Who has the most to loose from the Leaders Debates?

Tonight will see the first of the three Leaders Debates that have been floating around for the past six months or so. So unless you have been hiding under a rock you are unlikely to have missed them no matter how much you wished you had. Admittedly the format of the debates isn’t exactly that thrilling with the audience barred from clapping, booing and it seems: from the seventy-six different rules showing any independent thought at all. Add to that the strictly controlled audience selection process we may be looking at the most boring couple of hours in recent political history.

Tonight’s debate will air at 8:30pm on ITV hosted by Alistair Stewart who won’t be pinning down the three leaders but merely fielding the questions from the audience. Which could mean the whole exercise is a whole waste of time if no-one is going to challenge any of the leaders and hold them down until they give a straight answer.


But who has the chance of “winning” the debate and who needs to appear to win? Cameron is in desperate need of a boost, a turn around from just a couple of months ago where he enjoyed a comfortable lead against Gordon Brown who at the time saw the debates as the last throw of the dice against a younger challenger. Fast forward to now and the roles are now reversed as Brown now has Cameron fighting for his political life.

Cameron desperately needs to come off looking well in these debates, even with a high lead in the polls things were not as easy as they seemed with the Conservatives needing the biggest swing in eighty years to secure even a narrow victory of just a one seat majority against Labour. However Cameron is looking shaky these days after his previous highs and long leads in the polls again Gordon Brown. With shadow cabinet faux-pas’ and a slightly too highly polished an image he has a lot of work to do.


Labour as well has its problems with the economy being the big one however things have been improving in that sector with the OECD now predicting that Britain will now after a shaky start, be the fastest growing country in the G7.

It gives Gordon Brown the ace he needed to face off both of his younger more photogenic competitors. Labour certainly aren’t dead yet and they have the fear of the Tories being in power to capitalise on in many parts of the country.

The party that probably has the most to loose tonight is Nick Clegg's Liberal Democrats after the trouble with their tax proposals which were found to be not that radical at all. Not with giving the same rise in the tax threshold to £10,000 to the super rich as they would to the lowest earners. It didn't help either than VInce Cable was quietly taken apart in the same week by Jon Sopel over VAT rises. As well as the Fabian Society stating the Liberal Democrats were being dishonest. Ouch.

The Lib Dems as a result of having less coverage as the two other parties now run the risk of being flattened under the full media glare with a dose of sunshine on all their policies. Being sheltered from this may have been a shield from the criticism that may soon come their way.

Something that may have actually benefitted them in the past when it came to policymaking. Both the Conservatives and Labour have played it very cool in this election with neither making big promises that could return to haunt them come May the 7th.

With all this in mind DIF predicts that Gordon Brown will emerge the winner of tonights debate. Join the twitter feed to have up to date commentary of the debate @debateisfree.

Debate is Free's manifesto pledge

DIF is a sucker for punishment so the show will be taking it upon itself to trawl through the parties manifesto's now steadily coming out for the election and sort through all the flowery gumpf for you. These politicians they love to talk even if no-one is listening.

The key points from each of the parties manifestos will be categorised as such.



The Good

The Bad

The Ugly

Haven't we seen this before?


If you see anything interesting, dodgy or outright impossible in any of the parties manifesto's then drop us a line.

Debate is Free: General Election 2010

After weeks of work Debate is Free is glad to unveil its final panel for its General Election special on the 11th of March at the UNiversity of Glasgow.

Here is the final panel:

Patrick Harvie- Glasgow MSP and Co-Convener of the Scottish Greens

Ann McKechin- Glasgow MP and Minister for the Scotland Office

Alistair Carmichael- MP for Shetland and Orkney and Lib Dem Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland and
Northern Ireland.

Tommy Sheridan- Co-convener of Solidarity

John Mason- Glasgow MP and SNP Spokesman of Work and Pensions

Richard Cook- Conservative PPC for East Renfrewshire.

You might have seen that Question Time is also holding a first time voters edition and ours is of a similar idea. However the political outlook in Scotland due to devolution is a very different one from the rest of the UK and we think it would be more useful for voters in Scotland to have a programme that caters for them and the issues that dominate Scottish politics.

We have done our best to ensure we have a vibrant and interesting panel and we hope as many of you send in your questions as possible or apply to be part of the audience, but please hurry as space is very limited for the audience.

Get your questions or topics for debate into debate@subcity.org or to be part of the audience use the application form here: http://tiny.cc/DIFGE