This was the moment they had been waiting for. The families and friends of the patients who died unnecessarily in the NHS – especially the 1,200 patients who lost their lives while supposedly under the care of the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Trust between 2005 and 2009 – have spent years frustrated and angry at the seemingly endless abilities of the NHS' most senior official, Sir David Nicholson, to evade responsibility. They have found it impossible to understand how Nicholson – who was the chief executive of the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority at the time of those deaths – could possibly not accept the most basic principle of accountability and resign for what happened on his watch. Today he faced MPs on the Commons' health select committee. It was a big day for all concerned.

They might have expected at least a degree of contrition, a shred of humanity. What they got was farce. "I'm absolutely sure there is somewhere in there an apology," he muttered. A while later, he was able

We've been on a mission over the last few months at Politics.co.uk, trying to find out who are parliament's most liberated MPs. Not liberated like that, you disgusting pervert. No, we mean liberated in the sense of breaking free of the shackles of the party political system. Because of the changing nature of the way we 'do' politics in Britain, the identikit on-message politicians of the New Labour era have become firmly old hat these days. A new breed of independent-minded MPs are emerging to challenge the status quo. With the help of our jury of academics, journalists, campaigners and lobbyists, we've been busy working out which of our MPs are best at breaking the mould of British politics.

Without further ado, then, let's jump straight to our winner: the member of parliament who came top of the voting. You've probably come across Douglas Carswell before. He's the man who broke centuries of tradition and called (successfully, of course) for the Speaker to resign. He's embraced

Conservatives

It is hard to envisage a more disastrous situation for David Cameron. As David Davis said yesterday: "I think if we came third it would be a crisis. I think that's the case, and if it's a close second with Ukip on our tail it will also be uncomfortable." Cameron's fundamental lack of authority with his backbenchers is only partly a policy matter. It is primarily a result of the feeling that he is simply not a winner. He failed to win a Tory majority after four years of preparation against a deeply-unpopular Labour government. Now he has failed to win one of the party's top ten target seats.

Without the ability to take 20 seats off the Lib Dems the Tories' hopes for a majority in 2015 seem optimistic to say the least. Worse – the result comes after the Tories lost their chance at winning extra seats via the constituency boundary review. Without a credible plan to win the election, backbenchers will be even more rebellious. Paradoxically, this makes it even less likely they

The one thing everyone wants to talk about in Eastleigh is Ukip. Ukip wants to tell everyone it can win. The Tories want to tell everyone that voting Ukip lets in the pro-immigration Lib Dems. The Lib Dems want to encourage a split in the Tory vote. And Labour wants to use the wildcard fourth party, with its accompanying protest vote, as an excuse for its poor performance.

It's mostly hype. Ukip are very unlikely to win. Bookmakers' average odds give them an 11.1% chance. They are also unlikely to come second. All three final local polls put them in third place, 12 points behind the leading party.

But a strong performance from the eurosceptic party is entirely conceivable, especially if the chatter on Eastleigh High Street is anything to go by. William Hill have cut the odds on a Ukip victory from 100/1 to 5/1 over the course of the campaign. "There has been substantial support for all three of the front runners, with Ukip coming through strongly as the finishing post looms up,"

When it comes to his despatch box performances, Ed Miliband is barely living up to his job title as leader of the opposition.

Here's a brief list of ways in which the Labour leader fell short this week.

Overshadowed by the prime minister

This was another of those 'open goal' weeks when the government's position was so weak it should have been child's play to polish the prime minister off. Miliband's moaning about Britain's downgraded credit rating was too scripted to have much bite, and he had no rebuttal to the prime minister's accusations about Labour's borrowing plans. It is not enough in a PMQs scenario to resort to that 'I'm supposed to be the one answering the questions' catch-all. Miliband's spinners emphasise the importance of the overall tone, and not the specific words or phrases used. But there needs to be some attempt to engage with the prime minister for Miliband not to look completely cowardly.

Miliband allowed Cameron to be pressuring him from the word go, over Labour

Terrible things are happening to the good people of Eastleigh. The entirety of the Westminster village has decamped here. Local shoppers have to navigate a treacherous maze of excitable young party activists, stuffing campaign bumf into their hands and forcing their children to carry balloons with party logos. Throw something heavy and you've a good chance of hospitalising a Cabinet secretary.

It makes for a messy, baffling scene, like Glastonbury for hideous politics people. Spotty teenagers hand out leaflets for the Tories inbetween cigarettes, then mock an eccentric Ukip man with a loudhailer who walks around the town centre with his dog. Everyone seems to be having a grand old time, except for the people of Eastleigh, who look irritable and bored and desperate for the whole thing to stop.

The town itself is so characterless it is almost notable. It is entirely without qualities. Most places have at least one spot which make them look passable, but Eastleigh is universally dull. It

What's going on?

Allegations of sexual harassment by Lord Rennard have come to light and there are concerns they were brushed under the carpet by the Liberal Democrat leadership. Nick Clegg is front and centre of the row after he released a confusing statement about what he knew and when.

Who is Lord Rennard?

He's not exactly a household name, but inside the Westminster bubble Chris Rennard is celebrated as the backroom strategist responsible for the success of many of the Lib Dems' local campaigns. He enjoyed extraordinary respect and influence in the party's Cowley Street headquarters as the mastermind behind campaigns which entrenched the party in local areas.

He was director of campaigns and elections between 1989 and 2002 and then chief executive from 2003 to 2009, when he stepped down - ostensibly for health reasons. At the start of his employment the party were a half-remembered appendix to UK politics. By the time he left, they were a professional operation poised to enter

By Professor David Hardiman

On February 20th 2013, on his visit to Amritsar in the Indian state of Punjab, David Cameron expressed his personal regret at one of the most notorious acts carried out by British imperial troops – the Amritsar massacre of 1919.

Cameron quoted Winston Churchill, who in 1920 had described it as a "deeply shameful event".  The prime minister did not, however, offer a formal apology from the British government.

He stated: "I don't think the right thing is to reach back into history and to seek out things you can apologise for. I think the right thing is to acknowledge what happened, to recall what happened, to show respect and understanding for what happened."

Cameron held that we must try to put the massacre in perspective, and see it as an aberration in what was otherwise a generally positive history.

He said: "I think there is an enormous amount to be proud of in what the British empire did and was responsible for. But of course there were bad events as well