2010 United Kingdom general election debates

A proposal for leaders debates was first mooted at the 1964 general election when Harold Wilson challenged then Prime Minister Alec Douglas-Home to an election debate. Home rejected the proposal on the grounds that: "You'll get a sort of Top of the Pops contest. You'll then get the best actor as leader of the country and the actor will be prompted by a scriptwriter." At the insistence of the Liberals, their leader David Steel was also invited to take part in the debates, and accepted the offer. However on 3 April, Mrs Thatcher wrote to LWT to decline the offer to take part, saying that the election was for a government, not a president, which meant that the debates did not go ahead. Both Thatcher and her successor as Prime Minister, John Major, rejected Labour leader Neil Kinnock's debate proposal, with Major commenting that "every party politician that expects to lose tries that trick of debates and every politician who expects to win says no." For the 2001 general election Tony Blair turned down a debate with William Hague. On 28 April 2005, Tony Blair, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy took part in a special edition of the BBC's Question Time, although they did not debate directly, and were questioned individually by host David Dimbleby. The idea of holding leaders debates for the 2010 election was first supported by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, with Gordon Brown later agreeing. In 2009, Sky News began a campaign for leaders debates which was followed by a joint proposal from the BBC, ITV and BSkyB to stage three live election debates between leaders of the three main political parties, one debate for each broadcaster. On 21 December 2009, agreement was reached between the three main parties and the three broadcasters, BBC, ITV and BSkyB, on the key principles behind holding live election debates for the 2010 election campaign. On 1 March 2010 a set of 76 detailed rules for the leaders debates were announced. == Leaders' debates ==

Principles and rules The December 2009 key principles agreed were that the three main party leaders would appear together in three separate live television debates, and be given equal treatment. The debates would be held during three weeks of the election campaign, or over two weeks if there was less than four weeks between the election being called and polling day. Each broadcaster would produce one debate using the same format, ITV first from the North West, Sky from the South/South West, and finally the BBC from the Midlands. Broadcasts would be between 85 and 90 minutes in duration with half focused on a specific theme. There would be no commercial breaks and each debate would take place in peak time. ITV was required to make their transmission available simultaneously online and to radio, and to other television broadcasters immediately after the programme, while BSkyB and the BBC were to make their programmes available to other broadcasters simultaneously. • ITV News/ComRes: 43% for Clegg, 26% for Cameron, 20% for Brown The BARB produced audience figures indicated that the total television audience for the event on ITV was 9,679,000 viewers. The debates caused a large, immediate, and unexpected impact on opinion polls in favour of the Liberal Democrats, leading to many headlines regarding a 'Yellow Surge'. Commenting on the debates, the leaders of three minor parties who were not invited to participate were disparaging. SNP Leader Alex Salmond said, "You had three Westminster politicians who agree with each other on 99% of issues, and therefore the debate couldn't really come alive because of that convergence on the things that matter, and also, of course, because the audience weren't allowed to really participate." Former UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said there was not a "single memorable phrase" in the entire debate and Plaid Cymru leader Ieuan Wyn Jones said: "In what was a very sterile debate, not once did we hear the word Wales mentioned by any of the leaders. Indeed much of what they said was irrelevant to our communities." Both Gordon Brown and David Cameron agreed that Nick Clegg did well in the debate. Brown said Clegg had been "introducing himself in many ways to the public, in a mass way, for the first time. I think he'll be rightly pleased with his performance. I think at the end of the day... when all the dust settles, when people start sort of examining what are the policies, I don't think people know much about Liberal policies, and I think they do know more about our policies". He said he had "enjoyed" the debate, adding: "I think it's part of the debate we should have in Britain. I think it's energised the campaign." Cameron said, "I think he had a good debate but I must say I just enjoyed being able to talk to people at home, to address the questions that I think are the big questions at this election like immigration and the economy and crime." His colleague Michael Gove told Sky News that Clegg could "play the role of the sparky and feisty outsider." Clegg said it had been an "important moment in this campaign" while one of his predecessors, Lord Ashdown, said the debate was "potentially a game changer." BBC political editor Nick Robinson said the emergence of Clegg as a serious player would be the most significant development. He added that, amid predictions of a hung parliament in which Clegg's party could hold the balance of power, the Lib Dems would be "wooed, attacked and scrutinised with renewed vigour." The body language expert for Sky News Dr. Peter Collet revealed that Clegg had been the strongest as he looked down the lens, he also revealed that Cameron had been weaker than suspected as he stepped away from his podium. Sky News Debate: international affairs Prior to the debate, several hundred demonstrators gathered close to the Arnolfini, including anti-capitalist groups, Palestine groups and some English Defence League members. Between six and nine demonstrators were arrested before the debate for public order offences, Polling following the Sky News Debate declared Nick Clegg and David Cameron the joint winners, with all three leaders considerably closer than the previous debate. • ITV News/ComRes: 33% for Clegg, 30% for Cameron, 30% for Brown. • The Guardian/ICM: 33% for Clegg, 29% for Cameron, 29% for Brown Prime Ministerial Debate: economic affairs The final round of the first ever televised leaders' debates, hosted by the BBC, was held in the Great Hall of Birmingham University on 29 April 2010. The background to the debate was overshadowed a day before by a remark made by Gordon Brown in private, while being driven away after canvassing in Rochdale, when he met retired council worker Gillian Duffy. In the remark, caught by a lapel microphone, Brown said that "...she was just a sort of bigoted woman who said she used to be Labour". At the beginning of the debate, Brown mentioned the gaffe by saying "There's a lot to this job and as you saw yesterday I don't get all of it right." • ITV/ComRes: 35% for Cameron, 33% for Clegg, and 26% for Brown • Angus Reid: 37% for Cameron, 29% for Clegg, and 23% for Brown • The Times/Populus: 38% each for Cameron and Clegg and 25% for Brown • The Guardian/ICM: 35% for Cameron, 29% for Brown, and 27% for Clegg The viewing figures produced by BARB showed that the total viewing audience was 8,596,000 viewers, with 7,428,000 viewers watching it live on BBC One, 618,000 on BBC News, 337,000 on Sky News and 213,000 on BBC HD. In the analysis of psephologist John Curtice, "... ComRes found that 73 per cent of Conservative supporters reckoned Mr Cameron had won, 64 per cent of Liberal Democrats thought Mr Clegg had won, and 68 per cent of Labour supporters thought Mr Brown had won." About uncommitted voters, Curtice wrote, "Among this group it appears it was Mr Clegg who scored a narrow victory. On average, across the four polls that have published the necessary details, 34 per cent thought Mr Clegg did best, while Mr Cameron's score of 27 per cent was even lower than Mr Brown's 28 per cent." == Ask the Chancellors debate ==

Ask the Chancellors, also known as the Battle of the Chancellors, was a debate between the parties' financial spokesmen, Alistair Darling (the incumbent Chancellor of the Exchequer), George Osborne (Conservative) and Vince Cable (Liberal Democrats) took place on Monday 29 March on Channel 4. Lasting for 60 minutes, it featured the three men taking questions from a studio audience. This debate was chaired by ITN's Channel 4 News presenter and journalist Krishnan Guru-Murthy. The viewing figures for the debate were , 7.7% share of the television audience, rising to in the final 10 minutes of the debate. A spokeswoman for Channel 4 was said to be "really pleased" with the figures. An online poll conducted by Channel 4 after the debate, gave Cable 36% support, with Darling and Osborne both with 32%. == Daily Politics debates ==

The Daily Politics, a BBC political TV series, held a series of debates between members of the incumbent Labour Cabinet and their Conservative and Liberal Democrat equivalents. Starting on Monday 19 April, there were nine debates held on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the three weeks before 6 May. Andrew Neil acted as moderator, along with a specialist BBC correspondent. == National debates of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales ==

Exclusion controversy Other parties criticised the decision to hold television debates, the Scottish National Party (SNP) which forms the devolved Scottish Government, had insisted that as the leading political party in Scotland in the latest opinion poll, it should be included in any debate broadcast in Scotland, adding "The broadcasters would do well to recall the debacle experienced by the BBC’s Panorama programme in 1995, when they were forced not to broadcast an interview with the Prime Minister in Scotland because it breached the rules of impartiality during a Scottish local election." On 22 December 2009, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) leader, Lord Pearson stated that his party should be included because it "would be wrong for UKIP, which came second in the last test of national political opinion, to be excluded from these debates." The SNP had threatened to prevent any such debates being screened in Scotland should its leader not be included. On 25 April they announced that they now planned to raise the £50,000 that would allow them to proceed with legal action over the third and final Prime Ministerial debate on BBC One on Thursday, despite the fact that the SNP had mounted no legal challenge to either ITV or Sky Television for their decision to not include the SNP. The party said it was not trying to stop the final broadcast, but that it wanted an SNP politician included "for balance". The party's leader, Alex Salmond said it would be "unacceptable" for the SNP to be excluded from the debate, and sought "guarantees of inclusion from the broadcasters, given their inescapable duty to ensure fairness and impartiality in election-related coverage in Scotland" in the buildup to the general election. The party used the Freedom of Information Act to determine whether the BBC could have broken its own rules. Salmond said it is entirely unacceptable to Scotland as well as to the SNP for the broadcasters to exclude the party that forms the Scottish Government and leading in Westminster election polls. The legal challenge duly went ahead at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Despite earlier reassurances by the SNP that it was not trying to stop the broadcast, it sought an 'interim interdict' to prevent the debate being broadcast without the participation of the SNP. However, on 28 April 2010, the Court of Session dismissed the SNP's complaint, and refused to prevent the BBC from broadcasting the third debate in Scotland, on the grounds that the SNP had left the bringing of the case "far too late", had not contested the broadcasting of the first two debates by ITV and Sky Television, and that the third debate would in any case be broadcast by Sky on satellite across the UK, which a Scottish court had no power to block. The judge, Lady Smith, further ordered the SNP to pay the BBC's legal expenses. The SNP's political opponents described the SNP's contesting of the case as a "stunt". However, there were Scottish debates dealing with specifically devolved issues which Salmond had accepted the invitation to attend along the other parties within the Scottish Parliament on Sky TV. Whilst Salmond declined to attend those held on the BBC and ITV, Angus Robertson agreed to take his place in these debates. UKIP, which is a smaller party, but came second in the 2009 European elections, complained about having been denied a chance to appear in the televised debates. TV companies agreed the deal based on which parties were standing across Great Britain and already have existing seats in the House of Commons. The Green Party, UKIP, the SNP and Plaid Cymru all protested. On the announcement of the UK party leader debates, it was also announced there would be separate debates between the main parties of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. • Alex Salmond, leader of the SNP, First Minister of Scotland, MP for Banff and Buchan and MSP for Gordon. He took part in the Sky News debate • Cheryl Gillan MP, (Conservatives) Shadow Secretary of State for Wales and MP for Chesham and Amersham, took part in the Sky News and ITV debates • Peter Hain MP, (Labour), the Secretary of State for Wales and MP for Neath • Ieuan Wyn Jones AM, Leader of Plaid Cymru, Deputy First Minister of Wales in the National Assembly for Wales, and Assembly Member for Ynys Môn • Kirsty Williams AM, Leader of the Welsh Liberal Democrats and Assembly Member for Brecon and Radnorshire Note that Carwyn Jones AM, is the First Minister of Wales in the National Assembly for Wales and the leader of Welsh Labour. == See also ==