TILTING AT WINDMILLS: British party leaders election TV debate

Thursday, September 17, 2009

TV DEBATE YES – SKY NEWS NO

As the date for the British General Election starts to approach Sky News TV has been pressing the leaders of the three main parties – Labour, Conservative and Liberal – to enter in to a live TV debate.

Sky News has even started an on-line petition and at the weekend they kept proclaiming it had received 10,000 signatures. I haven’t counted the UK population recently but let’s say it is 60 million plus so 10,000 is hardly a ringing endorsement for the TV extravaganza.

Of course trial by TV is established practice in the USA. However that nation is the size of a continent so TV is an important electoral tool but to be honest just being an observer of the debates surrounding the Primaries and then Presidential contest has left me talked-at to death.

In Spain there are TV debates, two I think, between the leaders of PSOE and the Partido Popular ahead of a general election. I know they cause a lot of excitement for the media but whether they sway voters one way or the other I have no idea. I suspect they don’t.

The German General Election is shortly with us. They had a TV debate last weekend and Sky News gave it ample coverage telling us this was how our elections should be conducted. In the event it was a damp squib, boring in a very German way – indeed you’d get more excitement watching a man dance in Lederhosen.

So Sky News (the sister station of Fox News in the USA) backed by the Murdoch media empire of The Sun, The Times and the Bromley Bugle (ok I made the last one up) is pushing for the first General Election TV debate in the UK.

My view on this is very simple.

Yes to the TV debate – No to it being aired on Sky.

The whole essence of the three political leaders – Brown, Cameron and Clegg - going to head-to-head is that the British voters can watch, judge and decide.

Therefore the debates should be on free to view services such as the BBC or ITV.

Democracy is too valuable for it to be assigned solely to Sky subscribers. Nor are our politics yet another tool in the Murdoch armoury for increasing his empire’s viewers and profits.

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”