Why did Boris Johnson refuse to attend tonight’s Channel 4 leaders’ debate on the climate? His party has gone to war with the broadcaster, writing to Ofcom before the programme even started to complain about the way the prime Minister had been ’empty-chaired’, a slowly-melting ice sculpture replacing him (and another for Nigel Farage). According to the letter, signed by Tory spinner Lee Cain, the rationale for turning down the invitation was that Channel 4 has marked itself out as being anti-Tory with a ‘wider pattern of bias’, including the channel’s head of news and current affairs Dorothy Byrne ‘making highly personal and unpleasant attacks on the Prime Minister at the Edinburgh Television Festival in August’.
The Conservatives sent Michael Gove, former Environment Secretary, to debate in Johnson’s place, but Channel 4 refused on the grounds that the other leaders present had agreed to appear on the programme with other leaders.
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