The Guardian view on the leaders’ debate fiasco: prime ministerial cynicism
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Version 0 of 1. The UK has parliamentary elections but presidential media. Voters’ choice of party, not a beauty contest between leaders, decides the complexion of the government. Yet press and broadcasters routinely cover politics as if personality is all that matters. Resisting that trend is one objection to televised leaders’ debates. The format, it is argued, misrepresents the nature of the choice at the ballot box and sucks attention away from ground-level campaigning where the real issues are argued out. Those are respectable concerns, and if David Cameron had refused to do the TV debates on such terms he would be articulating a view shared by some non-partisan observers. His motives might be called into question, but he would at least have an argument to make. Downing Street has chosen to play a different game: agreeing that there should be debates and then obstructing them with unworkable conditions. Mr Cameron’s negotiating team insisted the events be held long before polling day; that they include the Green party, then Scottish and Welsh nationalists and perhaps Ulster Unionists. This was all intended purely to shroud the process in doubt, force broadcasters to continually revise their plans and sow division among other leaders. Meanwhile, aides to the prime minister have made it clear through private briefings that they see the debates as a liability to be avoided at all costs. The calculation was made long ago: the risk to Mr Cameron of looking slippery in ducking debates was less than the twin dangers of Nigel Farage courting the disgruntled under the PM’s nose and Ed Miliband, unfiltered by a hostile press, surprising audiences with a display of competence and charm. Downing Street’s “final offer” – one debate with seven leaders before the campaign proper begins – is really a last effort to close the show down. The claim to have “negotiated in good faith” in a petulant letter to broadcasters by Craig Oliver, Mr Cameron’s communications chief, tests the boundary between chutzpah and cynical mendacity. Broadcasters should nonetheless accept and call the prime minister’s bluff. They should also schedule further debates, erecting a podium for Mr Cameron, which can stand empty if he refuses the invitation. The broadcasters have played their hand poorly, wriggling awkwardly as Downing Street tugs the rug beneath them. A lesson is that such events should be the responsibility of neither TV companies nor politicians. In the US, the Commission on Presidential Debates is a not-for-profit, bipartisan organisation. It convenes candidates. The cameras then follow. That is how it should be in Britain, too. Debates are not the property of media or government but a service to the electorate. They are not a show for producers to arrange but a public occasion where cameras happen to be part of the process. There are, after all, other ways to reach an audience. The Guardian, for example, has teamed up with Google and the Telegraph with a view to hosting a digital debate, which need not be tangled in Ofcom rules. It is now clear that the existing process for putting prime ministerial candidates before a mass audience needs drastic revision. While constitutional arguments about the primacy of party and parliament have merit, they are trumped by the truth that the election is also an audition for the job of prime minister. The Conservatives can hardly pretend otherwise when their strategy for 2015 is to indulge a cult of presidentialism in every respect bar the debates. Their plan is to present the Tory leader as the incarnation of safe economic stewardship and Mr Miliband the embodiment of hapless profligacy. Downing Street thinks that judgment should be nodded through. Voters do not. In 2010, the debates were watched by 22 million people. As a courtesy to the electorate, Mr Cameron should make himself available for scrutiny. He was eager to do it last time, professing a belief that the public had a right to see sitting prime ministers set out their stalls on equal terms with rivals. Now he seems to think that incumbents needn’t sully themselves in that way. This is a mistake. It confirms the perception many people have already of a man without fixed principle, whose only constant feature is a sense of entitlement to high office. |