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.

Our general elections are not about electing a Prime Minister, but about electing a local representative at Westminster, with prospective Prime Ministers being directly elected only as MPs. However, a ‘prime-ministerial’ election is presented instead by the national media as the vast number of safe seats created under First Past the Post means that election outcomes there are foregone conclusions, with candidates being viewed more as vehicles for parties or Prime Ministers than champions for local communities.

If not dogged by scandal, candidates can largely escape public scrutiny, with such a lack of accountability enabling egregious behaviour by victorious candidates that contributes to public distrust in politicians and politics. Hustings events are the primary means for voters to assess their local candidates, but are organised in patchwork fashion by community organisations, advocacy groups and local news outlets, and receive so little coverage that candidates can withdraw and escape scrutiny without attracting attention.

To reassert that the UK is a parliamentary democracy, we should promote constituency-level debates in which every parliamentary candidate in every constituency would have the right to participate, regardless of seniority or party affiliation. They would better inform voters about who they are directly voting for, force favoured candidates to actively fight for seats, and present greater political diversity to an electorate seeking more options. Also, by marrying the journalistic rigour of public service broadcasters with the bandwidth provided by streaming, these debates can harness the Internet as a positive democratising force whilst securing a future for terrestrial broadcasters in a media landscape where streaming is becoming prevalent. Ultimately, such a measure would hand power back to the people.

* Samuel James Jackson is the Chair of the Policy Committee of the Yorkshire and the Humber Liberal Democrats and had served as the Liberal Democratic candidate in Halifax during the 2024 general election.