And the winner of the election debates won't be...

By David Higgerson on Dec 24, 09 03:49 PM

The voters. All of us. Not a single one of us will benefit from the plan to have three televised debates between the leaders in the run up to next year's general election.

Don't get me wrong, the principle is sound. The main parties like nothing more than charging around the country, carefully avoiding each other, pushing their message forward to a sympathetic crowd and hoping that no-one asks too many questions.

The hard work convincing the voters tends to go on away from the cameras. Hard-pressed party volunteers - whose enthusiasm for the job varies from straining-on-the-leash to pushed-into-it-through-emotional-blackmail - knock on the doors and try and convinced people to vote. And then try to convince them to vote for their party.

So getting the three party leaders to go head-to-head in front of the lot of us, on live TV, warts and all, seems a sound idea. And, as at least a million people (or so it feels) appear to have said: "Well, it works in America."

But here's where it goes a little bit wrong.

The American election debates are, indeed, tried and tested. But there was little to really call between McCain and Obama in the 2008 election race debates. They were effectively a score draw because the answers are so carefully managed.

And the same will happen in the UK, too. All three leaders, briefed in a way which makes PMQs feel unscripted, will be out to make sure they don't trip up. It'll be a conversational version of Graham Onions at the stumps in South Africa - blocking every shot to grab the draw.

David Cameron won't want to do anything which alienates any more of the population, especially if his overall lead in the polls remains at hung parliament status. And lets face it, plenty of the suspected Tory policies - if only they'd announce a few - would probably do that.

Gordon Brown, who bizarrely hasn't looked back in the polls since The Sun decided that the family of war dead were political fair game, also won't want to say anything which makes people think too hard about Labour's failings.

As for Nick Clegg, he's perhaps the one chap with the most to win. But having taken a dip in the polls after announcing some controversial policies in September - millionaires tax etc etc - and recovered as people forgot them (a familiar trait with the Lib Dems) Clegg won't want to see a double dip.

So we'll have three men - one who finds communication and exuding warmth difficult, one who appears to believe being a slightly upper class Tony Blair is an election winner and one who has still to break from the shadow of his previous party leaders - all determined not to be the loser when the debates take place.

Those within the Westminster Bubble are delighted by the prospect of the TV debates. There are two ways, as I see it, that the agenda can be set: Either each debate has a pre-determined number of themes, or it's a free for all based on questions from the audience.

Either way, the political chattering class win. If the issues are set in advance, they'll be the ones which have dominated the political agenda over the next few months. If it's a free for all, the issues which surface will be the ones which have dominated the political agenda (ie the newspapers and TV) in the days before.

The spin doctors around the leaders will react accordingly. And we'll end up with a trilogy of discussions which are light on insight, but heavy on spin. No-one wins from that.

This next general election has to be about engaging people who feel let down by politicians. Serving up three hours of political spin won't achieve anything, other than allowing the leaders to consider themselves in tune with the public.

America has a population of 304million. Around 50 million watched the TV debates. That's 16% of the population. The adult population is 204million, so a fairer percentage of voters would be 24% of voters watched the TV debates.

In the UK in 2005, turnout was 61%. Around 27,128,130 votes were cast. If you replicated the percentage of the population who watched the debate in America to the UK, then you'd be looking at around 9.6million adults - 24% of the voting population.

The numbers might be vague, but I can't help but think we'll simply end up with a general election campaign which is based around three TV events which the public simply won't get anything from. Who wins then?