The broadcasters’ proposals for the TV debates have not gone down particularly well in many quarters of Westminster. David Cameron, who has been trying to avoid the issue for as long as possible, claimed today that he has ‘always been in favour of TV debates’, even though he’s not really in favour of any debates that have the same effect on the election as the 2010 leaders’ debates did. His response today suggested that he expected something else to come up that the parties could agree to, with him telling broadcasters that ‘I’m sure there will be other proposals along before long’.
He highlighted one of his personal quibbles, which is that he does not want the TV debates to dominate the election campaign itself:
‘Why have all the debates inside the election campaign, rather than spreading them out over a longer period?’
The Prime Minister also highlighted one of the stranger anomalies, which is that Ukip are invited to one debate, but the Greens are not:
‘I can’t see how you can have one party in that has an MP in parliament, and not another party.’
The Greens are eating away at votes on the Left, rather than the ones Cameron wants to win next year, so including them in the debate would in theory be unhelpful to Labour and the Lib Dems.
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