“Look at me, I exist too!”

Good on Cleggy!

A three-way debate could be terrible for Clegg: how irrelevant will he look when Cameron and Brown totally ignore him?

Clegg will not become PM after the election, even in a hung parliament. The LD front benchers, however, might take some part in a cabinet.

Thus have some three-headed policy debates (Darling, Osborne, Cable; D Miliband, Hague, Davey; Johnson, Grayling, Huhne) and one PM debate (just Brown and Cameron).

Careful scheduling will ensure that the broadcast time regulations (currently 5:5:4) are adhered to.

It would be quite wrong to decide who gets to take part in the debate according to the media’s judgement on who might be PM after the election. All three should be included, and probably the leaders of the Greens and UKIP too.

But this is missing the fundamental point – we have a parliamentary democracy, not a prime ministerial dictatorship (well, actually that’s not true, but that’s what we seem to aspire to).

People need to be less hung up on who the PM is and look more to the overall party they’ll elect to parliament. I suspect that’ll only happen if and when we get a genuine parliamentary democracy in which the PM is little more than the chair of the cabinet and national spokesman for government policy.

“I suspect that’ll only happen if and when we get a genuine parliamentary democracy in which the PM is little more than the chair of the cabinet and national spokesman for government policy.”

Nice idea but utopian.

You can’t run a business, or a government by a show of hands. You need someone to be accountable and be in charge.

Not obviously related but i cant see where else to put it; does anyone know why, when Labour membership fell by 6% last year, members subs fell by 11% ? Im just curious, it doesnt seem to make sense.

This is a complete guess, but it seems plausible that in a recession more people chose to pay the discounted rate.

Grrrrr…..

I know this is not constructive but come on! We should have ALL parties involved…nay?

No, we shouldn’t. If you have everyone who can stump up the deposit to get on the ballot paper in a single constituency, there’ll be less chance for viewers to see the parties who might form a government debating, which is what most people tune in for. You could easily have 30 parties there, which would leave time for all of about two questions.

Personally I really like the idea expressed above of having three parties’ (Lab/Lib Dem/Tory) spokespersons on different issues having their own debates, then a one-on-one Brown vs Cameron. You could maybe have separate ones for Scotland, with Lab/Lib Dem/SNP instead.

“…less chance for viewers to see the parties who might form a government debating…”

Around a third of the country doesn’t want either Labour or the Tories to form a government, so what good does viewing a Cameron/Brown fix-up do for them? It’s basically just propaganda for FPTP.

As we get closer to the election, Lib Dems/Others are extremely unlikely to be on a combined 33% outside of Scotland/Wales. I’ve said there might need to be a separate debate for Scotland. But even if they are, your comment is slightly misleading unless you’re saying that every party – perhaps 20 or 30 or them – would get to participate on equal terms. If you’re talking about a manageable debate including Clegg as well as Brown/Cameron then the figure’s likely to be 20-22%.

Which is a pretty small minority. It’s not unlikely that a larger minority than that would prefer to see a more involved debate between Brown and Cameron than a more superficial three-way.

@sharmit yes you can! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n_Cooperative_Corporation

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