It's all an act

Tweet I doubt that there’s anyone who really believes Cameron’s line about not wanting to take part in leaders’ debates because the Green Party has been excluded, even himself.  He’s simply calculated the potential risks and benefits and decided that the downsides of participation are greater than the upsides.  The line about the Green Party isn’t entirely the fig-leaf as which it’s been painted though.  Part of his calculation will have been that having Farage present as a perceived alternative to the Tories might at least partly be countered by having Natalie Bennett there as a perceived alternative to Labour.

The others are just as calculating.  Farage probably calculates that the status accorded to him and his party as a serious player, coupled with his ability to play the outsider, can only be a plus.  Miliband should be very wary of going head to head with Cameron if he has any sense at all, but is milking Cameron’s refusal to take part for all it’s worth.  I can certainly see why he’d calculate that going ahead with the debates without Cameron might help him.  As for Clegg – well who knows what goes on in the mind of a Liberal Democrat?  Probably that nothing he can do can make things much worse, so any chance at all of redeeming his party's position is better than nothing.

The way that they and their advisors are calculating the risks and rewards of these debates isn’t the only similarity between them of course.  When it comes to policy there isn’t that much to choose between them either.  And four middle-aged male millionaires from the South East of England, saying and believing much the same, aren’t exactly a representative or exciting prospect.

I’ve never been a fan of the idea of leaders’ debates anyway.  Partly that’s because of the exclusion of any serious alternative viewpoint, and partly it’s because the election is about electing a parliament not a president.  (Although I wouldn’t have a major objection to separating the election of the executive from the election of the legislature, as it happens – indeed, I can see a number of advantages to doing that.  But while we're still electing a parliament rather than an executive, treating the votes of all the citizens of the UK as votes for one or other of the ‘leaders’ is to treat local MPs as nothing more than lobby fodder.  That may well be what they are much of the time, but that’s another problem which needs to be addressed not reinforced.)

However, neither of those objections are really what concerns me.  My biggest objection of all is that they’re not even proper debates.  They’re staged to suit the broadcasters’ wish for good television. 

The participants have all been coached and rehearsed and we’re encouraged to distinguish between them on the basis of their performance.  It’s all an act where the ‘winner’ is the one who has the best coaches and the best memory.  Remembering to look sincere in the right places, to display the right degree of outrage at others, to deliver the scripted sound bites and even the scripted jokes – all of these are more important than the substance of policy.

Would it be any different if Nicola Sturgeon, Leanne Wood, or Natalie Bennett (or even all three) were included?  It would certainly look different, but how certain could we really be that they too wouldn’t have been coached and rehearsed to perform well?  And how well would the format really suit the presentation of a serious alternative viewpoint?

I’m not at all confident on either score, much as I’d like to believe otherwise.  Unintentionally, perhaps Cameron is doing us all a favour by finding an excuse to block the debates.  For sure, the broadcasters will complain about the impact on democracy, but in reality it’s no such thing.  And believing that the broadcasters are interested in democracy rather than ratings would be as silly as believing that Cameron really cares about excluding the Green Party.

Basis of Selection

Tweet The idea of holding debates between the leaders of the parties at election times has been mooted for many years; I can't say that I'm surprised that it's finally going to happen. That doesn't mean that I'm exactly happy about it either.

It works well in the US because the people are actually electing a president when they vote; in the UK, we are not. We are electing a legislature from which a government is subsequently chosen, and the number of people who can actually vote directly for any of the leaders is very limited.

I'm quite open to the idea of holding separate elections for the government and the legislature. There are a whole series of details which would need to be resolved (not the least of which is that it would make changing a prime minister without a new election rather more difficult), but the idea has a number of advantages. However, simply grafting on a presidential style debate to a legislature based election brings a series of problems of its own.

Clearly, the choice of UK prime minister at the next election boils down to only two people, and if we were able to vote directly for a prime minister, I could see that benefit of having a debate between those two. But what is Clegg doing there? He has, to be blunt, no more chance of being the next UK Prime Minister than does Elfyn Llwyd, Plaid's parliamentary leader. I know it, the broadcasters know it - and even Clegg knows it.

It might be argued that the Lib Dems are fighting enough seats to be able, theoretically, to form a government if they won enough. But what if the Greens, or the BNP or UKIP then field enough candidates - do they get to be included?

It might also be argued that, in the event of a hung parliament, the third party would have a degree of influence beyond their numbers, so that people should know where they stand. But there's no reason to assume that the Lib Dems will be the third largest group. It's perfectly plausible that a 20-strong Plaid/SNP group would have just as much influence; everything depends on the final numbers of MPs.

In short, I can see no rational justification to include Clegg which could not also be used to justify the inclusion of a number of other possible leaders. And conversely, the basis on which others have been excluded could also be used to exclude Clegg.

The whole thing is a stitch-up by the broadcasters and the establishment parties. Nothing new there, then.

Whose heads?

Tweet There's been some debate recently as to whether the UK should ape the US approach of having head to head debates between the party leaders in the run-up to the general election. The reaction from the party leaders has been pretty predictable – oppositions always support the idea; the incumbents always reject it.

I'm far from convinced about the idea myself. It's not simply the fact that my own party is likely to be excluded, although I cannot deny that that is a factor – and a special 'Welsh' debate is hardly the same thing. Even leaving that issue aside, I still have major doubts.

In the first place, I think that the US debates are somewhat over-rated. The early ones, Nixon-Kennedy, say, were quite dramatic, and people remember that. But in recent years, those taking part have been coached, scripted, and rehearsed to such an extent that the debates have become pretty meaningless in reality. It's more a comparison of acting skills than of fitness for office.

Secondly, there is a real question over who should take part. In the US, they are electing a president – the head of government. The US is very much a two-party system – in the legislature as well as in the presidential contest - so it is easy to reduce the field to two contenders. A UK general election, on the other hand, is about electing the whole legislature, not just the Prime Minister, and there is an increasing plurality of parties.

It might be fairly easy to predict that the next prime minister will be one of two people – but it's a lot less easy to be certain about the make-up of the House of Commons. There's an argument that only the two obvious contenders should take part, but the very act of doing that would be to polarise attention on just two of the parties contesting the election, and to marginalise others – and that gives an unfair advantage to those two parties.

In theory, the leader of any party contesting more than half the seats in the House of Commons could end up as PM, however unlikely that might seem. Should broadcasters be allowed to 'second-guess' the result and exclude them – and if so, on what basis? And it isn't just the Lib Dems who are likely to be in that position.

If the election of a government was a separate matter from the election of the legislature, I might come to a different view; but as long as the government is drawn from the legislature, the introduction of such 'debates' would serve to change the nature of politics in a way which favours two parties in particular. And I really don't like the way in which one broadcaster is trying to force the issue.