General election debates: blazing an online trail
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Version 0 of 1. Britain likes to think of itself as the mother of democracies. England is justly proud of the liberties enshrined in Magna Carta, whose 800th anniversary falls next year. Yet British elections have been painfully slow to embrace the democratic opportunities of new media. BBC television services existed from the 1930s, and televised debates between the party leaders were discussed before most general elections from 1964. Yet it took until 2010 before such debates finally reached the screens. Even now there is no guarantee that similar debates will take place in 2015, as a House of Lords select committee warned a few days ago. The contrast with other democracies is a humbling one. Countries such as the US, Australia, Germany, France and many others have had leaders' debates for decades. It is not acceptable for there to be any such doubt about the possibility of leaders' debates in the 2015 election. The public certainly expects such debates to take place. Even in an era when politics struggles to connect with the electorate, the head-to-head events reach large audiences. They stimulate the public's interest. They energise wider debate. They engage the voters, especially the young and the detached. Above all, they open up the leaders of our parties to scrutiny as potential prime ministers or coalition partners. Leaders' debates should go ahead next year. Important though it is, television is not the only place to which voters turn in elections for news and debate. Indeed, television's days as the prime source of political news may be numbered. In the 2012 US presidential election, more than a third of voters got their election information from the internet, almost as large a proportion as gained it from local or national television. Among voters in this country under 44, half now get their news online, compared to a third who get their news from television. Britain has 55 million internet users. That is why the Guardian, in partnership with the Daily Telegraph and YouTube, is proposing that one of the leaders' debates in 2015 should be held online rather than all of them taking place on television. The detailed format should be negotiated, but the moderator of the online debate ought to be a woman. The world is riding a communications revolution. At the same time, Britain, like other advanced democracies, is living through a crisis of political trust and disengagement. There is a compelling case, both for democracy and civic self-interest, why the next election could harness the scale and interactivity of the web to the benefit of serious politics. The British system needs to stop asking "why change?" and start asking "why not change?". In 2015, the British electoral system has an opportunity to be a trailblazer not a laggard. It should seize that opportunity with enthusiasm. |