1. Military language will be the order of the day for debate pundits. Fighting to the finish, knock out blows and accounts of who is ahead on points: deploy your military phraseology at dawn.
2. 99% of pundits who have previously expressed support for a party will declare that party’s leader the real winner from each debate – even if the party and leader did not appear in the debate.
3. Each party participating in the debate will say beforehand that its leader is not going to easily best the other leaders – and will say afterwards that its leader did easily best the other leaders.
4. There will be a battle over worms.
5. At least one party will run a real time online rebuttal and evidence service, posting up online evidence to bolster what one leader has said and to undermine what other leaders have said.
6. Even though there is plenty of evidence that men and women often view the skills deployed in verbal debating differently, punditry will overwhelmingly come from male commentators who will make comments that rest on the assumption men and women think alike.
7. There will be a plethora of instant polls immediately after each debate. They will be of questionable usefulness (see all those post-budget quickie polls which failed to get the long term political impact of budgets right). But they’ll be better than relying on pundits or vox pops.
8. Clips from the debate will rapidly circulate on YouTube, Facebook and elsewhere, providing a major online part of the post-debate fall out.
9. My one man campaign to badger journalists who only refer to the US when talking about TV debates (despite the many Parliamentary democracies which also have them – and are far better guides for the UK having much more similar political system to us) will sweep to glorious victory as the Guardian and Telegraph duel it out to give the most detailed coverage of controversies over microphone location in 1980s Canadian political debates.
10. And finally: I won’t score full marks for my predictions.
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“Military language will be the order of the day for debate pundits. Fighting to the finish, knock out blows and accounts of who is ahead on points: deploy your military phraseology at dawn.”
That isn’t militaristic language, it is the language of boxing.
A pedant writes: 1) is actually Boxing, rather than Military analogies.
11. The pundits, candidates, hacks, activists, etc. will get terribly over-excited, before, during and after. The general public will be interested, then bored, then briefly piqued by some alleged slip or hypocrisy, then bored bored bored…
My one and only prediction is that they won’t happen.
The threat of legal action by one of more of the nationalist parties, UKIP, Greens or BNP to force their inclusion and/or a row between Labour and the Tories about the ‘rules of engagement’ will scupper them.
Looks like the Party’s got a long term chance in “Loamshire North”.
Nice piece of satiric fantasy at http://redfellow.blogspot.com/2010/01/headline-story-observer-3-january-2010.html
Aargh! #10 can never be wrong. Because if #10 is wrong then you’ve scored full marks. But #10 was wrong meaning you’ve at best got 9/10 right….. paradox!
In fact it’s like the liar paradox.
I agree with many of the predictions. I particularly like; 2, 3 and 7.
Can I add a couple:
11/ The press will have disproportionate coverage of Brighton Pavillion for Greens, Buckingham for Ukip and Barking for the BNP despite none of those parties ending up with a seat.
12/ There will be loads of talk about who Lib Dems (already begun) and even if a hung parliament occurs the party with most seats forms a government for a few months untill another election sorts it out.
I would like to know why Clegg is even allowed to participate in the three debates – considering he is not a candidate to become PM of this country. Mind you, 16% in the polls is dire for the Dims. Perhaps a pious, vacuous windbag like Clegg can boost the polls for the Limp Dims. Perhaps I can win a Euro millions lottery roll over, too.
I am SO looking forward to election night, when half of the Dim front bench is wiped out. To see that sanctimonious, humourless prat, Buff Huhne, lose his seat….
Bert – The fact that you do not understand why Nick Clegg should be involved rather undermines your credibility to comment on anything political. Perhaps John Stuart Mill was correct when he advocated that people should have to pass some sort of test before being able to vote. it would save us from you casting your vote.
Your intimate knowledge of Eastleigh politics further highlights that your labotomy was successful.
Bert, being a member of the Southern Lib Dems. I have meet Chris and been out in Eastleigh, even though he has a small majority it is looking very good for him and his support there has increased. he wont lose, infact Eastleigh is joined by two other lib dem areas. I think he will be fine.
Also Nick Clegg may not win, but he is running for the government and he could be part of a hung parliment, so its important for people to hear what he has to say
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