he argued for retaining the Trident nuclear deterrent by evoking doubts about China's future.
The Conservatives had been ahead in opinion polls for over two years going into the May 6 election. But Britain's emergence from recession at the end of last year and the advent of "Cleggmania" in recent days has seen their lead chipped away.
A Guardian/ICM poll yesterday put the Tories down four points on 33 per cent, the Liberal Democrats up ten to 30 per cent and Labour down three on 28 per cent.
Cameron is likely to come out "all guns blazing" against Clegg, Honeyman said, but must negotiate European policy with care: it has been a minefield for his party since the days of Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. He will want to appear eurosceptic, but not too much so for fear of scaring off swing voters he has worked hard to cultivate, and who will be key if the Tories are to end their 13 years in opposition, she added.
The Conservatives' decision last year to pull out of the European Parliament's main centre-right grouping was sharply criticised by Labour, who charge that Britain under the Tories would be isolated in the 27-nation bloc.
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