7 Comments

• Chris 17th Oct '08 - 7:01pm

  I agree with the concept, but believe it should be expanded.

  Not just leader’s debates, but also debates between the key ministers.

  We can have the chancellor, health, education, defense, foreign and home secretaries debate and set out their stall, in separate televised debates spread over the course of the campaign with the leaders debate being the climax the night before.

  This neatly sidesteps the problem of not being a presidential system and emphasises the cabinet system and introduces the key ministers.

  I know this is all wishful thinking, and no channel would agree to give up so much time, but it would be really useful to help frame the policies and the alternatives of the parties

• asquith 17th Oct '08 - 7:01pm

  No. It doesn’t bear any correlation to how they are likely to perform: often there are well-packaged stuffed shirts, or those not quite so presentational who are in fact better candidates.

• Different Duncan 17th Oct '08 - 8:00pm

  At the last election, there was a Question Time Special where each of the main party leaders was individually grilled by Mr Dimbleby and the audience for about half an hour each. The main difference between this and the American style debates is that they don’t appear on stage at the same time. While this difference is important, it completely negates the “not a presidential system” argument. I also think that it negates Asquith’s point too (as salient as it is).

  So it would seem that the argument is simply about the format of that programme. Having the party leaders on stage at the same time should be a livlier debate, so I vote yes. Whether Mr Clegg would get invited is another question…

• jim 18th Oct '08 - 2:22pm

  Well Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France,etc,etc seem to have these debates and the sky doesn’t fall in there…why not give it a go, as long as it’s not Fiona Bruce or Huw Edwards doing the hosting!

• asquith 18th Oct '08 - 9:11pm

  A large majority of respondents think there should be televised debates, which means they take the opposite view to mine

• Greg L 19th Oct '08 - 12:10am

  Theory states that no British government has ever been elected by the people; we elect a local representative to present our position in Parliament.

  Practise demonstrates that any American President would give their hind teeth for the amount of power within their own country that the effective ‘elected dictator’ of the British Prime Minister has.

  Effectively, rather than the American electoral college of 538 members chosen out of 50 states, we have a 650 member electoral college, choosing someone with vastly more power than any President, grafted on top of the theory, which on some level does continue to hold sway.

  In short, we elect a bloody mess, and trying to figure out how many of the people voted on what grounds, be it for a person to be PM, a party to form the government, a party to represent them, a local campaigner to represent them, etc, is the preserve of pollsters. What we can do is try to get as much information out there as possible. The Canadian Prime Minister has to fight their way through two debates, one in English, one in French, before election. The Swedes have televised debates. The Germans have televised debates. None of these are directly electing their heads of government, but in all of them it is recognised and accepted that the people should have a chance to see their future leader defend their ideas in public against the alternatives.

  So it’s probably fairly obvious I voted ‘yes’. Although I did toy briefly with voting ‘no’, because this isn’t the time to start it, twenty years ago or more was the time to start it

• Simon 19th Oct '08 - 9:06am

  I set up a facebook group dedicated to this very idea a few weeks ago. Do join and spread the news:
  ‘Presidential-Style Debates in the UK’