Sam Coates

If elections are job interviews, as party leaders like to say, then this interview has so far failed to assess applicants on the one part of the job description that most have no experience in - foreign policy and security. This absence was at its most conspicuous this week when the TV debate didn't spare even a cursory nod to global issues. Maybe the lack of contention on foreign policy is an implicit tribute to the Conservatives' steady hand on the tiller? If not, let's hear why. If so, the Conservatives have been surprisingly, some might argue laudably, reluctant to invoke global insecurity as an issue. Security concerns, global instability, and terrorism are important themes that normally mesh well with a serious, strong-headed, incumbent government.

Four years ago I was in a windowless room within the parliamentary estate. I was working in David Cameron’s opposition office at the time and a number of Tory political advisers had been corralled into said room to go line-by-line, page-by-page through the expenses forms for all Tory MPs. This was in the middle of the corrosive drip-dripping of expenses stories, and British politics had hit its nadir. Since then I’ve spent a lot of time living and working in SE Asia, which has enabled me to peer at the Westminster ant farm with a bit more perspective. On my last visit back to SW1, just over a month ago, I found it gripped by the Mercer and Yeo lobbying scandals. Disproportionality so, I thought.