Let's have a heated debate

Here we go again. Televised election debates have been proposed by Britain's major broadcasters, this time suggesting a '4-3-2 strategy', where the PM would go head-to-head with Ed Miliband in one debate, both would be joined by Nick Clegg for another and all of them joined by Nigel Farage in a further debate.

This had provoked predictable fury from other party leaders, and David Cameron has urged broadcasters to look at spreading the debates over a longer period, not just during the six week run-up to polling day on May 7.

pic: Sky

Cameron says that the three leaders debates during the 2010 election campaign 'sucked the life out of the campaign'. The debates had novelty value, I guess, with the UK finally catching up with the USA which had its first presidential debates 50 years earlier. Did it suck the life out of the 2010 campaign and what did the debates achieve? 

Well, it briefly led to 'Cleggmania' but the LibDems poll rating slipped back by polling day. Voter turn out went up slightly, but it is hard to link that to the televised debates, but rather more to do with the election being much more competitive than that of either 2001 or 2005 when Labour was still the overwhelming favourite.

It is clear that politicians are going to play politics with any proposals, because that is what politicians do. Yet, it is vital for democracy that those who seek to govern us are accountable to voters. Debates are a powerful way of increasing that accountability.

Here are two proposals that I suggest could: a) could take some of the politics out the deal making around the set up of the debates and; b) widen public engagement by making the debates not the sole preserve of the traditional broadcasters.

Firstly, let us make the debates a permanent fixture of general election campaigns and let us have a neutral arbiter of the rules. In the US, since 1987, there is a standing Commission on Presidential Debates which sets the rules. We do not need to set up a new body for this, but could give the job to the Electoral Commission.

Secondly, let us have at least one of the debates on-line. The Telegraph and the Guardian have already teamed up with YouTube to make such a proposal for 2015. As a spokesman for the Digital Debate Campaign says: "We believe that one of the debates should be on the biggest video platform in the world, YouTube. More than half of people under the age of 44 get their news from the web rather than television and it's time that politicians moved into the digital age."

Let us urge our politicians to make it happen, make it permanent and make it digital.