General Election 2015: You’re welcome to join us on the campaign's final straight

Thank you for sticking with us. Not only this week, for turning past the unusually lengthy run of advertisements before the news begins, but for the past two years that I’ve been editor. Your enthusiasm for and engagement with the title has made this the best job in the world. That, and having a brilliant team who work tirelessly to create a lively, thoughtful and balanced newspaper.

And speaking of balance, this election has proved quite challenging on that front. We are, after all, famously independent and, as such, we strive to report on and judge the issues of each party on its merits.

We hoped to bring you interviews with all the major party leaders. Knowing how stage-managed politics can be, we sought to ensure, particularly, that David Cameron faced some of the questions we thought our readers would want asked. Don’t say we didn’t try, as his office could no doubt tell you, but in the end we had to settle for a written article by him (page 50). And, because we do try to be independent and balanced, there’s a Comment piece by Ed Miliband on the same page and a Nick Clegg interview (page 8).

Our political team will have a rest today and tomorrow before re-entering the fray to bring you the post-ballot day news, negotiations and analysis next week. Today’s leading article gives you more information on our approach to this deeply important turning point in the way we are governed.

Meanwhile, we saw a “breaking news” story which for a while skewed the agenda in a very different direction. I refer, of course, to the birth of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s daughter.

Other papers will have scrambled to publish special supplements and pushed all other news to page 11 or beyond; we choose to note it and just say congratulations to them on a healthy birth. But it’s not uppermost in our minds – nor, I suspect, yours.

As ever, please tell me what you think about this and our decision to feature Messrs Cameron, Clegg and Miliband.

Twitter: @lisamarkwell