David Cameron had clearly planned his answers to his Today programme so that a casual listener might think that he really is very keen for the TV debates to take place. He sounded ever so earnest, and repeatedly said that he does want the debates to take place. But when Justin Webb asked the crucial question – which was tell us you’re going to do the TV debates, rather than that you just want them to happen – the Prime Minister’s pretence was exposed.
He doesn’t want the TV debates to happen, and now that his original condition of the Greens being included has been met, he is attaching more conditions before he will say ‘I will do these debates’. The first, which is that the Northern Irish parties should be included if the SNP and Plaid Cymru are to get a place, is quite reasonable and James makes the case for that here. The broadcasters have clearly had great difficulty in coming up with workable criteria for which parties should be included, but they really have made it easier for the Prime Minister with both the first and second sets of proposals.
But the second condition was that the debates don’t happen within the short campaign. The Prime Minister has made this point before, but not in relation to the specific proposals offered by the broadcasters. Until last week, all he wanted was the Green party in the debates, now he wants the DUP and Sinn Fein and to dictate when the debates take place.
It is difficult to conclude anything other than that Cameron is being utterly disingenuous on these debates. He may be right that they sucked the life out of the campaign, but he is using this new condition to wriggle out of a chance to bring politics to voters who do not usually read newspapers and who, according to the polls, want the debates to happen. His effusive quotes in 2010 about the importance of the debates can now be filed in the rather large ‘expedience’ drawer in Cameron’s filing cabinet, along with his previous love of environmental policies, because he cannot have meant them. If he did, he would accept that the TV debates are a part of the campaign that he may not necessarily enjoy but that voters want. And then he would jolly well get on with them.
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