Nine big questions about the 2015 leaders' debates

Ahead of the 2010 general election, Britain held leaders’ debates for the first time ever, a democratic innovation which shook up the election and increased participation among young and first-time voters, according to an Oxford University study. But while last time the format for the debates was (relatively) straightforward to decide, vast changes in the dynamics of British party politics since then make the basis for debates in 2015 much harder to decide, assuming they even occur at all. Discussions between broadcasters, politicians and commentators have now rumbled on for months, but proposals issued by the broadcasters are yet to attract clear consensus support, especially from David Cameron. Below I’ll explore some of the main questions the country now grapples with on debates.

1.       Should we have leaders’ debates at all?

In my view yes, and that is at least now the consensus view. A YouGov poll published a few days ago shows 70% of the public want debates. Over 20 million watched the 2010 debates. Oxford University/Reuters Institute research published in 2011 suggested that majorities of viewers claimed they were better informed about party policies and leadership qualities as a result and that most watched at least an hour. Crucially, 55% of 18-24s felt more energised about the election & 74% felt they knew more after viewing – 92% claimed they had discussed the debate with friends, compared to only 84% among older viewers. 

Once we discount any politicians determined to obstruct debates for reasons of self-interest (the most likely reason they could be scuppered this year), the only substantive critique of debates ever articulated is that they further “presidentialize” our nominally parliamentary system, but even this is a false critique. It’s hard to point to a time when government formation, leaders and personalities didn’t play a crucial role in elections, and the formalisation of this with leaders’ debates certainly doesn’t prevent voters from factoring in local candidates and priorities if they chose to (though the standardisation of debates at the local level between Prospective Parliamentary Candidates would also be good for democracy).

2.       What have the broadcasters proposed?

In October the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 & Sky outlined their “2-3-4” format; one debate between Miliband & Cameron (2 – produced by Sky News & Channel 4), one with Clegg included (3 - BBC), and one more with Farage as well (4 - ITV). This represents a clear break from the format of having three three-way debates in 2010, reflecting how party strength has shifted since then. All three debates would take place within the six-week campaign period at fortnightly intervals on April 2^nd, April 16^th and April 30^th. So far, there doesn’t appear to be much discussion over whether the inclusion criteria would change for Channel 4’s 2010 ‘Ask the Chancellors’ debate this time around, assuming it happens (though the Lib Dems have confirmed that Danny Alexander, not Vince Cable, would be their spokesman this time around if one goes ahead and includes them). Broadcast regulator OfCom has ruled that Natalie Bennett’s Green Party of England & Wales – not included in the broadcasters’ plans at current – are not a major party.

Update, 23/01: the broadcasters now plan a "7-7-2" format, with the Greens, SNP and Plaid Cymru in the first two debates. Reaction to this now added at the conclusion of this blog

3.       Isn’t it worrying that unelected regulators and broadcasters have that kind of influence over our democracy?

In a sense, but it’s hard to think of a better way to do it. There are 422 registered political parties in the UK, and while no criteria for which handful of them get coverage can ever be entirely logical or fair, it’s clearly in the public interest that thresholds exist. Elected politicians will let their own partisan interest dictate the terms of any debates (see below), so that’s out as a way of deciding what the terms are. And while these questions are perhaps a good candidate for direct democracy in the British mould, where we mostly get referenda on process matters affecting the structure of our democracy, it’d be hard to imagine a sufficiently linear referendum we could agree on and organise this side of the 2015 election. Additionally, OfCom already effectively decides how many Party Election Broadcasts parties get – the Greens’ protestations aside, it’s already our standard practice.

4.       What do the Conservatives and Labour want?

Perhaps the only certainty in debate formats is that it is in the public interest that the two parties that can plausibly make up all/most of the government and provide the prime minister should be included – 84% of the public agree with this.

For Labour, ensuring debates go ahead is a priority – Ed Miliband’s aptitude for the role of Prime Minister has been a subject of discussion for much of the past five years, and challengers to incumbent PMs traditionally benefit from the equal standing debates give them (at least part of the reason why Cameron leads Ed on ‘who can you imagine as PM?’ questions is because Cameron already is – debates lessen this advantage). While Ed sometimes struggles with big set-piece speeches or encounters with an often-unfriendly press, he is capable of getting the better of Cameron in PMQs exchanges, and his style is often better suited to small-scale ‘retail politics’ environments where he can talk to voters directly. A televised debate featuring questions from swing voters gives Ed his last best chance to lay out the case for both himself and a One Nation Labour government.

Additionally, it’s been observed that the Tories and the right-wing press have done a poor job of setting realistic expectations for themselves. In the US, it’s a common tactic for party spokesmen to play down their own candidate’s debate chances in order to adjust the perceptive bar they have to clear. Instead, constant discussion of Cameron’s supposed leadership heft and relentless attacks on a “weird”, gaffe-prone caricature of “Red” Ed have likely made the latter’s job easier (to paraphrase Saturday Night Live’s take on the 2008 American VP debate – “we would like to remind our audience that due to the historically low expectations for Mr Miliband, were he simply to do an adequate job tonight and at no point eat a bacon sarnie or donate to a homeless person, you should consider the debate a tie”).

For all of these reasons, and one more obvious one – the proposed inclusion of Nigel Farage – David Cameron is currently avoiding debates, or at least holding out for more favourable terms. Tory strategists also concluded after 2010 that agreeing to the debates was a mistake – though the challenger to Gordon Brown, Cameron did not truly need to persuade the public in quite the same way Ed Miliband needs to do now, since the Conservatives already had a wide lead. Instead, the 2010 debates simply gave Nick Clegg the chance to steal Cameron’s thunder and temporarily seize the mantle of “change”. Now the incumbent, Cameron has even less reason to want debates, and has calculated (probably correctly) that the damage his opponents can inflict on him by accusing him of being “frit” about debates is far less than what they could do in a debate itself. The terms Cameron has proposed for any debate include the inclusion of Natalie Bennett for the Greens – essentially to counterbalance the votes Farage will draw from Cameron’s right – and perhaps also the elimination of Clegg from the 2010-style three-man debate on the BBC (more on those three next).

5.       How should the Lib Dems be represented?

They’re somewhat unhappy they’ve been cut down from three debates in 2010 to just two, but this is probably a fair reflection of a key shift since 2010. There was perhaps an argument even then that the inclusion of a Lab/Con-only “Prime Ministerial” debate was in the public interest, but it was outweighed by the likelihood of a hung parliament and the Lib Dems’ unquestionable status as Britain’s third party. This was clear then by virtually every metric (MPs, previous vote share, current polls, councils/councillors, membership etc), but now, their decline and the rise of UKIP, the SNP and the Greens mean each of these indicators can tell us a different story about party strength - Britain no longer has a definitive third party. Based on past performance (a less fickle indicator than current opinion polls) and the likelihood that the Lib Dems will still have a good 20-30 MPs after the election, it’s probably still fair that Clegg gets to have both the “4” and “3” debates, rather than being written-off at Farage/Bennett-level as in Cameron’s recent proposal. 78% of YouGov respondents still agree he should be in at least one debate, in any case.

6.       And UKIP?

A consensus has formed in favour of Farage’s inclusion in one debate, which again seems objectively about right. UKIP now have two elected MPs, they won the Europeans in May 2014 (the first national election not won by Labour or the Conservatives for a century), are currently a clear third-place in the polls and have come second in a string of Westminster by-elections. They were fourth on popular vote in 2010 (919,546 votes, 3% of the total) and are also fourth for membership (behind the SNP). However, they only have 368 councillors (for comparison, the Lib Dems still have over 2,000), they are unlikely to turn their newfound support into many more Westminster seats and their leader is neither a current MP nor a dead-cert to be one after the election (Farage currently trails in his chosen seat of South Thanet).

Nevertheless - 71% want Farage in the debates and Clegg already ceded Farage’s status when he embarked upon the ill-advised EU debates with him in 2014. Ed Miliband has indicated he’s also relatively easy about the prospect (though as various elections in 2014 showed, UKIP does pose somewhat of a threat to Labour in both the north and key marginals). Farage is still a larger threat to the Tories, though, hence Cameron’s greater reluctance about a debate with Farage and insistence that at the very least, the Greens be included to balance things.

7.       And what about the Greens?

I was initially reluctant to see the Greens included, and while I readily admit that was partly my bias as a Labour partisan talking, the case for the Greens is also objectively somewhat weaker than for UKIP. They are fifth in the polls and in membership, are even less likely than UKIP to gain much in the way of new Westminster seats, and Natalie Bennett is far more of a long-shot for her chosen seat (Holborn & St Pancras) than Farage is for this. Further, the party Bennett leads is the Green Party of England & Wales – there is no ‘UK Green Party’ - whereas Miliband, Cameron, Clegg and Farage all lead UK/GB-wide parties, raising questions about her inclusion in a UK general election debate. However, it’s perhaps fair to point out that the distinct Scottish & NI Green parties do appear to align themselves with their counterpart and that several of the UK major parties already only retain token presences in Northern Ireland. Moreover, the Greens also elected an MP four years before UKIP did, unlike UKIP they already run an English local authority (very badly, I’d add, but still) and they are now rivalling the Lib Dems in opinion polls and membership.

Update (19/01/15): in the past few days, it has been reported that following a surge, the combined England/Wales & Scottish Green memberships now outnumber UKIP's national membership figure - if correct, this makes the Greens 4th in membership, behind Lab, Con & SNP

Even putting my Labour hat back on for a second, there are still valid strategic reasons for Ed Miliband to clearly back Bennett’s inclusion (I say “clearly” because Labour’s anti-Green strategist Sadiq Khan has already said he would be okay with it anyway). First, Ed needs a debate more than Cameron does for the reasons I previously outlined – this gives Ed incentive to call Cameron’s bluff on this. Second, while a debate with Bennett will give the Greens a temporary bounce at Labour’s expense, Labourites will just have to hold our nerve and remember that as Cleggmania did in 2010, the phenomenon will largely dissipate closer to Polling Day when the gravity of the Labour-Tory choice sets in (Green-considerers are also likely to be fair-weather friends to a Labour government anyway, once Prime Minister Miliband embarks on his promise to clear the deficit). Third, as Mark Ferguson pointed out in Labourlist, Bennett being present will bring some balance to the ideological tone of the debate, making it less of a ‘Farage show’ dominated by UKIP-friendly issues like immigration, Europe and benefits. And I’d also argue that if Ed conducts himself well, a hard-left presence on the stage in the form of Bennett could help blunt Cameron’s “Red Ed” attacks, by putting One Nation Labour’s measured, centre-grounded platform in clearer context. Sadiq Khan is right – Bennett should be in one of the debates, along with Farage.

8.       What about the nations - the Nationalists, Northern Ireland etc?

In 2010, the answer to this one was simple – no, because they were weak at Westminster level, the policies of explicitly sub-national parties were less relevant in a UK general election and they would overcrowd a national debate. Instead, separate debates were organised in Wales (including Plaid Cymru), Scotland (including the SNP) and Northern Ireland (DUP, SF, UUP & the SDLP – though in the election the UUP were left without seats, while the Alliance Party gained one). Five years later, this basically still seems like a fair compromise for Wales and Northern Ireland, although there are now two complications.

The obvious one is that the SNP are likely to break through to become a clear second or even an outright first in Scotland’s delegation of 59 Westminster MPs (currently they only have 6, to the Lib Dems’ 12 and Labour’s 40). This would put the SNP’s seats in the dozens, positioning them to rival or supplant the Lib Dems as Westminster’s king-making third party in the event of a hung parliament – this means that though “rUK” voters still won’t have the opportunity to vote on the SNP, they now stand to be substantially impacted by its policies anyway. Perhaps in recognition of this, YouGov found that 51%-53% of English and Welsh voters now think SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon should be in the debate. But if the SNP are included, excluding Plaid Cymru and some of the NI parties becomes tougher to justify logically. On balance, I nevertheless still think the 2010 format is best, and Sturgeon not being a Westminster aspirant like Farage and Bennett also irks me in terms of symmetry, but it’s more blurry than five years ago.

9.       The English Question

The other, connected issue people will likely neglect is England. Since the independence referendum, English politicians have been promising greater devolution for England and more recognition of a unique English identity within the union. For example, Ed Miliband’s former PPS John Denham called for UK Labour to create a formal ‘English Labour’ organisation, in equal stead to the party’s existing Scottish and Welsh sub-branches. If Welsh, Scottish and NI debates are scheduled alongside the main UK debates and English politicians want to show they intend to make good on their rhetoric, a good start would be to organise at least one designated English-issues debate as well (including UKIP and the E&W Greens). 

In order to avoid the English-only debate getting vastly disproportionate coverage or becoming a de facto UK debate, I’d suggest it would be necessary for most of the major parties to not send their UK leaders, even though all of them are standing in English seats. Labour could choose a high-ranking shadow cabinet member or someone like Jon Cruddas as England spokesman, or perhaps a local government leader like Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson or Oldham council leader Jim McMahon if we wish to truly push English devolution. Eric Pickles or Sajid Javid might be a logical choice for the Tories, the Lib Dems could send someone like Tim Farron, Douglas Carswell or Paul Nuttall for UKIP, and so on. In the case of the Greens, however, this is also a plausible compromise about Natalie Bennett’s inclusion in the UK debates, if this continues to be a sticking point between Cameron and Miliband. While there is a case for her to be in a UK debate anyway as I outlined above, she would qualify even more clearly for an England-only debate.

Conclusions

In sum, it’s a democratic imperative that debates go ahead, and the broadcasters have largely got it right in terms of format. The SNP should be made to stick to their own Scottish debate for now, but the issue is getting tougher and public opinion reflects that. It’s in the interests of the electorate (and also those of the Labour Party) that Natalie Bennett be included somewhere. And if we’re serious about English devolution, the format is going to need to start reflecting that commitment as well.

Update, 23/01: I'll now add that the "7-7-2" format (including SNP & Plaid, as well as the Greens) that has now been adopted by the broadcasters is a mistake. Adding Natalie Bennett to the original plans makes sense, but the inclusion of the SNP & Plaid Cymru is unnecessary for the reasons outlined above. I'd said that "they would overcrowd a national debate" and that "if the SNP are included, excluding Plaid Cymru and some of the NI parties becomes tougher to justify logically" - 7 in two debates gives the UK public less time to hear from the voices that matter most, and Northern Ireland's DUP (which is the largest party in NI, currently has 2 more MPs than  the SNP and has 5 more than Plaid) is now understandably complaining about their exclusion.