Clegg: General Election now a two-horse race

The General Election is now a “two-horse race” between the Liberal Democrats and Tories, Nick Clegg said today.

With Labour out of the picture – according to Mr Clegg – their voters were invited to join the Lib Dem “cause”.

But after last night’s leaders’ debate exchanges on immigration Mr Clegg was forced to defend his plan to give some people who are here illegally the right to live in the UK, claiming Labour and the Tories were seeking to “brush the problem under the carpet”.

He also stuck to his assertion that 80% of immigrants were from the European Union and would not be covered by the Tories’ proposed cap, claiming there was a “fundamental dishonesty” in David Cameron’s position.

Despite opinion polls suggesting Tory leader Mr Cameron won last night’s debate, ‘Cleggmania’ was in full swing at De Montfort University in Leicester.

The biggest crowd of his campaign so far greeted the Lib Dem leader, with people leaning out of windows overlooking the university in an effort to catch a glimpse of him.

At one point there was a cheer as a Vote Labour poster was torn up while Mr Clegg answered questions from students.

He said: “The question now is not ’do you want change’, everyone wants change. It’s ’what kind of change’.

“That’s why this campaign is now boiling down to a simple choice, a two-horse race between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative Party.

“Who do you trust to deliver the change and fairness that you want?”

He added: “We need real change, not fake change and that is what the Liberal Democrats offer.”

Mr Clegg said the Lib Dems had replaced Labour as the “party of hope” adding: “I welcome anyone, from whatever party you supported in the past, to join our cause, our momentum towards a fairer Britain.”

Speaking to reporters Mr Clegg said: “It’s a contest between hope and fear and I think we are now the party of hope and fairness in this very dramatic election campaign.

“I think there’s a real momentum now, I feel it round me here in Leicester, particularly a lot of young people who feel that it is only the Liberal Democrats who offer something different.”

Mr Cameron last night said the Lib Dem immigration policy would allow an “amnesty” for 600,000 illegal immigrants.

Mr Clegg added: “What we are doing is at least trying to grapple with the problem.

“It’s a one-off legacy from the past and we have got a one-off solution.”

While “no one can predict ... how many people will take this up” he said: “One thing I can tell you is that we are the only party who are at least being big enough to confront this problem and seeking to deal with it.

“The other two parties simply want to brush the problem under the carpet as they have done for so many years.”

On a visit to a clock factory in Derby Mr Clegg told reporters his plan to allow illegal immigrants to stay in the UK would require them to prove they had been resident for 10 years.

“If they can’t prove it, then they come into our scheme,” he said.

“Even if people have been living illegally there will be some kind of paper trail.”

He stood by his claim that 80% of migrants came from the EU.

“We didn’t mislead at all. We took our figures from The Economist, if you look at those figures, what they were doing, it’s all about whether you include or exclude students and that’s the basis upon which I made that claim.”

The Tories have claimed only a third of immigrants come from EU nations.

But The Economist election briefing Mr Clegg referred to said “workers from outside the EU make up just one-fifth of all immigrants when students (who pay valuable tuition fees) are excluded”.

Mr Clegg said: “The fundamental dishonesty of the Conservative position is to raise hopes in people by this repeated assertion that you can put a numerical cap when they know, whatever one statistician says to another, that you simply can’t do that.”

The Lib Dem leader was later given a mixed response, including some boos, when he addressed the crowd at the World Snooker Championships, held at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield.

He joked: “You’re here for snooker, you are not here for politics, so I was trying to work out how I could mix the two.

“I was thinking what can I say? Brown being snookered, the reds are going down the hole – and then I realised the blue is worth more than the yellow so I thought I would stop.”

Mr Clegg’s campaign tour has seen him make several visits to universities, but he denied he was “targeting” the student vote.

The party was “not targeting anybody, but we are appealing to everybody”, Mr Clegg said.

He added: “I am certainly not going to rest one millisecond, one minute until this campaign ends – right up to the moment when people decide how to vote.

“That’s a very exciting moment when people go into the polling stations and put their cross on the ballot paper.

“There are lots of people who haven’t decided how they are going to vote, I think many people now see this campaign is wide open, it’s one of the most exciting campaigns in a generation and that we can do something different.”