2015 Election and the Leaders Debates

Good! David cameron is a git espeical when he moaned abotu this in 2010......

Let's just back track a little, where in the constitution does it state that TV debates are now part
of the election process ? The broadcasters love setting up targets for confrontation,
and there's loads of it now, The Apprentice, Big Brother, IACGMOOH, etc . Question Time
is essentially nothing more than a knock-about cheap point scoring session.
There's no proper detailed debate, what actual value and enlightenment did the 2010 debates reveal ?

If Cameron doesn't want to engage in a debate, then so what, ditch the idea, and move on.
The broadcasters are deluding themselves that there's a huge public appetite for these
debates. Yes, they had big audiences in 2010, but only because of their novelty value, and
because the broadcasters hype their audiences up into a frenzy of expectation.

You still learn far more, and therefore the democratic process genuinely benefits from a proper, calm, forensic one to one interview by Humphrys, Snow, Mair, or Marr

The issue is though Cameron has been derailing these from the start and this week had the bare faced cheek to accuse the broadcasters of beg behind the farce. Ironically it is the debate about the debates which have shown the nation the real David Cameron.

It doesn't matter how much the broadcasters "hype" things up, the audience will not watch it if they're not interested. Regardless of any "hype", the debates in 2010 were still a ninety minute political debate right in the middle of primetime and today's audience, with a million and one other things to watch, are not going to stick with a programme like that if they're not interested in it. There would have been an argument if the first one got ten million viewers and the other two got nothing at all because the novelty would have worn off, or indeed if the first one started with ten million viewers and ended with none when peope realised they weren't going to start punching each other, but the ratings were incredibly consistent, meaning viewers were clearly engaged in the concept and genuinely wanted to see them.

Regardless of how flawed the format is, it's surely better to have nine million people watching a political programme and at least getting some idea of the arguments and the ideas, than it is to have half a million people watching The Daily Politics and the other eight and a half million people watching no politics at all. The argument against is ridiculously high-handed. Everyone should vote, so everyone should at least be able to see the arguments in a format they want.

We have all this stuff about how Blair turned down the debates when he was leader but there is a precedent now. For many years we didn't have TV coverage of Parliament and many MPs argued we didn't need it, some of whom will still be in the House now and it may well be an opinion shared among others. But nobody's going to argue against it now. We never used to have debates but the parties never had YouTube or Twitter accounts in the past, and they're not going to get rid of them. Campaigning and coverage changes over the years based on what the electorate says they want to see. And the electorate are the important people.

The problem is that forensic political interviews tend to attract viewers who are reasonably well-informed anyway, rather than the masses who rarely watch Marr but may tune in to an "exciting" prime time debate.

Indeed. Even in the U.S., presidential debates did not become commonplace until 1976. (The 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate was a one-off.) Today, it would be difficult to imagine elections without televised debates either in the U.S. or most most European countries. Whatever their disadvantages, debates tend to work because they attract many low-information voters who may otherwise not seek out political information on their own (or may only get it from one-sided sourced).

Yes, and at the end of the day, these are still political programmes and, up until the debates, political programmes generally rated incredibly badly. There may be some cynicism in the broadcasters in wanting them to happen because of their high ratings, but we should be pleased any political programme is getting high ratings.

Yes, I take your point, but the broadcasters are getting dangerously close to salacious overtones and self promotion.

The Farage:Clegg debates, seemed to be bourne out of LBC trying to promote themselves
to a national audience. I lost count of the number of times the moderator said 'LBC'.
The Sky 2010 GE debate had a FA Cup Final style build up.
The post mortem programmes primarily feature media folk talking to other media folk,
it's all rather self serving and incestuous

On the subject of US and European debates, well OK, but as we all seem to agree when it comes to local TV, what works there, doesn't necessarily mean it will work here.

As an aside, I don't think I've noticed any 'host broadcaster' branding on the sets of foreign debates.
Sorry, but our ones just seem to smack of the broadcasters' own self promotion agendas, and not enough genuine interest in the democratic process.

From 2007 - 2010, HE DID, and he sucked so tough cheess, And to be fair Lib dems never come out of it really well since it lost seats..

Look whats turned up on Digital spy:

Broadcasters must give adequate opportunity for candidates and political parties to be represented. The broadcasting code from Ofcom is as follows:

Rule 6.9 states: “If a candidate takes part in an item about his/her particular constituency, or electoral area, then candidates of each of the major parties must be offered the opportunity to take part. (However, if they refuse or are unable to participate, the item may nevertheless go ahead)”.

Rule 6.10 states: “In addition to Rule 6.9, broadcasters must offer the opportunity to take part in constituency or electoral area reports and discussions, to all candidates within the constituency or electoral area representing parties with previous significant electoral support or where there is evidence of significant current support. This also applies to independent candidates. (However, if a candidate refuses or is unable to participate, the item may nevertheless go ahead)”.

Cameron's strategists have made a complete mess of this - not only will this prove unpopular because most people want the debates but also it completely debases their campaign which revolves around portraying Miliband as the weak and ineffective leader. I'm never one to speak out on behalf of post-94 Labour but this does give Miliband the high ground in most respects (also Miliband's actually quite good at debating - in PMQs he beats Cameron just as often as vice versa).

With the wider issue of the debates I don't think the head to head should be last as it seems to be a tad unfair - yes the next PM will definitely be either Cameron or Miliband (bar any leadership changes) but I think that you have to end with a full range of opinions left in the viewers mind.

Also I think that the broadcasters are perfectly legally allowed to empty chair any leader who doesn't wish to participate and I think should do so - if the broadcasters stand their ground long enough, which would make a change for the BBC, we could actually get somewhere for once.

On the subject of the DUP - IMO if you include Plaid you have to include the two major NI parties (SDLP, UUP, Alliance all have ties to the Westminster 3 so Sinn Fein and DUP are the only real independent parties). While a 9 way debate wouldn't be optimal the minute that Plaid were included made it ridiculous. Including the SNP was logical - they control one of the devolved governments and have shown a significant rise in polling support and are likely to gain many Scottish seats, yet Plaid have in fact gone down in the polls, have almost half the support in the Senned than they did in 1999 and are more likely to lose seats than gain seats.

The problem with including Plaid was that it would always lead to other problems. If this does go to court I expect the DUP will win because quite frankly their is no logical or fair reason to exclude them (if had to put money on it I'd say the BBC have made an order for a few more podiums than 8 (7+Dimbleby)). Galloway can logically be excluded (while his party may have the same number of MPs as the Greens they have practically no other representation or polling support, unlike the Greens) however if we have to include Welsh Nationalists then why not Cornish Nationalists or Yorkshire Regionalists. Why Plaid were included I don't know - plus they sit as the same party as the SNP in the commons anyway so why do we need two representatives from practically the same party?

I very strongly disagree, with the DUP being included. None of the 7 parties on that stage, represents NI not will there. NI should have its own debates with its own parties. This may be unfair but what is the point of the DUP debate with parties it have no connection to NI?