And here’s your starter for No 10: who should chair Britain’s first live prime ministerial debate? There was, yesterday, lots of conferring.
As the prospect of Britain’s first televised election showdown looks more likely, broadcasters are jostling for their moment in campaign history.
No sooner had The Times revealed that advisers to the three main political party leaders had touted Sir David Frost as a possible host, than David Dimbleby, the chairman of Question Time on BBC One, was keen to show his interest in the job.
John Humphrys, Adam Boulton, Andrew Neil and Justin Webb are among the other interviewers keen to take on the job — but they cautioned yesterday that the rigidly scripted format could blunt the edge of even the sharpest inquisitors. Dimbleby said: “The risk is that there are so many rules written about how the debate would be conducted that the whole thing becomes emasculated. In the last US presidential elections, the voters didn’t really learn much that was new about Obama and McCain.”
Discussions about a possible pre-election debate came as an opinion poll suggested last night that the Tories could be heading for a 96-seat Commons majority next year. David Cameron, the Conservative leader, would win a 42 per cent share of the vote, with Labour on 28 per cent and the Liberal Democrats on 17 per cent, according to a YouGov survey for The Sun. The poll is the first of the party conference season, just months before Gordon Brown has to call an election.
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Mr Cameron will be buoyed by results that show voters believe he would make a better Prime Minister than the Labour leader by a factor of two to one. But only 34 per cent think that the Tory leader has the right team to lead the country, compared with 42 per cent who disagree. YouGov surveyed 1,996 adults before August 28.
On the television debate, Dimbleby believes that the Question Time format would work because a live studio audience comes up with the questions, allowing Mr Brown, Mr Cameron and Nick Clegg (who would be standing at lecterns) to engage with voters and argue with each other.
Humphrys, the Today presenter, said: “I imagine it’s capable of being a very frustrating experience for the chairman. Which is not to say one wouldn’t want to do it, obviously because its part of history.”
He added: “You almost feel a twinge of sympathy for whoever gets to chair it — you have so little freedom to do what you’d like to do.
“Imagine if you were standing there as chairman and leader X will say something outrageous and you will desperately want to say, ‘For God’s sake, come off it, how can you’, but you won’t be allowed to because he’s allowed his two minutes for that answer and you won’t be allowed to interrupt.”
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Adam Boulton, the political editor of Sky News, said that while he would “love to do it, I don’t think it matters who would chair it. It’s about getting them [the party leaders] to talk. Who can remember who chaired the Kennedy-Nixon debate?”
Sky has already indicated that it intends to have a live debate, regardless, and will push ahead with it even if Mr Cameron and Mr Clegg are the only participants. Mr Boulton added: “It’s better to see Cameron and Clegg debate together rather than watch them interviewed separately ad nauseam.”
Justin Webb, who led the BBC’s coverage of the Obama-McCain presidential election and has just returned from America to take up the role as one of the presenters on Today, said: “The US model can be quite a formal one. Some between Obama and McCain were quite cringe-making. I’m not sure we learnt much that was new. Obama came across as aloof and McCain as tricky.” So would he chair such a debate? “I am not going to turn it down but I am very realistic.”
Andrew Neil, the former editor of The Sunday Times, said: “I would love to do it, but the BBC is not going to ask me. Brown has refused to be interviewed by me for five years. Cameron’s rules were absurd. They wanted the interview outside, standing up, so they could show that he was taller than me. I am not holding my breath.”
In the frame
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6/4 Sir David Frost
5/1 Jeremy Paxman
10/1 Adam Boulton, David Dimbleby
16/1 Kirsty Young
20/1 John Humphrys
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25/1 Andrew Marr
33/1 Jeremy Vine, Nick Robinson, Jonathan Dimbleby
50/1 Andrew Neil, Huw Edwards, Jon Snow
100/1 Andrew Rawnsley, Jon Pienaar, Nicky Campbell, Sir Trevor McDonald
250/1 Piers Morgan
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500/1 Ant and Dec
Source: Ladbrokes