Nicola Sturgeon has announced she is to snub the upcoming Holyrood election Question Time special, instead sending the party’s deputy leader Keith Brown in her place. The SNP argues Sturgeon has been “scrutinised by the media nearly every day over the last year”. Whether she ever provided any answers is another question…
It makes cynical political sense for Sturgeon to not take part – she has the most to lose. Guido thought it’d be interesting, however, to see how the SNP reacted when both Theresa May and Boris Johnson also skipped party election debates in 2017 and 2019. After May announced her refusal to debate, Angus Robertson said it showed an “unwillingness to debate showed a lack of belief in her arguments.”:
“If the Prime Minister is so confident of her hard-Brexit, pro-austerity, anti-immigration case why won’t she debate opposition leaders?
“Can the Prime Minister tell people why she is running scared of a televised debate with Nicola Sturgeon?”
When Boris refused to debate Sturgeon in 2019, the SNP put out a Facebook graphic accusing him of “running scared” and being a “big feartie”.
Sturgeon hasn’t been having a great campaign, getting dragged into debate scraps with Douglas Ross, and appearing relatively low-energy. Today’s poll has the SNP’s constituency vote share down by 3%, and their list voting intention down to 38%. It’s amazing someone who’s hosted unchallenging live television briefings almost every day throughout the last year has suddenly become camera-shy…
Lovely Christmassy Message…
Even with this very clap-friendly audience, they couldn’t drown out the derisive laughter…
The first head-to-head one-on-one general election debate in British history is set to take place, live from Salford, tonight at 8pm on ITV. Following Jo Swinson’s failed attempt to sue her way onto the stage, Boris will take on Jeremy Corbyn for the first time without a baying House of Commons backing either of the leaders up. ITV’s Julie Etchingham is in the chair, making for a similar set up to the Boris-Hunt debate during the Tory Leadership contest. Will Boris succeed in “peddling optimism” again tonight..?
Boris has had coaching from the same guru who helped prepare him for the EU referendum debate. Last night he took the unusual step of writing to Jezza setting out four questions to answer ahead of tonight. All of them focus on EU issues – expect Boris to bring them up again this evening…
Ten and a half million people watched the first debates in 2010, by 2017 that number fell to four and a half million. Tonight is expected to be higher stakes, and higher viewing figures. YouGov will be on hand with a snap poll soon after the debate is over – so we won’t have long to wait to see what this first big campaign moment could change…
Downing Street are very bullish on making a May v Corbyn TV debate happen. They have lined up the BBC, Labour say they prefer ITV’s format and earlier timing. The Tories think May’s concrete plan will contrast well with Corbyn’s evasiveness and ambiguity with viewers. They claim Seumas Milne knows that and is making excuses to avoid the head-to-head. We have put our chicken on standby for Seumas if he continues to try to wriggle out of the debate. Guido thinks it will be a laugh to watch May pretend she is enthusiastic about Brexit and Corbyn pretend he would prefer Britain to remain in the EU…
Adam Boulton’s proposal that an independent debate commission be set up to avoid the farce of past general elections whereby they either didn’t happen or the formats were stitched up between political parties and broadcasters, making for dire television is worth considering.
Should there be an independent Debate Commission to run general election television debates? #MakeDebatesHappen
— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) September 18, 2018
If there were to be a commission Guido would not want it to be either statutory or at taxpayers’ expense…
