Labour, the Lib Dems and Ukip are having quite a bit of fun with their identical letters from their respective leaders demanding that David Cameron take part in the TV debates – or risk having something done to him that is even worse than a noun being turned into a verb (the latest threat is that he will be ‘empty-podiumed’, which sounds considerably more unpleasant than being ‘empty-chaired’ and possibly as bad as someone ‘weaponising’ something).
As for why David Cameron doesn’t want the debates to go ahead, Daniel Finkelstein has a revealing piece in today’s Times in which he says the Tories forgot about Nick Clegg when they signed up to the 2010 debates – and have now realised the potency of the outsider, who this time round will be embodied by Nigel Farage. All of the reasons the Prime Minister has for avoiding the debates make political sense for the Tories. But that still doesn’t mean they shouldn’t go ahead.
The TV debates in 2010 attracted audiences of millions, with 9.4 million people tuning in to the first, followed by 4.1 million watching the second. People watched the debates in town squares. Voters who politicians like to badge with a number of patronising descriptions such as ‘ordinary’, ‘normal’ and ‘outside the Westminster bubble’ invited friends round for wine and popcorn while watching Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg do battle on television. Those debates changed the campaign in many ways, but the most important thing is that they engaged millions of people in politics. Yes politicians should be engaging through print media, social media, town hall events, and doorstep sessions. They might even hope that some voters will catch clips of Prime Minister’s Questions every so often. But the TV debates are a way of engaging with voters on a big scale. They take politics onto the big screen when so often it can feel rather small.
Cameron claimed to realise this before the 2010 election, repeatedly saying the TV debates were important, were here to stay and were just what politics needed. Just because they’re not what Cameron needs now doesn’t mean he should be able to avoid them. Quite apart from anything else, his recalcitrance suggests his earlier enthusiasm wasn’t based on a real conviction about the importance of engaging voters but simply on expedience, and contributes to the impression that politicians only do what is best for them, not for voters.
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