WHEN the game is deep into the second half and your team isn’t winning, it’s time to change the tactics – and that’s what both big parties did today.

Only days ago, David Cameron was denying he had a ‘passion problem’, insisting voters preferred a leader with a sober, level-headed plan and adding: “This is who we are. This is who I am.”

But the mutterings that the prime minister lacks hunger won’t go away – notably from Tory donors who, at the weekend, criticised him for a “curious lack of energy and belief”.

Hey presto and suddenly Mr Cameron has passion pouring from every pore, telling small business owners he is now really “pumped up” – and almost bursting out of his shirt.

“If I’m getting lively about it, it’s because I feel bloody lively about it. It’s decision time – that’s what pumps me up,” he literally shouted.”

So what is Labour’s change of tactics? Well, everyone knows that party pledge cards have a nice, easy-to-remember, five promises, don’t they? No – or, rather, no longer.

Suddenly, Ed Miliband’s card has a sixth pledge, reading: “Homes to buy and action on rents’ – after he announced that first-time buyers (of homes below £300,000) would pay no stamp duty.

It seemed that – despite experts panning the Conservatives plan to expand Right to Buy to housing associations – Labour fears it needs to beef up its attack on housing.

Also, the policy will overwhelmingly help people in the South. The current average price for a first-time buyer in the North-East is just £118,000 – below the threshold for stamp duty anyway.

When I read Nick Clegg’s weekend interview, apparently ruling out talks with the party that finishes second – probably Labour - I wondered if it would cause trouble with his party?

It’s well-known the Liberal Democrat leader prefers dealing with the devil he knows (David Cameron) than the one he despises (Labour)….but many Lib Dems feel very differently.

Sure enough, Mr Clegg rowed back today, saying: : "It’s not for me, or for any of us, to express a preference on which of the older parties the Liberal Democrats may, or may not, talk to after the general election…..”

He then announced a ‘red line’ - that education spending must be protected, from nursery to 19 – that poses a bigger challenge for Tories (£5.2bn short) than Lab (£2.5bn short).

Joke of the Day: Mr Clegg, again – on what he’s thinking during his weekly kickboxing classes. “Well, sometimes Ed Balls might flicker through my imagination.”

Idiot of the Day: Gulzabeen Afsar, a Conservative council candidate in Derby, who said she could never support “the Jew” Ed Miliband. She has been suspended.