4,988 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on May 18, 2017 19:30:49 GMT
Anyone else watching?
PN has already said Australian points based system. Let's turn this into a drinking game !
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Post by Deleted on May 18, 2017 20:00:03 GMT
I frequently turn to drink when politicians start ... well, anything, actually.
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4,988 posts
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Post by Someone in a tree on May 18, 2017 20:05:12 GMT
I hope with the drink you are able to remain strong and stable ?
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Post by tmesis on May 18, 2017 20:22:02 GMT
When I drink I like it to be for the many and not the few.
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Post by d'James on May 18, 2017 20:52:26 GMT
I hope with the drink you are able to remain strong and stable ? Strong and stable is already a drinking game!! |
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Post by Phantom of London on May 18, 2017 21:50:39 GMT
Wait we spend billions of pounds collectively to run a 'democratic' country and the 2 main party leaders don't have the common decency to turn up and pitch to the British public and justify why we should elect them to run government.
Shame on those 2.
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Post by Phantom of London on May 18, 2017 23:53:03 GMT
Wait we spend billions of pounds collectively to run a 'democratic' country and the 2 main party leaders don't have the common decency to turn up and pitch to the British public and justify why we should elect them to run government. Shame on those 2. Well to be fair I don't believe the election should be won based on how well one party is able to conduct themselves on a TV show. They certainly did Cameron the world of good previously, simply because he had more charisma and showmanship than Brown or Miliband - it distracted from the policies and turned the debates into point scoring games. If May and Corbyn had been there I'd have watched, but frankly there's no point without them. This election campaign has been a complete snooze fest anyway. The press are trying to cover it, but even they seem to be doing so half heartedly. In fairness I think you have raised a couple of cracklings points, which are personalities and policies which you have articulated extremely well. |
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Post by Jan on May 19, 2017 6:04:13 GMT
Wait we spend billions of pounds collectively to run a 'democratic' country and the 2 main party leaders don't have the common decency to turn up and pitch to the British public and justify why we should elect them to run government. Shame on those 2. Well to be fair I don't believe the election should be won based on how well one party is able to conduct themselves on a TV show. They certainly did Cameron the world of good previously .... Actually the reason May didn't do this debate is because of Cameron's failure in the "I agree with Nick ..." TV debates which simply boosted the LibDem profile and vote and ended up with Cameron underperforming in the election and having to form a coalition government - the calculation by the Conservative strategists is that the debates preferentially benefit the smaller parties who otherwise get less coverage. I guess (but don't know) Labour declined to appear for a similar reason. |
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Post by vdcni on May 19, 2017 7:23:13 GMT
Given we've only had TV debates since 2010 I don't think they are really obligated to turn up - it's not a direct election for Prime Minister after all - but the optics don't look great.
No surprise May turned it down, she's dreadful at PMQ to the point when even Corbyn can generally score wins against her and Cameron used to handle him with ease. She also doesn't like being challenged and I doubt she would come over well in this kind of environment.
I don't understand why Corbyn didn't turn up though, it was the perfect opportunity to communicate directly with the public (since he always claims the media distort his views) and show him in contrast to the Prime Minister as willing to debate and tear into their manifesto which has so many attack points. Then again he also tends to mostly live in a bubble of his own support - he turns up at big events but they are loyalist rallies rather than true public events.
That said, I didn't watch. I live in a Lib Dem/Tory marginal so it will be Lib Dem for me - there's nothing really for me to decide.
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Post by Jan on May 19, 2017 8:00:49 GMT
No surprise May turned it down, she's dreadful at PMQ to the point when even Corbyn can generally score wins against her and Cameron used to handle him with ease. That's not the reason she turned it down. The reason is that the 2010 TV debates (which Cameron actually lobbied for in the first place) and which featured only the top three party leaders boosted the LibDem's and Nick Clegg's profile too much as a the "reasonable" centre ground between the other two. Although Cameron was personally quite good in this format in 2015 he was very obstructive about TV debates and ended up agreeing to only one with seven party leaders where they calculated it would dilute any advantage to the LibDems - having proposed TV debates in the first place he could have hardly done none. May is just following the same strategy to its logical conclusion. |
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Post by duncan on May 19, 2017 9:29:18 GMT
Well to be fair I don't believe the election should be won based on how well one party is able to conduct themselves on a TV show. They certainly did Cameron the world of good previously .... Actually the reason May didn't do this debate is because of Cameron's failure in the "I agree with Nick ..." TV debates which simply boosted the LibDem profile and vote and ended up with Cameron underperforming in the election and having to form a coalition government - the calculation by the Conservative strategists is that the debates preferentially benefit the smaller parties who otherwise get less coverage. I guess (but don't know) Labour declined to appear for a similar reason. The Liberals lost seats in 2010 from their2005 performance.
Cameron didn't underperform in 2010 either, he had the best swing from a Labour Govt to the Conservatives in decades.
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Post by vdcni on May 19, 2017 10:40:27 GMT
No surprise May turned it down, she's dreadful at PMQ to the point when even Corbyn can generally score wins against her and Cameron used to handle him with ease. That's not the reason she turned it down. The reason is that the 2010 TV debates (which Cameron actually lobbied for in the first place) and which featured only the top three party leaders boosted the LibDem's and Nick Clegg's profile too much as a the "reasonable" centre ground between the other two. Although Cameron was personally quite good in this format in 2015 he was very obstructive about TV debates and ended up agreeing to only one with seven party leaders where they calculated it would dilute any advantage to the LibDems - having proposed TV debates in the first place he could have hardly done none. May is just following the same strategy to its logical conclusion. You're welcome to think what you like. |
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Post by Jan on May 19, 2017 10:53:58 GMT
Actually the reason May didn't do this debate is because of Cameron's failure in the "I agree with Nick ..." TV debates which simply boosted the LibDem profile and vote and ended up with Cameron underperforming in the election and having to form a coalition government - the calculation by the Conservative strategists is that the debates preferentially benefit the smaller parties who otherwise get less coverage. I guess (but don't know) Labour declined to appear for a similar reason. The Liberals lost seats in 2010 from their2005 performance.
Cameron didn't underperform in 2010 either, he had the best swing from a Labour Govt to the Conservatives in decades.
I'm not debating this or giving my own opinion, I'm just telling you what the actual Conservative strategy is. They believe that in the 2010 election the advantage gained by Nick Clegg in the TV debates lead to the 1% swing (in the popular vote) to the LibDems overall which in certain marginal seats denied Cameron enough seats to win an overall majority. The swing to the Conservatives was 3.7% (in the popular vote), they needed only a fraction more to get an overall majority. The number of seats won by the LibDems themselves is not relevant. The alternative view that May is not doing the debates because she would be no good at them simply doesn't explain why Cameron refused any direct head-to-head debates with Labour and LibDems in 2015 which is exactly what he had proposed himself in 2010. |
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Post by Jan on May 19, 2017 11:00:32 GMT
That's not the reason she turned it down. The reason is that the 2010 TV debates (which Cameron actually lobbied for in the first place) and which featured only the top three party leaders boosted the LibDem's and Nick Clegg's profile too much as a the "reasonable" centre ground between the other two. Although Cameron was personally quite good in this format in 2015 he was very obstructive about TV debates and ended up agreeing to only one with seven party leaders where they calculated it would dilute any advantage to the LibDems - having proposed TV debates in the first place he could have hardly done none. May is just following the same strategy to its logical conclusion. You're welcome to think what you like. I'm not telling you what I think, I'm just reporting what their strategy is. To believe your suggestion you'd have to tell me why Cameron refused to do head-to-head debates with Labour and LibDems in 2015 as he himself had specifically requested and done in 2010 and agreed in the end only to a single debate with all seven leaders present - in fact Lynton Crosby (who ran his campaign then and is running May's campaign now) didn't want him to do that one either. Crosby was not there in 2010 and his analysis of that was that Clegg's performance in the first TV debate seriously damaged Cameron's campaign and eventual vote share. I'm not sure if you remember that debate, the papers were full of "Cleggmania" stories afterward. All this is old news actually, whoever the Conservative candidate was Crosby would have stopped them doing TV debates. More interesting is why Corbyn has refused. |
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2017 11:41:42 GMT
On balance I've come to believe that such debates are a bad idea, running the risk of people not engaging with issues, just on how somebody performs.
There is also the risk of a populist demagogue with broadcast experience and no depth using them to rabble rouse by replacing intelligent discourse with simplistic solutions and bigotry. Not that it could ever happen in a functioning democracy of course.....
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2017 14:23:02 GMT
On balance I've come to believe that such debates are a bad idea, running the risk of people not engaging with issues, just on how somebody performs. Not a bad thing. I shall take both into consideration when I vote. |
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Post by Jan on May 19, 2017 15:52:43 GMT
On balance I've come to believe that such debates are a bad idea, running the risk of people not engaging with issues, just on how somebody performs. On the other hand they give smaller parties (if invited) the chance to present their policies to a much bigger TV audience, an opportunity they don't get in mainstream media coverage where they are often relegated to a fig-leaf announcement "... other candidates standing in the constituency are ...." merely to simulate balance. On related topic, I see some in the Guardian lobbying for mandatory voting (to try to boost future left-wing candidates by ensuring younger voters actually turn out and vote). Interestingly when they introduced this in Australia they found the apolitical/apathetic younger voters who were forced to turn up just tended to tick boxes entirely at random to get out as quickly as possible, so I fear any attempt to make more people "engage with issues" just won't work. |
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2017 16:22:09 GMT
mandatory voting [...] Interestingly when they introduced this in Australia they found the apolitical/apathetic younger voters who were forced to turn up just tended to tick boxes entirely at random to get out as quickly as possible, so I fear any attempt to make more people "engage with issues" just won't work. That's always been the problem. You can force people to vote. You can't force them to care. I think this is the biggest problem with the first past the post system. If you live somewhere where the result isn't balanced on a knife edge then it's easy to feel that your vote won't make a difference and your opinion isn't valued. You're never going to get people to take an interest if they feel that way. Where I live there's not a massive majority for one candidate but it's large enough for there to be no prospect of a change, so for all practical purposes we might as well not bother having an election here at all. How do you convince people that they can make a difference when they've never seen that happen? |
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Post by Jan on May 19, 2017 16:27:36 GMT
mandatory voting [...] Interestingly when they introduced this in Australia they found the apolitical/apathetic younger voters who were forced to turn up just tended to tick boxes entirely at random to get out as quickly as possible, so I fear any attempt to make more people "engage with issues" just won't work. That's always been the problem. You can force people to vote. You can't force them to care. I think this is the biggest problem with the first past the post system. If you live somewhere where the result isn't balanced on a knife edge then it's easy to feel that your vote won't make a difference and your opinion isn't valued. You're never going to get people to take an interest if they feel that way. Where I live there's not a massive majority for one candidate but it's large enough for there to be no prospect of a change, so for all practical purposes we might as well not bother having an election here at all. How do you convince people that they can make a difference when they've never seen that happen? In Australia they have a form of AV voting so potentially more individual votes make a difference but they still found this random voting behaviour (in fact more of it because voters have to fill in several boxes with numbered preferences). |
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Post by Deleted on May 19, 2017 16:44:49 GMT
I don't understand why Corbyn didn't turn up though, it was the perfect opportunity to communicate directly with the public (since he always claims the media distort his views) and show him in contrast to the Prime Minister as willing to debate and tear into their manifesto which has so many attack points. Oh he probably was there, it's just the right-wing press has convinced you he wasn't. |
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Post by theglenbucklaird on May 19, 2017 17:10:50 GMT
Well to be fair I don't believe the election should be won based on how well one party is able to conduct themselves on a TV show. They certainly did Cameron the world of good previously .... ..." TV debates which simply boosted the LibDem profile and vote and ended up with Cameron underperforming in the election and having to form a coalition government - the calculation by the Conservative strategists is that the debates preferentially benefit the smaller parties who otherwise get less coverage. I guess (but don't know) Labour declined to appear for a similar reason. Are you sure? I think it is because she is not very good at it. |
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Post by Jan on May 19, 2017 17:18:13 GMT
Actually the reason May didn't do this debate is because of Cameron's failure in the "I agree with Nick ..." TV debates which simply boosted the LibDem profile and vote and ended up with Cameron underperforming in the election and having to form a coalition government - the calculation by the Conservative strategists is that the debates preferentially benefit the smaller parties who otherwise get less coverage. I guess (but don't know) Labour declined to appear for a similar reason. Are you sure? I think it is because she is not very good at it. Yep. 100% sure. After the Cleggmania first debate in 2010 Lynton Crosby decided such debates have no benefit at all for the incumbent (he had anyway followed the same policy in Australia) and tried to stop Cameron taking part in even one debate in 2015. You may well be right that May would be no good at it but that is not relevant to their strategy - Cameron was very good at it but tried to pull out in 2015 anyway. Read any inside account of the 2015 campaign and this is all explained, also it is common knowledge inside the current Conservative campaign. |
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Post by sherriebythesea on May 19, 2017 22:59:27 GMT
At least you don't have the problem we have right now. Our (cough cough) president going on a foreign tour. It's basically a toss up if he will either
1. embarrass and humiliate the US or
2. start an international incident.
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Post by theglenbucklaird on May 20, 2017 5:57:17 GMT
Are you sure? I think it is because she is not very good at it. Yep. 100% sure. After the Cleggmania first debate in 2010 Lynton Crosby decided such debates have no benefit at all for the incumbent (he had anyway followed the same policy in Australia) and tried to stop Cameron taking part in even one debate in 2015. You may well be right that May would be no good at it but that is not relevant to their strategy - Cameron was very good at it but tried to pull out in 2015 anyway. Read any inside account of the 2015 campaign and this is all explained, also it is common knowledge inside the current Conservative campaign. Sorry Jan, took that comment a bit to heart. I wasn't disagreeing that the PM has no benefit in attending live debates, just making the point May is terrible and is the first leader ever 'to be hidden away'. Not a chance she will want to go near Corbyn debating. |
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