UK General Election

Not at all, especially as they'll likely be 6 other leaders. It would be biased not to give other leaders the platform to get their message out because one leader of a party refuses to participate.

Do you want to tell the other party leaders that? It's a debate! Not a pre-election PM roasting!

I cannot see how any of these debates can go ahead without difficulty on any of the PSB broadcasters due to Ofcom and BBC Trust regulations with regard to impartial and even handed coverage. It's an interesting situation.

Here's Ofcom's take on it:

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0020/25643/section6.pdf?lang=cym

Edit to add, I edited my original post before the poster below quoted it.

I'm unsure about TV, but in radio, you can simply state the name, party and basic policies in the case of somebody failing to show up IIRC. As I've said, that is just for radio. However, I'd imagine similar rules would apply. If a party turns down the opportunity to represent themselves, that isn't the broadcasters fault.

Surely all they would need to do is say that they were invited to take part but declined.

The likes of the BBC, ITV and Sky will have summaries of the parties and their policies on their news websites, so can point to them rather than list them all on air.

There was an item on the Manchester Gorton by-election last week on Sky News, in which they interviewed candidates for the major parties, listed them all on a graphic and pointed viewers to the website.

OFCOM's programme code section 6.9 is pertinent



The last sentence is the key one - I think until relatively recently one candidate's refusal to take part could put the kaibosh on things, now they get the empty chair treatment.

Thanks for the clarification.

It does seem strange that the broadcast media is so heavily constrained yet the newspapers can print whatever they like. Although perhaps unusually for me, I would want the newspapers to be reined in rather than broadcasters to have the same "freedoms".

Broadcasters use airwaves that are both public and limited, so they face tougher regulation. On the other hand, just about any company or organization can set up and publish a newspaper (without making use of a publicly owned resource), so there's less of a justification to regulate. Besides, broadcast signals come into my home, whereas I'm always free to purchase -- or not to purchase -- a newspaper.

Well, of course, while Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg wouldn't have stood in for Cameron in this situation because they represent different parties. The Conservatives don't have a deputy leader, and Deputy Prime Minister is an ad-hoc position awarded at the Prime Minister's discretion. There are other ways for party leaders to highlight number twos without making a formal appointment - when Cameron was Leader of the Opposition, William Hague was titled "Senior Member of the Shadow Cabinet" to make him an ostensible deputy. But it's not an automatic position that has to be filled.

In reality, the replacement for May if she declined to attend and they wanted another Conservative would be a senior cabinet minister. It's happened before anyway - in the build-up to the 1987 Election, the Beeb ran a series of programmes with the public questioning the party leaders, but while Kinnock and Steel took part, Thatcher refused to do so because they were being presented by Sue Lawley and she refused to be interviewed by her again after the Diana Gould incident in 1983, so Norman Tebbit did it, at that point Conservative Party Chairman - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/78c6c8b91afa4852a5ba7c6f4f24fe82

In fact in that programme there was a misunderstanding with Tebbit when there was a bit of dead air and then both her and Lawley started talking at the same time, and Lawley said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you'd forgotten what you were going to say". Tebbit thought she was trying to stitch him up, and then Tebbit refused to be interviewed by her again as well.

Good Morning Britain says this morning PM is considering a Q&A session on TV. One would guess that would be the same as the Question Time special with the 3 leaders.

Oh yes, I was only speaking in the sense of who would step in at PMQs - obviously Nick Clegg wouldn't attend an election debate on David Cameron's behalf!