Debate next week confirmed for ITV. Sunak and Starmer only. More specific details have yet to be announced.
Well this seems silly there. With the way things are going, it is not outside the realm of possibility for Reform or Lib Dem to perform effectively as well as the Conservatives. You can always direct more questions to the two leading parties. But they should have the five largest national parties for a national debate.
I can’t see the Tories agreeing to a multi party debate, certainly not with Rishi attending. It’d be three against one (well four as they’d also invite the SNP). The Tories want a horse race that marginalises the legitimacy of the Lib Dems and Reform, they’d have to be morons to agree to a multi party debate (then again…)
And unlike in America there isn’t some historical norm of debating that he’d be embarrassingly breaking. Iirc 2010 was the first ever live debate, and just about every election before then one was mooted but rejected by a leader.
And for the realists in the Tory camp, the election is already lost and it's about saving the furniture. And the single biggest threat to the Tory backbenches is Reform being legitimised on a national stage and splitting the vote.
The (successful) Tory tactics in debates in 2015, 17 and 19 was to widen out the debates as far as they can to take in as many shades of fringe left opinion as possible and have their own representative try to stand above the fray. Of course that allows e.g. Plaid Cymru to have a shot at them, but those 'moments' only really serve to galvanise some strand of leftish opinion rather than actually weakening the Conservatives.
The Greens / SNP / Plaid would all absolutely take their shots against Labour, and strategically they would be correct to do so. Labour are a much bigger threat to their chances than the Conservatives.
And Sunak isn't a great debater, but he did fine standing in for Johnson in 2019. And let's not kid ourselves that there is some magnetic speaker in one of the opposition parties. Starmer, Davey, Tice, Swinney and whatever no mark is currently leading the Green Party are just as uncharismatic as Sunak.
Sunak's real weakness is not in debating his opponents (not that he's brilliant) but in interacting with the public.
When you're 20 points underwater it's a bit late to try and scheme to split the opposition vote. That's irrelevant at this point. To hold whatever furniture they can the Tories need to squash Reform and try and woo some voters back from Labour. 2 hours of fearmongering about Labour Danger while pretending Reform doesn't exist vaguely serves those goals.
Something to note is that the audiences for televised debates are already significantly smaller than in 2010. The novelty factor has worn off, which in turn means that a higher proportion of people watching will be partisans.
Given that Reform voters are apparently disproportionately politically engaged, they may make up an outsized proportion of the TV audience. Given the whole campaign seems targeted towards them Rishi might play it up even more.
