Saying the Lib Dems with what, 57 MPs in 2010, none of them bought as sitting Conservative MPs, should NOT appear at a 2015 leader debate is severe-head-up-own- UKIP-bum.
The Lib Dems had nearly 8 million votes in 2010 and 23% of the vote, versus UKIPs 2010 3% of the vote, up from 2% of the vote in the previous two General Elections - having polled in the double digits in EU and local elections..
The Lib Dems with a very different ideology to the Conservatives have done the UK a great service by forming a coalition in 2010, to allow urgent reforms the UK needed in what looked to be a no-ideas-myself-but-oppose-everything- parliament. Some reforms were unpopular, there is no painless way to cut a £157 bil annual overspend and try to find bedrooms to 5 million needing social housing in 2010, when all the money had gone, and then some.
UKIP have achieved nothing, rubbished their own 2010 General Election manifesto and have obtained 24 MEP seats, disingenuously by pretending to the electorate that voting for them could bring the UK out of the EU and stop EU immigration enshrined in British law, by the signing of the Lisbon Treaty.
UKIP have nothing to offer in a leadership debate, as they have nothing to offer the UK, when we need solutions to our problems, not another 5-years of their 'protests', while forcing another coalition on the country that is unlikely to work as well from 2015 to 2020. IMO.
The Greens on any measure of UKIP, have been hard done by without a platform which IMO should have 2-3 debates, one being between just the two leaders who WILL form the next 2015 government, probably again with a parliamentary minority.