Does Cameron fear Farage?

David Cameron has argued that UKIP should effectively be excluded from televised leaders’ debates at the next election. His defence is “the TV debates should be about, you know, the parties that are going to form the government, in my view.”

He really will have to do better than this. The Prime Minister gives the impression of defending a cosy cartel of parties (aided by first past the post) that is conspiring against the public. Worst of all, it suggests David Cameron he is unwilling and even scared to debate Nigel Farage. He has good reason.

Thinking back to 2010, Cameron underperformed in the first two leadership debates allowing Nick Clegg to boost his standing (temporarily) and cut into the then Opposition leader’s appeal. Some have argued this helped deprived the Conservatives of a majority. Meanwhile Thursday’s BBC Question Time is to go by, Farage has a good chance of landing some serious blows on Cameron. Whereas the Conservative leader will have to defend his government and also the coalition, Farage will be able to indulge in his brand of freewheeling populism.

The New Statesman highlight 54% of voters say UKIP should be included in the debates. Next year’s European elections will probably result in UKIP finishing ahead of the Conservatives in either 2nd or 1st if the betting is to be believed. Inclusion in debates is clearly a case to be seriously considered in this scenario. What is possible is that come the next election UKIP could be polling more than the Liberal Democrats, who almost certainly will expect to be part the televised proceedings. Can that be right?

Tory Chairman Grant Shapps and David Cameron have previously argued that the leaders’ debates are a distraction from the democratic job in hand and “sucked the life” out of the campaigns.

Now their tune has changed and UKIP don’t have a right to be there. The Prime Minister is not at all worried about the distraction from the campaign. He is not concerned about Ed Miliband or the ghost of Nick Clegg’s past performance. David Cameron lies is in fear of Nigel Farage.

Henry G Manson

67% tell ComRes/Express poll say Cameron would appear a “coward” if he didn’t take part in TV debates like in 2010. twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 9, 2013

There’s a new poll out tonight by ComRes for the Daily Express highlighting the dangers for Dave of appearing to be reluctant about taking part in election TV debates. The 67%-12% split saying he would appear a coward if not there is quite emphatic.

The debates will help being the election campaign to life, according to the poll. More than half (52%) say they “make the General Election campaign more interesting”, with 28% disagreeing, although 50% also believe that the debates “don’t tell us anything about the party leaders and their policies that we don’t already know”.

The poll also finds 54% saying Nigel Farage “should be offered the opportunity to take part alongside the other main party leaders” and only one in five – 20% – disagree.

I think that Grant Shapps made a big error before Christmas when he appeared to suggest that the Tories would be reluctant to take part.

Mike Smithson

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Cameron doesn’t do extended interviews (except Marr), he doesn’t do monthly news conferences, now blowing cold on debates – accountable?

— Adam Boulton (@adamboultonSKY) December 11, 2012

Cameron’s reluctance might not be good politics

The Tweet this morning from Sky TV’s political editor, Adam Boulton, should worry Downing Street.

For Boulton has broadened Dave’s desire not to repeat the 2010 TV debates experience into a general attack on the PM’s accountability as PM in a manner that could run and run for the next 29 months.

Whatever Dave’s reasons it can be portrayed as though he’s bottling it – something that’s a gift to Ed Miliband.

I hadn’t realised until reading Boulton’s Tweet just how much Cameron has cut back on the general accountability processes and this could start to become part of the narrative.

Dave, as we’ve seen, can be very stubborn when he sets his mind to it and the last thing he’ll do now is appear to give in – a position that was entirely avoidable.

Grant Shapps shouldn’t have raised the debates a week or so ago. Instead the blue team should have publicly been totally supportive and argued about the detail in private. Whatever they should not have been seen as the side putting the kybosh on the events.

Dumb politics I’m afraid.

Mike Smithson

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David Herdson asks:Should the party without a single MP be given a place in the TV debates? bit.ly/VkNSd8 twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) December 1, 2012

David Herdson says there might be a case based on the polling

In one sense, UKIP has enjoyed a Golden November. In the PCC elections, every one of their 24 candidates kept his or her deposit, their shares of the vote ranging from 6.9% in Merseyside to 18.7% in Northamptonshire. In the six parliamentary by-elections, they chalked up over five thousand votes in Corby, more than a fifth of the vote in Rotherham, two second places and only one lost deposit (the same number of deposits forfeited as the Conservatives and two fewer than the Lib Dems). In another sense, they end the month with nothing to show from the elections: they lost every one and didn’t come close in any.

That dichotomy lies at the heart of what is likely to soon become the debate about whether UKIP are given a place in the leaders’ debates for the 2015 general election. There is of course the first question as to whether the debates will happen at all to answer but the precedent has been set and media and public will expect a repetition. Turning down an invite is probably a luxury none can afford.

The case for their inclusion is that they are scoring at least as well as the Liberal Democrats in both opinion polls and real elections, and that if the Lib Dems are to be represented – and it’s inconceivable that they won’t be – then Farage should be there too. The timing of the 2014 European election will only add momentum to that argument.

The case against is that for all their votes, UKIP have no record at all (yet) of even being within a shout of winning a Westminster seat, and the debates are supposed to be between prime ministerial candidates.

It is possible that UKIP might win a seat by 2015 if the right constituency came up – which essentially means an English one with minimal Labour presence – but that would still be written off as unusual. Respect won in Bradford West but they won’t get a slot either.

UKIP’s chances of participating may also suffer from the probable hostility of virtually everyone else involved. The media like straightforward battles and the more people involved, the more complex it becomes (and the more structured and stilted the debate). Every other party is also likely to be opposed. Clegg showed in 2010 how quickly the polls can change off the back of a very good and unexpected performance. Were Farage to do something similar – and with his currently low profile and his differentness from the others, he might – there’s no telling who would come off worst from it given that UKIP pull from both the centre-right and from oppositionists.

The minor parties too would also kick up a huge fuss were UKIP awarded a place. The Greens would stake a claim to inclusion as another national party (and one that has already won a seat at a general election), as would the BNP but with lesser justification. Both Scots and Welsh Nationalists could point to their superior record of winning Westminster seats despite the relatively few constituencies contested.

Why does it matter? Because we know that the debates can massively shift opinion polls and we can assume that this can feed through to actual votes, even if the effect turned out to be smaller than anticipated in 2010. Those in the studio gain a massive advantage over those in the cold. Merely the presence of UKIP would affect the dynamics between and within the other three and that could have a decisive effect on the final outcome, even if UKIP themselves were again to draw a blank.

David Herdson

Marf PB cartoon May 3rd 2010

Grant Shapps has not thought this one through

While all eyes have been on UKIP and Rotherham what for me was the biggest general election news over the weekend has been largely ignored.

This was the comment by Tory chair, Grant Shapps, that Dave might not take part in TV debates in the run-up to the next general election.

Given the impact that the debates had in 2010 this could have a major impact on the very nature of the election campaign. As will be recalled from 2010 the whole narrative was shaped by the debates and the party machines found it harder to get their pro-active points across.

Cameron was widely criticised by his side in the election aftermath for agreeing to the debates in the first place and for allowing Nick Clegg to be there as well.

But, surely, the genie is now out of the bottle and it’s going to be more difficult for any of the leders to refuse. They risk being accused of running scared and, you can see the word “CHICKEN” playing a big part.

A real problem could come if one of the broadcasters, possibly Sky, says that it will be going ahead anyway and if Dave doesn’t want to attend there will be an empty chair.

There are legal issues on this but I cannot see Adam Boulton, who played a big part in getting the principle of TV debates established, dropping this lightly.

And what a new line of attack the Shapps comment provides for Ed Miliband. You can see him bringing it up at PMQs whenever Dave seeks to evade a question.

My view is that the downside of not going forward is greater than the risk of having them. Shapps is making a big mistake.

Mike Smithson

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Is the hacking effect starting to recede?

The latest YouGov party leadership ratings for News International are out and show the prime minister gaining some ground.

As can be seen Dave is up a net five on last week with Ed down a net two and Clegg unchanged.

Looking back over the past few weeks both Clegg and Miliband are still in much better positions than before the scandal erupted.

Miliband is a net 17 points up while Clegg is a net 9 points to the better. Cameron is a net 2 points worse.

The polll also had just 35% saying they believed that Nick Clegg will still be in his job as party leader in May 2015. The Miliband figure was 47% with 66% for Cameron.

News International’s Sunday Times is making a big deal of the Clegg figures though their report omits that with LD voters the figure is 58% for Clegg compared with 29% saying he wouldn’t be. Amongst Labour voters 66% said they thought Ed would still be there while 90% of Tory voters believed that Cameron would make it to the general election.

A lot for all leaders depends in the short term depends on the reaction at the party conferences.

@MikeSmithsonPB

Without the debates could Labour have hung on?

Today is the first anniversary of an event that was to have a profound impact on the 2010 general election and which probably changed British politics forever – the first of the three leaders’ TV debates.

It was staged at the Granada studios in Manchester and I was fortunate to have been there – taking part in the post-debate discussion on ITV with Jonathan Dimbleby.

We all know the story of what happened in the polls immediately afterwards but it’s useful to remind ourselves of the trend in the weeks beforehand. For, as shown in the chart of ICM election polls below, the Tory share had edged downwards and the gap between the two main parties was getting closer and closer.

By April 15th 2010 it was conceivable that Labour might have been runner-up on votes but winning most seats.

The first debate changed everything. Nick Clegg was deemed winner by all the quickie polls and suddenly the election campaign had a different narrative. Other pollsters recorded the bigger yellow surges and at one stage YouGov had Clegg’s party in the lead on 38% – less than three weeks later it actually got 23.6% of the GB vote.

To my mind the main impact of the debates was that it altered the agenda for the entire campaign and in doing so much reduced the effectiveness of Labour’s final effort.

Many Tories blame Dave for agreeing to the debates in the first place and for allowing Clegg to be there. They are wrong. The Tories had lost almost any chance of a majority well before the first debate took place.

As the polling shows it was Labour that was the big loser even though it recovered a touch by May 6th 2010.

Without the debates I believe that Brown would still be prime minister perhaps in coalition with the Lib Dems. The Tories would probably have a different leader.

Mike Smithson

Rod Crosby on the impact of Brown’s decision to take part

After working hard in the run-up to the election I took a break for a while, and have really only just begun the post-mortem on my predictions and the actual result.

One thing that caught my eye is this graph. For those who don’t recall, I promoted the Kalman Filter as the best way of “averaging” the polls, and as far as the critical Tory lead was concerned it couldn’t be bettered. My final forecast was a lead of 7.2%, which proved exactly right. The other feature of the Kalman Filter I mentioned was its uncanny ability to identify turning points in public opinion.

Looking at the graph, the Tory lead declined inexorably from the moment Gordon Brown fired the election starting-gun on April 6th, heading encouragingly towards the “Swingback Zone” – the area in which I could claim unqualified success for that particular forecasting method.

But on 15th April the first televised debate was broadcast, an innovation for a British general election campaign. Overnight, the election had become Presidential, and the media and poll consensus was that Gordon Brown was the resounding loser. That verdict remained unchanged after the two subsequent debates. The poll trend sharply reversed, and the Tories extended their lead all the way to polling day.

Had the Tory lead remained around the 5% mark, where it was prior to the debates, the Tories would have had a seat lead of only 16 seats. A fraction less and Labour could quite possibly have nosed ahead in seats, an outcome which I personally had never discounted.

The tentative conclusions I draw from this data are that British general elections have now become just a bit harder to forecast, and the Tories owe about 20 seats or more to Brown’s lacklustre televisual performance.

Labour’s chance of clinging on to office with the help of the LibDems slipped away, and Nick Palmer amongst others can probably blame his personal defeat on the TV debates. The genie is now out of the bottle and the Debates may again prove decisive next time…

Rod Crosby