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Cameron’s only doing it if it’s in a 7-way: The Election TV Debates



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Welcome to the 21st century UK, boys and girls. The land where your smartphone battery lasts 5 hours and your overdraft lasts a lifetime. A place where an angry fella at a non-league football match can challenge for Christmas number one. A time in which we obsess over the tiny details of the lives of people famous for shagging whoever on camera and then ‘leaking’ it onto the internet (I always felt the word leaking was too graphic for a sex tape). 

A century increasingly defined by a media obsession with personality.

This obsession, coupled with 24 hour news coverage and the kind, sympathetic and forgiving place known as the internet has had a profound effect on British Politics. Parties have been condensed down into their leaders, swirling round in the sea of constant surveillance: keeping their heads above the water, avoiding the odd floater or News-UK-journalist-shaped-shark. 

Unless you’re Nigel Farage, sailing through the media shit storm pint in hand, laughing as you deflect yet another bigoted scandal into the swell behind you.

You probably remember the last election. For the first time ever, the leaders of the parties debated in a setting outside of the House of Commons, taking questions from the public without opposing crowds of middle aged white men shouting their approval/disapproval from behind.

The public loved it. A further distillation of entire parties of representatives into a personality to be judged.

The result was that we actually got a clear idea of what the parties stood for, and engaged people in politics. It got people talking and actually livened up the election. The Lib-Dems came storming out of it with approvals through the roof after their policies received almost universal approval. 

Even Cameron and Brown (remember him?) were falling over each other, sycophantically appealing for favour by repeating the ‘I agree with Nick’ mantra. 

They promised to end the culture of broken election promises in this video so filled with hope it fooled many of us into thinking the country could change.

Ha.

The Lib-Dem majority was never going to happen, as most of the young people won over by his policies were too busy wanking over the Mail’s sidebar of shame to notice they actually had to go out and vote.

But what the televised elections proved was that when exposed and without a chortle of Etonians (correct collective noun) to back him up, Cameron came up short.

This time around, Cameron is desperately trying to get as many party leaders into the debates as he can. The more party leaders there are, the fairer the debates, he says. And we know David Cameron knows all about being fair.  

Cameron is shying away from the debates, not only because he can’t talk down to members of the public like he does when patronising opposing MPs, but because he doesn’t want to go up against Ed Milliband. The character assassination of Milliband over the past half year has been quite something, painted as a useless nasally moron by the media it would seem surely he’s easy pickings for the dear leader Mr Cameron.

But a televised debate rather than establishment PMQs yelling match would suit Milliband’s quiet style better. He will also be going in armed with a list of Tory failures that the Prime Minister knows will hit hard with the public. 

Milliband will go in at PR rock bottom - if he manages to get to the lectern without falling over he's already been successful, if he plays his cards right he MIGHT even come out looking like a decent candidate for leadership in the eyes of the public.

But Cameron isn’t satisfied if it’s just with one or two others, he has to have it with seven other leaders all at once. The advantage of this being that everyone will be throwing out meaningless soundbites, Milliband won’t improve his image, and Cameron won’t expose himself as a sneering bully. The status quo will be maintained.

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Jack produces topical blogs for Howtobet4free tackling the key issues in the world of sport. Jack also publishes articles for a number of publications each week, and can be found on Twitter by following @JWinterr.

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