Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Another opportunity to do something constructive - demand the SNP's inclusion in the main TV leaders' debates by responding to the BBC Trust consultation

As I mentioned last week, the BBC Trust are running a consultation on the draft guidelines for coverage of the general election campaign next spring.  In spite of the misleading impression that was originally given, the consultation is not specifically about the proposed leaders' debates.  However, it's still a golden opportunity for us to raise that issue in huge numbers.  Below you can read the submission I'm about to send in.  If you'd like to make your own submission, please click HERE.

Question 2. Are there any omissions from the proposed Guidelines and appendices?

By far the most important omission from the guidelines is their failure to specifically ensure fairness in any TV leaders' debate organised by the BBC, and indeed fairness across all leaders' debates that are agreed as a "package" by the BBC and other broadcasters.  Regrettably, no-one can have any confidence that the general guidelines will deliver fair debates, for the simple reason that they comprehensively failed to meet that task in the last general election.  Perhaps with an eye on ratings, the BBC and other broadcasters departed from decades of good practice in 2010 by completely excluding two parties that have major party status in constituent nations of the UK, and that have enjoyed unbroken representation in the House of Commons since the 1960s and 1970s respectively.  That this decision altered the result of the election is beyond reasonable dispute.  The SNP, for example, were immediately overtaken by the Liberal Democrats in Scottish opinion polls after the broadcast of the first debate, which was entirely unsurprising given that the leader of the Liberal Democrats had just had the unbroken attention of the Scottish electorate for one-third of a ninety-minute debate, from which the SNP leader was totally absent.  

The BBC's function in an election campaign is to facilitate debate, not to set arbitrary boundaries on debate or to "steer" voters towards a desired conclusion.  The guidelines must therefore ensure that there is no repeat of the 2010 debacle.  In doing so, the BBC will be returning to the good practice that existed in general elections prior to 2010.  In the 2001 campaign, for example, the nearest equivalent to leaders' debates was the appearance of each individual party leader in a series of Question Time specials.  The three programmes featuring the leaders of major parties that were standing throughout Scotland, England and Wales were broadcast on a UK-wide basis, while the two programmes featuring the leaders of major parties that were standing only in Scotland or Wales were broadcast only in the relevant nation.  In this way, fairness was achieved in the coverage of the four-party contests in Scotland and Wales, and also the three-party contest in England.  The 2005 campaign was slightly different, because all three leaders of the major London-based parties took part in a single Question Time edition, albeit they appeared in separate segments and did not debate with each other.  As before, balance was achieved in Scotland and Wales by broadcasting a Question Time special in each country featuring the SNP or Plaid Cymru leader, which ensured that those parties received exactly the same amount of airtime as their three opponents.

These precedents point to elementary ways in which fairness can be achieved in any leaders' debates.  One option is that the so-called "UK debates" from last time could form the template for debates to be broadcast only in England during the forthcoming campaign.  (They did, after all, reflect the party system of England only, and not the rest of the UK.)  Those debates could be fully replaced in Scotland and Wales with four-way or five-way debates that give equal airtime to the SNP and Plaid Cymru respectively.  The obvious alternative option would be UK-wide debates in which the SNP and Plaid Cymru are fully represented.   The guidelines should therefore make clear that the BBC must choose between these two equally-valid options, and that there will be no third option of excluding the SNP and Plaid from the main debates that are broadcast in Scotland and Wales, as happened in 2010.

The guidelines should also make abundantly clear that any second-string debates broadcast in Scotland and Wales in addition to UK-wide debates cannot in any way correct the imbalance that would be created by excluding the SNP and Plaid from the UK-wide debates.  This is for two reasons - firstly, there is ample evidence from 2010 that the public quite rightly saw the extra debates as of much lesser importance and largely ignored them, and secondly, the extra debates would almost certainly include the three largest London-based parties, thus giving those parties even more airtime over and above the disproportionate amount they receive in the UK-wide debates.  There would be absolutely no 'corrective' effect of the sort achieved by the extra programmes in 2005, which by featuring the SNP and Plaid Cymru leaders only successfully redressed the imbalance that would otherwise have existed.

The guidelines should also emphasise that no tolerance will be given to attempts to use sophistry to justify the broadcast in Scotland and Wales of unfair debates that exclude the SNP and Plaid Cymru.  In 2010, it appears that the BBC knew perfectly well that they were departing from good practice in respect of parliamentary elections, and attempted to excuse their actions by redefining the leaders' debates as "Prime Ministerial Debates", ie. debates that were only for Prime Ministerial "candidates".  The guidelines should restate the obvious - the UK does not have elections for the post of Prime Minister, and there is consequently no such thing as a "Prime Ministerial candidate".  In the context of a parliamentary election, leaders' debates can only be justified if they are debates between the leaders of parties that have representation in parliament.  By definition, this includes the SNP (who have had unbroken representation in the Commons since 1967) and Plaid Cymru (who have had unbroken representation in the Commons since 1974).

It should also be pointed out that the excuse offered in 2010 didn't make sense anyway - in a parliamentary system, it is perfectly possible for a party to supply the Prime Minister on the basis of a small minority of seats.  There are countless examples from around the world of this happening.  The best-known example from UK history is Ramsay MacDonald continuing as Prime Minister after his party (National Labour) won just 13 out of 625 seats in the 1931 general election.

The need for the guidelines to explicitly set out a requirement for fair debates has become even more apparent in recent weeks, with the revelation that the BBC have learned no lessons at all from the 2010 debacle, and are once again proposing to totally exclude the SNP and Plaid Cymru from the main debates to be broadcast in Scotland and Wales.  Curiously, though, they are proposing to include UKIP this time, which weakens the 'logic' for the exclusion of the SNP and Plaid still further.  The Chief Political Adviser to the BBC, Ric Bailey, recently claimed on a radio programme that the line-up for the debates was being determined on "very objective criteria", based on the result of the last general election (which of course was in any case tainted by the broadcast of unfair debates) and also opinion poll evidence since that election.  And yet at the last election, the SNP won six seats, Plaid Cymru won three, and UKIP won zero.  At present, opinion polls are suggesting that the SNP will be the third largest party in the next House of Commons, ahead of the Liberal Democrats and also well ahead of UKIP.  There has never been a time since the last general election when the opinion poll average has suggested that UKIP will win more seats than the SNP - the reverse has always been predicted.  The guidelines should therefore make clear that there is no objective criteria that could possibly justify the exclusion of the SNP from the main debates while UKIP are included.

The fact that the SNP are currently projected to become the UK's third biggest party in parliamentary terms (they're already the third biggest in terms of membership) ought to give the BBC pause for thought that extends beyond even the fundamental issue of fairness.  If the SNP win 20, 30 or 40 seats in May and become the "kingmakers" in a hung parliament, viewers throughout the UK will be utterly bewildered that this development seemingly came out of the blue, due to the BBC and other broadcasters deliberately "hiding" a key part of the election story from them during the debates.

It's also worth noting that under the current proposals, the BBC will include all major parties that have a male leader, and will arbitrarily exclude all three major parties that have a female leader.  It's obviously impossible to know whether this is merely an unfortunate coincidence, but at the very least it's not going to look good.

Lastly, the guidelines must address the dreadful error that was made in putting together the live audiences for the 2010 leaders' debates.  Not only were the SNP and Plaid excluded from the debates themselves, but their voters were literally banned from being part of the audiences, due to the insistence that all audience members must come from the immediate vicinity of the debate's location in England.  The guidelines should make clear that all debate audiences must be drawn from throughout the United Kingdom, thus enabling people who vote for all major parties to be fairly represented.

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Once again, if you'd like to make your own submission to the BBC Trust consultation, the link is HERE.

40 comments:

  1. Can't better that James and hope that Plaid submits something similar. Too much to hope however that the BBC will admit they are not being impartial---nanny knows best!

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  2. Good post.

    I was wondering what the leaders likeability/approval ratings were in 2010?

    Are we perhaps paying too much attention to the effect the debates have? Point being that if the approval ratings are really low, will people watch them?

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  3. I will make a submission to remind them that this is about democracy and not prime time television and ratings chasing.

    My only comment about your submission James, unless my skim reading has missed it, is the complete absence of any reference to N. Ireland.

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    1. No, I didn't mention Northern Ireland, if only because that would have taken several more paragraphs. With Northern Ireland having its own party system, there's a reasonable argument that it doesn't make a huge amount of difference if the English debates are broadcast there, because Labour and the Liberal Democrats don't even stand in NI and the Tories always receive a negligible vote, and therefore there's no real advantage gained. That's certainly not the position in Scotland and Wales.

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    2. Perhaps I shouldn't have said the Tories "always" receive a negligible vote - 2010 was a bit different because of the electoral pact with the UUP. But even that was a failure.

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    3. the tories no longer stand in NI after the 2010 debacle.
      Labour is affiliated with a sister party SDLP, on the skids like labour UK and labour in the Republic of Ireland.
      UKIP has, I believe, one representative in the Ulster Assembly (Not westminster as far as I remember).
      Lib Dems are affiliated with the Alliance party with Naomi Long representing East Belfast at Westminster. No others as far as I am aware.
      The other NI representatives in Westminster are the DUP ( 12 seats? religious fundamentalists, creationists, no gay blood for transfusions, no abortion etc etc) and Sinn Fein (8 seats? republicans, left of centre, who are abstentionists).
      Figures may not be exact as I am going from memory but do give overall picture.
      In other words, NI has very little to do with mainline westminster parties. It's sort of semi-detached from the UK (republicans have one foot out the door and are waiting the opportunity to get both out!!).
      NI hasn't really belonged to the "family" since the 1920 govt of ireland Act (now repealed since Peace treaties were signed)
      best to all
      ben

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    4. The Tories do still stand in Northern Ireland - they got 0.7% of the vote in the European elections this year. That means they were beaten even by NI21, which is quite an achievement in the circumstances!

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  4. They're not going to listen. It's really pissing in the wind to write complaints. You'll just be fobbed off with the usual response. I also share chalks' doubts about how influential televised debates are in the UK.

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    1. Stoat, you're not even paying attention - it's a submission to a formal consultation, not a complaint. I've already had an email that reads "thankyou for your submission", which is pretty much the response I was hoping for.

      You have such an attitude of "there's no point doing anything, it's all hopeless, everything is predetermined". I don't know why you even bothered campaigning for a No vote, because presumably you already "knew" the result! I've never asked you - why do you actually oppose independence (or support the UK, or whichever way you want to frame it)?

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    2. Well, you're right that I wasn't paying attention, my attention span something leaves a bit to be desired. Though I certainly don't think that everything is predetermined, just this particular thing. I tend to take the view that history occurs as a series of accidents. As for why I campaigned against independence, I tend to treat my own political beliefs as a purely personal matter.

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    3. "I tend to treat my own political beliefs as a purely personal matter."

      Really? You've already told us that you campaigned during the referendum, so how did that work? Did you say to people "you should vote No, but I'm not going to tell you why"?!

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    4. When campaigning and talking to voters, I always focused on why they should vote No and why it was in their interests to. My own personals views and beliefs along with my reasons for voting No were utterly irrelevant to the campaign. It was never about me. I didn't campaign for Better Together because I wanted to shout from the rooftops about how passionate I was. It was a matter of getting information to as many people as I could as quickly as I could.

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    5. If it wasn't about you, why were you intervening? Presumably you were doing it on the basis of beliefs that you kept secret from the people you were trying to influence. That means it was about you.

      If you were just trying to "help" people and draw out their own beliefs and best interests, it would have been perfectly possible to do that in a neutral way.

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    6. It all depends on what you believe to be in the people's best interests. Most of the Yes campaigners campaigned for independence because they believed that independence was more in the interests of the people than remaining in the UK. That's why they were campaigning for Yes, rather than running a more neutral public information campaign. I've also heard many Yes campaigners bemoan the decision that No voters took, saying that independence was really in their interests, they just didn't realise it yet (See Salmond's patronising drivel about "Deferred Yesses). So we all put forward what we believe to be in the people's interests, whether Yes or No campaigners. Even if we feel that those who vote the other way are misguided. You give them information, we give them information. Then they decide for themselves what's the most plausible.

      It's just that my campaigning methods were always more focused on bringing relevant information to the people, tailored to their day to day concerns, rather than regaling them with tales of my own thrilling journey of self-discovery.

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    7. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm deducing two things from what you've said -

      1) You think independence would have been so calamitous that it was in the rational self-interest of every single person in Scotland to vote against it.

      2) That wasn't the main reason you campaigned against independence, and you instead had a over-riding private reason that you're keeping secret.

      Well, I've heard of the "silent majority", but this is ridiculous. Even the campaigners won't tell us why they voted No.

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    8. 1) Yes indeedy! and 2) Who knows?

      But it needs to be said that Better Together was a broad church, many of us having completely different motivations to one other. I didn't care about what their motivations were, I was purely concerned with campaign tactics. Maybe you'd have better luck with other Better Together campaigners, though most of them want to put it all behind them and move on.

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    9. "most of them want to put it all behind them and move on"

      Poor dears. The democratic process was such a trauma for them, wasn't it? The way things are going, I'm not sure they're going to be in luck...

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    10. Yes, I received my reply:

      "Thank you for your submission to the BBC Trust's Election Guidelines consultation. The Trust will take the consultation responses into account and publish the results of this consultation on its website, together with the final guidelines and appendices with guidance, once approved by the Trust. We anticipate that this will be in March 2015."


      March 2015 - too late already for a lot of unbalanced coverage, and too late to dictate the format of many grossly unbalanced and unrepresentative programs. Another whitewash job from the pathetic BBC (Lack of ) Trust).

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  5. It's not a complaint. It's a submission to their consultation. Which may just be a pedantic point, as I don't imagine they pay too much attention to them either.

    It's hard to know how much impact the debates have. "Cleggmania" may have been overstated, but the Lib Dems did achieve (I think) their best vote share of all time. In 2005, their good performance could be largely attributed to opposing the war. Other than the debates, what explanation was there in 2010?

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  6. James: O/T but I was just wondering why you haven't covered/included the latest ICM Scottish subsample. It tells a familiar (but welcome) story: SNP 42%, Lab 25%.

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    1. I haven't included it yet because it was published after I did the last update.

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    2. There's Ashcroft too. Labour on a dizzying 12% compared to the SNP on 43%.

      I think the Tory vote of 27% is maybe a little optimistic though.

      Could be that people are now confusing Labour and Tory?

      ;-)

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  7. Personally I would only have a single representative from the 'three main parties' as their policies are all much of a muchness. Then there would be space for a nationalist representative (one of PC, SNP, Sinn Fein), a far right (DUP or UKIP) and a Green. That way viewers would be able to detect genuine policy differences and it would be a more stimulating debate. (Id also have a socialist but can't think of any in the UK parliament).

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  8. Wondering if submissions are now closed? Feeling as you do, James, that it's valuable the BBC know how people feel, I've written my piece but cannot get your links to work and tried another browser, tried search engine for the URL attached to your link - they all say no page found. Dang! Perhaps they don't really want us to give our opinions?

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    1. The link is still working for me, so it may have just been a temporary problem. Submissions will remain open for a long time - as far as I can see, a closing date hasn't even been announced yet.

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    2. I didn't think they were closing so quickly, so thank you for that info. I'll keep trying. I WILL have my say! One way and another... lol Gosh... haven't been on the BBC news site for ages and from the content I saw when trying to find their submission page, I won't be a regular there either, any time soon! *shaking head at their 'top stories'... dearie me.* PS: I so enjoy reading your blog. You're so very good at putting MY exasperation with the current political system, into words.

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    3. Thankyou! Actually, if the link doesn't work, the simplest thing to do is give you the email address for submissions -

      electionguidelines.consultation@bbc.co.uk

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    4. That's marvellous, thank you!! I did try to work my way into those pages again, but it sure didn't want to let me in! 'Page Error', 'Cannot Find this page' was the message to me every time I clicked for the 'BBC Trust' page! After using a fourth browser and registering TWICE, it let me have my say! What a palaver! Perhaps that is the whole point of the 'run-around'. Tire us out to the point we give up. But I've never been anything but persistent. Lol!

      Thanks to your email addie, I have now had my say and have made it clear that I won't be satisfied with anything but debating privileges for all Parties involved in the Election (particularly the SNP in view of their great number of members and high Poll ratings) to have their say. Anything else is totally unfair and the 'British' notion of democracy just a tired old cliche.

      By the way, on looking through the guidelines of the Consultation, I couldn't help noticing and laughing a little at their opening statement; "The BBC is required by its 2006 Charter and Agreement to ensure that matters of political controversy and matters of public policy are covered with due impartiality." Soooo... why is a Consultation actually necessary??? Surely that word 'impartiality' would imply the other parties would all automatically be allowed their say at fair debate without any need for a 'consultation'?? Perhaps I'm not that au fait with the word 'impartiality' and its various meanings...

      Anyway - I note the closing date is January 12, 2015. Still plenty of time to get as many submissions in as possible to encourage the BBC to do the right thing! Having said that, at this time of year, time really flies! So perhaps this should be at the top of the 'to do' list? Anyway - thanks again, Jame.

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    5. Ooops! Somehow the 's' was knocked off your name. I meant ' Thanks again, JAMES'! My apologies.

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  9. I believe it is vital that all people of the United Kingdom should be able to see represntatives of all the political parties at present operating in the UK beng able to debate openly on television in order that the electorate make the most informed choice. It is undemocratic to say the least not to allow the leading Scottish , Welsh and Northern Irish parties to have their say.

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  10. Don't give Stoat such a hard time - he has years yet, hinging roon the necks of Alasdair Darling and Gordon Brown. What a hideous fate for all ermine. He has as much entitlement.to promote his weird views as any of us.

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  11. James, you don't mention the Greens. Have they now been included in the proposed line up for the debates?

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    1. No, the broadcasters haven't budged at all yet.

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  12. "The three programmes featuring the leaders of major parties that were standing throughout Scotland, England and Wales were broadcast on a UK-wide basis, while the two programmes featuring the leaders of major parties that were standing only in Scotland or Wales were broadcast only in the relevant nation."

    They showed the wee debates in England, albeit at a time when few people would have been watching.

    http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/2001-05-15#at-23.40

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    1. Ah, OK, I didn't know that. They weren't "wee debates", though - they were question and answer programmes featuring the leaders of SNP and Plaid, which exactly replicated what had been done for the three London party leaders. That's the clear precedent that was ripped up by the BBC and other broadcasters in 2010.

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  13. The key to the Guidelines is 3.1.2: "Determining appropriate levels of coverage should take into account levels of past and current electoral support (see Appendices)."

    It's arguably the most important part of the Guidelines, yet that's all we get, a pathetic one-liner, and even when relegated to the Appendix it just repeats it. It needs to be changed to include a reference to polling data, and their possible results in number of seats in the House of Commons - e.g. 54 seats for the SNP, holding the balance of power. England Local elections should also be considered differently to the General Election.

    I've made my submission accordingly.

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  14. James, are you going to keep your iref Y/N PoP going?

    I don't see any reason why not given the last two polls for this suggested Yes gains. A wee update would be good here, featuring all last minute pre-ref polls and those done subsequently.

    Iref polls will continue; they've been a feature of Scottish politics for decades and given support for indy has hit an all time historical (confirmed) high, then we can imagine they may feature more frequently that in the past.

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    1. I'm not sure how meaningful it would be to have a Poll of Polls that is five-sevenths pre-referendum and only two-sevenths post-referendum. But maybe once we have another one or two, it would be possible to do a PoP solely composed of post-referendum polls.

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  15. It's getting a bit silly now. The latest Ipsos MORI gives Ed lower approval ratings than IDS at his nadir.

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    1. UK-wide:
      32% Con
      29% Lab
      14% UKIP
      9% Lib
      8% SNP
      7% Green

      Scotland subsample:
      59% SNP
      14% Lab
      12% Con
      8% Green
      4% Lib
      2% UKIP

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