Unsurprisingly, David Cameron has this afternoon said he won’t take part in the TV election debates if the Greens are no included in one of the line-ups. Currently the proposal is for Cameron vs Miliband, then Cameron vs Miliband vs Clegg, then Cameron vs Miliband vs Clegg vs Farage. The Greens have been excluded, as have the SNP and Plaid Cymru.
This is the exchange between the Prime Minister and ITN’s Tom Bradby:
Me; ‘Time is running out; are you saying you are not going to go in as it stands unless at least the Greens are in?’ Him; ‘Correct.’
— tom bradby (@tombradby) January 8, 2015
Why is Cameron so anxious about the Greens all of a sudden? It’s not because he’s still hankering after the days when he pranced about with huskies and fancies a louder environmentalist voice on the TV. It’s because they make life uncomfortable for Ed Miliband, offering a stronger anti-austerity message than the Labour leader can realistically produce when he might actually end up running the country. It’s also because it’s the only reasonable sticking point he can use to wriggle out of the debates altogether. He doesn’t want to do them because he remembers that the 2010 ones, which he assumed he would ace, ended up helping Nick Clegg’s profile the most. And there is little benefit for any Prime Minister in doing these things anyway.
Ultimately these are still very poor reasons for stopping the TV debates from taking place. But unless broadcasters are prepared to empty chair the Prime Minister, they will have to give the Greens the look in that many – including those not normally particularly sympathetic to their ideas – think they deserve. Or else there will be no TV debates.
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