Billed as a teaser for the historic TV pre-election debates between the party leaders, the three men who want to run the economy went head-to-head in a bid to win the trust of voters, writes London Reporter Sunita Patel.

And not surprisingly, it was the one who is the most unlikely to be granted custody of the public purse who arguably emerged the marginal victor.

It was not the liveliest of studio debates, with all three starting nervously, each explaining how they would bring financial stability to the UK.

On the whole it was a good-natured debate on issues such as VAT, public sector pensions and jobs, frontline NHS services, social care reform, tax hikes and bankers’ bonuses.

However, the sharpest exchanges were about tackling the record deficit.

It provided shadow chancellor George Osborne with the platform to trumpet his pledge to cut back Labour’s National Insurance rise to “cut waste” and stop Labour’s “tax on jobs”.

But it also gave his opponents the chance to gang up on him and set him up for stinging criticism, arguing it was not credibly costed.

Chancellor Alistair Darling insisted the economy was safest in his hands because he had made the “right judgement calls” to bring the nation out of recession and into recovery – albeit a fragile one. He warned against Tory proposals to cut public spending immediately.

To do so, “prematurely”, would risk tipping the country back into recession. He accused his Tory counterpart of “bad judgement” for pledging to scrap the income-raising planned National Insurance hike, while talking about reducing the deficit.

Mr Darling described the pledge as a “spending spree you cannot afford to finance”, while Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable accused the Tories of using “fictional savings” to fund the tax cuts.

Mr Osborne’s discomfort was evident after Mr Cable, who pitched himself as the wiser and more experienced candidate who saw the financial mess coming from a way off, suggested the Tory’s top tax priority was to cut inheritance tax for millionaires.

A frowning Mr Osborne protested that was not the case, arguing the centrepiece of the Tory campaign was his tax reversal – a move which he said had the backing of “every single business leader in the country”.

He insisted the nation’s finances were best-placed in his grasp, because he had the “energy, ideas and vision” to “get Britain working again”.

If there was a clapometer on stage, Mr Cable would have won the debate hands down. He was the only one who managed to raise a few laughs and applause from the floor – including a ringing endorsement for a swipe at the Tories – and the billionaire bankrolling them – who, he warned, just wanted to “get their noses in the trough and reward their rich backers”

But it was Mr Osborne who landed the last punch, by matter-of-factly telling Mr Cable that the choice facing the electorate at the next General Election was between two parties – and it did not include the Lib Dems. The only new policy announcement came from Mr Darling, who confirmed that the Government had ruled out levying what critics have branded a “death tax” to fund social care for the elderly.

Whether he spilled the beans deliberately, or unwittingly, was uncertain.

There were no knock-out blows as such, with all three emerging unscathed from the Channel 4 studios without any big errors or slip-ups. And from that view the objective was attained.