Televised leadership debates at the General Election – as Cameron calls for ban on Salmond

This has itself been the subject of much debate, with Gordon Brown doing a dance of the seven veils on his decision on whether to take part; and the SNP parking armed tanks on the lawns of the major media stations concerned, BBC, ITV amd Sky.

The whole event has been marked by unevolved thinking on the part of the media and politicians alike, alongside some conceptual confusions evident in discussions on the format of the debate and in the major parties’ responses to the SNP challenge.

In a General Election campaign the Prime Minister is simply a Party Leader

First – a General Election is a contest amongst equals in the sense that it is between political parties under their respective party leaders. It is not, formally, a contest between other parties and one party led by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister continues to govern the country until the result of the election is known and in place – but in the parallel election campaign he is the leader of his party like his competitors.

Gordon Brown is unclear on that – as are the media – as evidenced in Brown’s alleged suggestion of a debate format he is said to favour. This would see him do a one-on-one debate with David Cameron; and another one-on-one with Nick Clegg.

Who – apart from us – has yet said how innately indefensible such a format would be? It would give Brown twice the exposure of each of his fellow party leaders. It would also, of course, send a message to viewers that Brown was pre-eminent and that Cameron and Clegg are electorally equal.

Both of these subliminal messages would mislead. Brown is in no way pre-eminent on the evidence of his performance and in an election campaign, as one of the competing party leaders and not a Prime Minister, he has to be set on a level playing field.

And Cameron does not electorally equate to Clegg. The Conservatives are quite likely to form or lead the next UK Government while the Liberal Democrats public standing has remained static as a long-way third.

The new political reality of devolution is not yet understood

The media stations  – London-centric as they are – have not grasped the political reality of devolution and the extent to which it creates a very different set of political equations governing the management of electioneering and of broadcast initiatives during a General Election campaign.

There are three issues here:

• the situation within the territories of devolved administrations
• the post-election situation at Westminster
• devolved and retained powers

The current situation in Scotland

This case is naturally our own priority and the reality here is that:

• The Conservative Party is a political force south of the border and may lead the next UK administration, but it has only one Scottish MP. The Leader of the Scottish Conservatives has a seat in the Conservative Party Shadow Cabinet and will have a Cabinet Seat should that party come to power in Westminster.
• The Labour Party is the party in power at Westminster at the moment, has been losing power to the Conservatives across England and even in Wales but has, as of now, a residual power base of 38 elected MPs in Scotland, one of whom, Jim Murphy, is Secretary of State for Scotland. The Labour Party in Scotland has also led the first two coalition administrations in Holyrood, with the Liberal Democrats as junior partners. The Leader of the Labour Party in Scotland has no formal position in the Labour Government at Westminster.
• The Liberal Democrats have 12 Scottish MPs elected to Westminster, one of which – Argyll & Bute’s MP, Alan Reid, is Scottish Affairs spokesman (although yesterday’s – 4th October – Telegraph online assigned that role to Alastair Carmichael?). The Liberal Democrat Party in Scotland has been a junior partner with the Labour Party in the first two coalition administrations in Holyrood.
• The Scottish National Party has 7 MPs elected to Westminster and is the largest party at Holyrood and the current minority Scottish Government.

Post-election probabilities in Scotland

The picture of Scottish MPs elected to Westminster after the upcoming General Election is likely to show an ‘up here, down there’ more or less static position for the Lib Dems, with some gains for the Scottish Conservatives and more for the SNP, both at the expense of the Labour Party – which may lose its historical dominance of the politics of Scotland.

The post-election situation in Westminster

The possibility of a hung UK Parliament is quite lively. The Conservative vote is likely to soften in the approaches to election day yet there is no realistic possibility that Labour will win. The country has simply had enough of them.

This leaves the Liberal Democrats, currently with 63 seats, as the king-maker. However, the Party could have problems in choosing which major party to support. Gordon Brown has trailed the carrot of a post-election referendum on proportional representation – an obvious attempt to pre-book the support of the Lib Dems if there is a hung Parliament.

But would the LIb Dems wish to be seen to return to power a profoundly unpopular and nationally distrusted party – one which has taken the UK to wars of suspect legality from which extrication is not on the horizon – and one which has presided over the most serious erosion of civil liberties this country has ever experienced? Alternatively would the Lib Dems break their (short) historical precedent and support a Conservative Government?

It is not unlikely that the national Liberal Democrat Party could find it impossible to support either major party into Government. If the SNP had hit the target of 20 Westminster seats set by its Leader, Alex Salmond, then the SNP would then be the king-maker – or, like the Lib Dems in this scenario, choose to withhold support from both the Labour and Conservative parties.

The impact of devolution on General Election  campaigns

There are some key issues here:

• Issues addressed in General Election campaigns – sometimes centrally important, as with health, education and policing – cannot now, where they are devolved matters, be addressed as single-state propositions in such campaigns.
• Issues of national importance – such as the future of nuclear power and nuclear weapons – cannot be satisfactorily addressed nationally as a single-state matter where a devolved administration, as is the cross-party situation in Scotland, has set itself against both.
• The big issue of what will forever be known as the West Lothian Question, thanks to Tam Dalyell who put it – is a General Election issue which parties in both Westminster and devolved administrations must address. This is an issue bringing into question fundamental constitutional fairness. (See below under ‘The elephant in the room’.)
• Issues around devolved budgets are of nationwide interest and a General Election campaign is the place where this debate should be conducted.
• Constitutional reform is a nationwide concern, very much a General Election issue and one in which both Westminster and devolved administrations should engage.
• Devolved administrations – as with Scotland and Wales – may have parties in power which have either no or little nationwide elected presence but whose contribution to their territories is obviously more germane that that of the UK-wide parties.

The SNP position and David Cameron’s response

The Scottish National Party and its Leader, Alex Salmond, have demanded that – for some of the reasons listed above -  in any national televised debate in the forthcoming General Election campaign, the Leaders of the governing parties in the devolved administrations must be included.

Failing that, the SNP has demanded – and established that it is technically achievable – that the proposed televised debates between Brown, Cameron and Clegg should not be screened in Scotland.

An examination of the post-devolution positions outlined above shows that the request for inclusion in the debates is a well-found case and, if it is disregarded, the SNP has made it clear that it may mount energetic legal challenges.

Yesterday (4th October) speaking to the Telegraph online, UK Conservative Leader, David Cameron dismissed Mr Salmond’s claim, saying: ‘Alex Salmond is not standing for Westminster. Alex Salmond is not standing to be UK Prime Minister. This is a British General Election. The choice is between Gordon Brown and a modern Conservative Government led by me’.

This does not quite square with assurances that David Cameron gave this morning to the Conservative Party Conference – that, in Government, he will ‘respect’ the Holyrood administration and work collaboratively with the devolved administrations as a political family.

You do not ‘respect’ the elected leader of a country – as Mr Cameron is not yet himself – if you attempt to patronise. In the piece in the Telegraph, Mr Cameron went on urge Mr Salmond: ‘to concentrate on his job as Scottish First Minister’, rather as if Scotland were a playpen and Mr Salmond was spending his time commanding the toys.

However, Mr Cameron’s single defence of his call for Mr Salmond to be excluded from these debates betrays further confusion.

Mr Salmond does not personally have to be standing for a Westminster seat to be qualified to take part in a national leadership debate in these circumstances.

He is the Leader of a party – one currently in Government as Mr Cameron’s is not – which is putting forward candidates for that election, campaigning on a manifesto with policies relevant to that election.

The UK does not elect a President. It elects a party. Mr Salmond is Leader of a party contesting the election in a part of the country governed by his party and in a situation where the battle for seats will essentially be fought between his party and the UK Labour Party. He has a case.

The elephant in the room – the core problem

A solution to the situation could be found in running two series of debates:

• one national debate between Brown, Cameron and Clegg,  limited to issues over which Westminster alone has authority across the all the constituent elements of the United Kingdom
• debates between party leaders in the devolved administrations, limited to issues around matters devolved to those administrations. (There is little commonality of authority in the situation in which these administrations operate.)

The reason why this solution could not work is the elephant in the room – the problem not spoken. England.

England alone in the UK has no authority of any kind over its own affairs – although the elected representatives of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – the devolved administrations – do. Westminster speaks for England. It is the home country, indivisible from the nation.

Regardless of whether this is what England feels about itself, it is indisputable that it has been constitutionally disadvantaged in a way which no one has yet attempted to defend.

Were England in the same position as the other constituents of the UK, the solution proposed above would work. But it isn’t in that situation and this solution would therefore not work.

Any and all issues must be open to the televised debates because otherwise England would be disadvantaged. Yet, with all issues open to inclusion, a proportion of the matter of the debates will be misleading at worst and redundant at best for three out of the four constituent parts of the UK.

The real solution is to abandon the televised debates altogether and spare us what will not even be a worthwhile spectator sport.