David Maddox: The great debate... Barnes v Maddox (2)

Unlike Gordon Brown and a succession of previous Prime Ministers (or even Alex Salmond on St Andrew's Day), I am not one to shirk when the challenge is laid down for a debate, even if this one is taking place over the cyberspace rather than on people's TV screens.
But as I have the greatest respect for Eddie Barnes, who as The Scotsman group's political editor is after all my line manager, I thought I should take his central point over the great TV debate debate seriously.
Eddie stated that to exclude Alex Salmond or another SNP politician from a general election TV debate aired in Scotland is "anti democratic."
As this is a complex matter it perhaps deserves a complex solution because including the SNP would bring into play several other parties with equal or greater demands for inclusion.
I think it is unlikely that the broadcasters and main party leaders will go for regionalised debates so we need a solution which recognises the proportion of support for parties across the UK as a whole.
On this basis I have decided to look at a "fair and proportionate" way of running a UK-wide TV debate. To do this I have gone back to the last serious test of political opinion in the UK - the European Parliament election in June this year.

My calculation on who to include and how much time to give them is based on the following rules:
1. To be included in the debate a party will have to have won a European seat.
2. The time allocated is mostly based on the percentage of votes received in June, with alterations detailed below.
3. As Labour are the biggest party in Westminster but only came third in June and the Conservatives are the biggest party in the European election I have added up their June 2009 percentages and given them half each of the combined 43.4%.
4. As UKIP came second in June but have no seats in Westminster, while the Lib Dems came fourth in June but are clearly the third party in Westminster I have added their percentages together and given them half each of the combined 30.6%.
5. I have topped up the English Greens with the Scottish Green vote, even though strictly speaking they are separate parties. Perhaps Scotland's Patrick Harvie could replace England's Caroline Lucas in one of the debates.
6. I suggest that the SNP and Plaid Cymru are represented as a single Celtic block with the SNP providing speakers for two of the three debates and Plaid the other. I have also topped up their vote with the 0.1 per cent given to Cornish Nationalists Mebyon Kernow, who out polled Labour in Cornwall.
7. I have excluded Northern Ireland which could have its own debate because essentially it has its own political parties, even if the former Ulster Unionists have joined the Tories.

This means for a two hour debate the following time allocations would be provided to the parties as a percentage of the total 120 minutes:

Conservatives: 26 minutes 3 seconds (21.7%)
Labour: 26 minutes 3 seconds (21.7%)
Liberal Democrats: 18 minutes 22 seconds (15.3%)
UKIP: 18 minutes 22 seconds (15.3%)
Greens: 10 minutes 56 seconds (9.1%)
BNP: 7 minutes 27 seconds (6.2%)
SNP/ Plaid: 3 minutes 36 seconds (3%)
The rest of the time ( 9 minutes 11 seconds) would go to adverts, the presenter and maybe the audience.

Seems over complicated?
Well this is what you get by trying to be strictly "fair and proportionate". I suspect that it would have little value to the parties, the broadcasters and most of all the voters.
How much better it would be to simply recognise that this proposed debate is a part of the growing presidential style of UK general elections and would focus on which individual we would rather see as Prime Minister. That cannot be Alex Salmond, even if the law may be on his and others' side when it comes to who should be given air time.
What would really be best is a simple, straight fight of Cameron v Brown.

Over to you Eddie.

Eddie Barnes - The Great Debate....Barnes v Maddox

In series 5 of the Wire there's a great comment from the news editor at the Baltimore Post that, at their best, newspapers "are places where people constanly disagree with one another". In that spirit, I'm going to go head-to-head with my esteemed colleague David Maddox (and this is risky; he sits behind me) on the subject of the general election TV debate debate, as he calls it.

The story so far.....the broadcasters have said they want a debate, and the Conservatives, the Liberals and Labour have all agreed. Last weekend, the SNP - which will not get a podium place - said it would be taking legal action. In a previous post, David declared with typical panache that the SNP was getting its knickers in a twist. He said it was hubristic of that SNP to insist that they got involved, and that it would be absurd for non-Scottish viewers to have to watch the views of Alex Salmond being aired when none of them had the chance to vote for his party.

Well, clearly that would be strange. But I don't see how you can argue that having a debate screened in Scotland involving only Messers Brown, Cameron and Clegg is anything other than anti-democratic. If these debates do go ahead, let no-one be in any doubt about the importance they would hold (there will be 3 of them under the plans being considered by the BBC, ITV and Sky). We in the media would go predictably nuts and they would become easily the most important part of the election schedule. Ofcom recognises the SNP as one of the a main party in Scotland, along with Labour, the Tories and the Liberals. Are we seriously suggesting that in Scotland one of the main parties is going to be excluded? Why not exclude the Liberals instead? Or the Conservatives? Or Labour?

I've spoken to broadcasters in Scotland about this debate idea and they are pretty sceptical about the whole thing meeting the strict rules which cover election coverage. Frankly, the SNP seem to me to have a hard and fast case. Labour has suggested that we have a kind of Division Two clash involving all the leaders of each party's Scottish Westminster group. But would you dash home from work for the chance to watch David Mundell take on Alastair Carmichael? Thought not.

Personally, I would like to watch a TV debate take place. So what to do? I have no idea. Maybe there should be three more debates, to be broadcast in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - in which the UK party leaders stand alongside the leaders of the SNP, Plaid and Ulster parties respectively. It's not exactly likely to happen, I admit. Incidentally, I'm not at all convinced that Alex Salmond should be the person representing the SNP, given that he isn't standing for the General Election.

But I'm not here to provide answers. I just think that to exclude one party which represents the views of a substantial part of the electorate from such a high-profile occasion -an occasion which could decide the votes of thousands - is plain wrong.

Over to you David.