Tag Archives: election debates

In 2024, ‘the year of elections’, the UK’s general election saw the end of fourteen years of calamitous Conservative governance, while the ongoing US election campaigns have proved tumultuous, to put it mildly. Regardless of the changes to the Democratic ticket, the presidential and vice-presidential debates gave Americans the chance to know who they are voting for in that race. In the UK, however, such debates have made things less clear.

The 2010 general election saw the advent of televised debates. Originally proposed in 1964, they were opposed in the belief that presidential-style debates were alien to British political culture and would emphasise personalities over policies and were prevented from materialising earlier by disagreements over format and partisan impulses to deny favourable coverage to opposition figures. Now, they are part and parcel of general election campaigns.

When they debuted in 2010, the ITV, Sky and the BBC leaders’ debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg were accompanied by Channel 4’s Ask the Chancellors debate on fiscal policy and a series of policy area debates on the BBC’s Daily Politics between the responsible minister and their shadow counterparts. The latter formats arguably ensured that issues remained a focus during the election.

However, there were noticeable format changes in subsequent elections. The 2015 debates saw several new formats which emphasised the primacy of party leaders including a head-to-head programme between the two major party leaders, and the last Politics Daily debates between parties’ portfolio holders. From the 2017 election onwards, concerns regarding the propensity of presidentialism and personalities in debates have been vindicated. This trend likely arose due to parties who rely more on the popularity of their leaders than their policies manipulating broadcasters’ commitment to due impartiality to gain an advantage, or broadcasters succumbing to an impulse to entertain rather than educate.

We should seek to revive special policy area debates to make elections about issues and not personalities, and to re-emphasise the fact that we are a parliamentary – not presidential – democracy. However, we need to go further if we wish to remedy the latter problem.