Anne Longfield

Chief Executive of 4Children

That childcare is now high on the government's agenda, at a time when many areas are of growing financial concern, is an achievement by campaigning parents and charities that should not be minimised. The government's proposal for tax-free childcare support, unveiled earlier this week, demonstrates that the prime minister and the deputy prime minister have heard the warnings that childcare costs were spiralling alarmingly.

Ben Hughes

Ben is CEO of the Community Development Finance Association

Nick Clegg has spoken this week of the need to extend the Funding for Lending scheme and "put it on steroids". George Osborne, Vince Cable and the Bank of England are also desperate to get the scheme working for small businesses.

Jason Holmes

London-based writer

Gibraltar is a play concerned with the military operation conducted on 6 March 1988 on Gibraltar

Justin Cash

Freelance journalist published by Total Politics, CityAM, the Reading Chronicle and others

The flip-flop, the backtrack, the reversal, the U-turn; all terms that have entered public discourse to describe an intriguing catch-22: Reneging on policy commitments too often is seen as a surefire sign of a weak political will, yet slavery to principle whatever the weather is the defining characteristic of a political bigot in the eyes of the electorate.

Jawad Yaqub

Enterprise Architect with 20 years in the industry who currently runs and owns Razormind worldwide

Nigel Farage was quipping that the Tories split the UKIP vote in Eastleigh - ouch. With the recent decline of the BNP and soon to be expired incarceration of the EDL leader Stephen Lennon - their masses of frustrated followers have found their mouthpiece in Farrage.

Mehdi Hasan

Political director of The Huffington Post UK

To remove Ed Balls from the post of shadow chancellor would deprive the opposition of its most accomplished macroeconomist - and its fiercest attack dog. It would also be an act of supreme cowardice, not strength, on the part of Ed Miliband. Like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown before him, the Labour leader would be dancing to the tunes of the right-wing media echo chamber - the Dacres, the Desmonds, the Murdochs.

Mikey Smith

Reporter, blogger, minor geek

Nick's line was a rather desperate piece of nonsense which relied on an understandable lack of knowledge of how local government finance works on the part of the public and a lack of will or ability to investigate on the part of the press to make the council's cuts seem mean and unnecessary.

Carla Buzasi

Carla Buzasi is editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post UK

Adele might have been flying the flag for the Brits over in Hollywood, thanks to an Oscar win for her omnipresent Skyfall theme song, but there wasn't a huge amount to celebrate back at home. With last week's triple A-credit downgrade still casting its murky shadow over the coalition government, it was a case of divide and fail to conquer as the Conservatives and Lib Dems went head-to-head in the Eastleigh by-election. Well, head-to-head was the idea. Ukip rather got in the way of that, with their representative, Diane James, relegating Conservative candidate Maria Hutchings into a rather undignified third place.

William Davie

Second-year journalism student at the University of Gloucestershire

It's time for Labour to ditch the blue and take up its old red colours once again.

Sean Axtell

An unsystematic worker working in a systematic workplace

It is the people of Eastleigh, the constituency's voters who were the most important thing in the by-election. Not the by-election candidates.

Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage MEP - Leader of UKIP

The result entirely changes the public perception of Ukip. You have to be bold and you have to be brave to fight from the sidelines and come out swinging. The media, hugely loyal to their party of choice, will seek to destroy you. All the other parties will not hesitate to club together to attack. The underdog became a threat to them all.

Iain Anderson

Director, Cicero

Small political earthquake in Hampshire - that's that tone of much of the commentary about the Eastleigh by election on Friday. And it's fair comment too. So what are the key lessons from the poll? I believe there are four.

Robin Lustig

Journalist and broadcaster

What significant numbers of voters in Italeigh have in common is a profound sense that conventional politicians have let them down. They lie, they cheat, they make promises that they have no intention of keeping - and, most seriously, they preside over a collapse in living standards that throws thousands of people out of work and creates real, palpable misery.

Eve Betts

Journalism student, blogger and writer for Forge Press, Liberty Belle Magazine and CarpaMusica

If I'm honest, I'm really pleased I have so much practical stuff to do for my degree. It makes me feel as though I'm actually working towards something real rather than sitting in my bedroom staring blankly at a text-book. This attitude can't be said of everyone at university.

William Bain

Shadow Minister for Scotland, Labour MP for Glasgow North East

A decade has passed since the eruption of brutal violence and conflict in Darfur. In these 10 years, 300,000 people died and three million people were displaced from their homes, fleeing horrifying atrocities.

Dr Simon Duffy

Director of The Centre for Welfare Reform

Workfare is not only bad economics it is morally wrong. Workfare is a modern form of slavery. This may seem an extreme statement, for we tend to associate slavery with racial oppression, when black people were forced to work for white farmers. But slavery is not always racial and it is not always achieved by violence.