David Cameron is yet to commit to taking part in a televised leaders’ debate before this year’s general election and is engaged in a semi-public negotiation with the other parties and the broadcasters about whether a debate will take place and, if so, what the lineup and format should be.
The leaders of Labour, Ukip and the Liberal Democrats are trying to press Cameron to appear in a series of debates, and are leaning on the broadcasters to “empty chair” the prime minister if he doesn’t turn up. Cameron says he will only take part if a fifth party – the Greens – is allowed to take part. But the truth is probably more complicated than that.
Background
Although televised political debates have a long history in other countries, they are still a novelty in the UK. The 2010 debates between Cameron, the then prime minister Gordon Brown and the Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg were the first of their kind and significantly moved the polls when Clegg unexpectedly triumphed. British politics hasn’t yet developed the infrastructure that surrounds leaders’ debates in other countries – and this has given Cameron his opening.
The UK’s parliamentary system means voters do not get to directly elect the head of government. In a presidential election such as in France or the US, candidates need to appeal to voters for their support – and so having TV debates makes much more sense. In other countries with more proportional electoral systems – such as Germany or New Zealand’s mixed-member system, where candidates vote for a party as well as a local representative – leaders have a big incentive to debate to win votes for their party.
Those conditions do not hold in the UK. And yet the push for leaders’ debates has grown, in part because the identification between party leader and government is now so strong in the UK, and in part because the drama that nationally televised debates generates is likely to awaken interest among a jaded electorate. Plus, everyone else does it, don’t they?
The negotiations
One obstacle to holding debates is setting the rules. In the US, the two parties fight like rats in a sack over pretty much everything they think may help their candidates. No detail is too minute, from the podiums – so that the candidates appear at the same height – to the insistence that both candidates walk on stage simultaneously. These rules sometimes take on a life of their own: a debate in 2014 between two candidates to be governor of Florida ended up in a spat over one candidate’s use of an electric fan under his podium.
In the UK it appears that the telecommunications regulator Ofcom is starting to fill the role of the organiser, after its ruling this year on what is or isn’t a major party. Based on polling and support in previous elections, Ofcom ruled that Ukip was a major party and so qualified for inclusion in the debates, but the Greens were not. And this leads to the second problem for election debates: who gets to take part.
In the US, the 1980 presidential debates were nearly derailed by a popular third-party candidate, with neither Jimmy Carter or Ronald Reagan wanting to take part. The reason is simple: the exposure is invaluable to candidates outside the biggest parties. Clegg’s performance in 2010 is a perfect example: the candidates from smaller parties have far more to gain – and that explains why Cameron would rather skip a leaders’ debate this time round.
The law
To complicate things, there are laws governing broadcasters and fair coverage during elections. This means the broadcasters have to make a call about whether it would be legal to stage a debate without Cameron.
Cameron’s argument against …
Incumbents or challengers well ahead in the polls have little to gain from televised debates and much to lose. By allowing Nigel Farage of Ukip on stage next to him, Cameron will effectively be elevating Farage – and Clegg and Labour’s Ed Miliband – to equal status. Cameron can’t avoid the truth: debates strip away the advantages of office. And they rarely show a clear winner. The most a leader can hope is that his rivals stumble – and even then it may not make any difference. The most famous riposte in US political debates was Lloyd Bentsen’s to Dan Quayle: “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” But Quayle won that year’s election as running mate to George Bush Sr.
… and for?
An empty chair would make Cameron look like he is running scared of his opponents, and would be hard to justify. Cameron’s advisers are probably calculating that they might be able to sit out of a debate because precedent is very weak and voters won’t punish the Conservatives for it. The same calculation holds true for Miliband.
History
The experience of other countries shows that it takes time for debates to become part of the furniture. Yes, the US saw John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon show down more than 50 years ago, but after Kennedy’s performance and Nixon’s narrow loss in the 1960 presidential election, presidential candidates did not participate in another debate until 1976.
In 1980 Carter and Reagan fought behind the scenes over the staging of the debates. Several proposed debates were scrapped and in the end only one took place – which Reagan was said to have won handsomely. Carter’s advisers have since said that allowing even that debate to go ahead was a mistake.
By 1988 things still weren’t settled and the Republican and Democratic campaigns attempted to stitch up the debates behind the scenes. That lead the original organisers – the League of Woman Voters – to pull out in protest, and the two parties then got together to form the Commission on Presidential Debates, which has run the debates ever since.
No comments:
Post a Comment