General Election Debates

It's for his own good really, he wouldn't last 5 minutes there.

Having said that I've lasted this long, so who knows.

So will the BBC show Sky News' broadcast and vice versa?

I suspect Sky One will broadcast the event too.

Politically the only winners I see out of this are the Lib Dems, who are like the guest you don't really want there, but have to invite.

Forgetting the Wales/Scotland debate for a minute, the other issue I could see arising is in the constituents of the party leaders. Considering during the debates they are effectively little more than candidates for a constituency seat, I'd imagine rivals in their constituencies, especially outside of the main three parties, could claim they are not being given the same opportunity.

Why do most people not understand!

most people don't vote for PERSON there vote for a PARTY and the party with the most seats wins ( with a maj)

We all fully understand that

It's one of the reasons this whole idea will ultimately die on its ar$e, or at least should.

Because of the fact that you vote for a party and not a person, there is no inherent limitation on how many candidates you can include.

In the U.S. you typically have three candidates, one of whom polls very little and is thus usually ignored.

In the U.K. you have a multi-party system where upwards of 7 or 8 parties have a realistic chance of winning in some areas. Therefore you cannot have a fair system without including at least those parties on a level playing field.

The SNP would never field a UK presidential candidate because (a) it stands no chance outside Scotland, and (b) its constitution effectively procludes it from fielding. In a presidential election this is dandy, but Sky seem to have ignored the fact that it isn't a presidential campaign and therefore the reality is that a debate series won't work without significant upset.

This isn't helped when the media portray Brown as "unelected" : he is no more or less "elected" to be PM than Blair was, but it feeds into the public psyche.

Exactly. Annoys me too when the Tories bring that up even though back in 2005 they used the slogan "Vote Blair. Get Brown." as they and the voters were aware he was PM in waiting.

Back to TV and I much prefer the format we've had in the past where each leader gets their own show, rather than political point scoring off each other. Could well backfire on the Tories too as Brown and Clegg really have nothing to lose.

Well I've always been under the thought that the leader of the party (and who becomes PM) is the leader and the face of the party so therefore if they fail to get into government, they usually resign don't they?

I would have thought that Sky News and the BBC will show each others on the red button. In addition, both news channels will carry commentary and snippets of each others, but not complete coverage, and the same for the ITV one, with fewer snippets. All three debates will probably be looped on the red button on both news channels after the event.

I can't see any point in Sky One or Five simulcasting - no one will watch them. It does mean that the Sky debate will not be live in analogue only homes, but that is a very small proportion these days.

The other thing is, with the ITV debate first, and it not being available for simulcasting, I believe the simulcasting of the others will be reduced. If the first debate were available to all, I could have seen a lot more channels broadcasting it.

Quite pleased, as I seem to have got the main factors of the proposed debates correct in this post made in early September when Sky started this circus.

We'll see how things develop over the coming weeks, the debates will no doubt be covered in some detail when the leaders go head-to-head with Andrew Marr in his Sunday programmes in January.

Does anyone know who's hosting/presenting the debates? I'd imagine Adam Boulton will do the Sky one, maybe Sir Trevor for ITV, numerous possibilities for BBC

It's already been confirmed - Alastair Stewart on ITV, Adam Boulton on Sky and David Dimbleby on the BBC.

Has Trevor McDonald ever really been involved in election night coverage. Certainly didn't play any significant role in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections, and can't say I've seen clips of him involved in earlier ones - Jon Snow fronted ITN's coverage in 1992.