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mikey4444 | 07:35 Wed 19th Apr 2017 | News
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Why won't Mrs May take part in any TV debates ?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39633696
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“Why won't Mrs May take part in any TV debates ?”

“......they were just a polite slanging match and didn't really achieve anything.”

Quite right, Mikey, and it seems Mrs May has grasped what her publicity hungry predecessors did not.

Absolutely agree with jackdaw and others. This ridiculous idea, imported from 1960s US TV, is an insult to both the electorate and the politicians involved. If voters do not know the issues on which the election is being fought and the differences between the options on offer without having to have them reduced to pseudo reality TV show, then perhaps they should consider whether they ought to vote at all.

“…its my firm belief that its is still the best Party for the working man to vote for.”

You slightly misquoted your advice, Mikey. Labour is the best Party for the NON-working man (and woman) to vote for. Every “policy” announcement seems to involve explaining to which group of non-taxpayers some of the vast sums appropriated from taxpayers will be given.
-- answer removed --
As others have said, TV debates are useless - actually, worse than useless, because they trivialise the whole process and lead people to form decisions on superficial things such as how much like a grumpy geography teacher Corbyn acted, or what type of leather trousers May had on and how angry each of them got.
The media love them of course and are always pushing for them to happen because it gives them something to talk and sensationalise about.
Television audience appear to " like " them .
Audiences like them because they can be entertaining. Look at the Trump/Clinton ones for example. There's nothing there of real substance to inform anyone's decision though. It's just an entertaining slanging match as someone called it above.
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Anne...the television audience for the Jeremy Kyle Show are ecstatic as well !
T.M.doesn't have enough confidence to take part in televised debates .
It's more a case of not having to. If you think you're ahead anyway you've got nothing to gain and everything to lose by taking part. Why risk making some gaffe that jeopardises your position? All you have to do is stumble over some answer or look too sweaty and you lose 100,000 votes irrespective of what your actual policies are, which is why I think they're stupid.
There isn't anything to debate that's why. It's really a nationwide vote of confidence in her leadership - and she certainly gets mine - if you don't like that then you know what to do - and then for Pete's sake shut up.
To understand what the TV debates can do to a poll simply look back to 2010. The LibDems were trailing in the polls, had no policies that particularly appealed to many people. Nick Clegg goes on the telly, puts up a half decent show (against not much in the way of opposition as far as “presentation” went, apart from N. Farage). Result: 50-odd seats and the spare keys to No 10 for five years.

People need to make their decision on the parties’ and Leaders’ track record and how they think they will perform when dealing with important issues for the next five years. Anyone swayed by a TV debate, or even by a five minute “Party Political Broadcast” should not vote.

The issues in the forthcoming election are straightforward: who is to be trusted to extract the UK properly from the clutches of the EU. Remember the referendum question: “Remain or Leave”. Nothing in between. No half in half out. No "in this bit but not in that bit". No “Leave provided it’s not too tricky or does not cause too much trouble”. We need a team that will extract us properly because that’s what people voted for. (Those who voted to Leave but wanted anything else should have voted to remain because that’s what anything else amounts to). And I know where my “X” will be going.
//Remember the referendum question: “Remain or Leave”. Nothing in between. No half in half out. No "in this bit but not in that bit". No “Leave provided it’s not too tricky or does not cause too much trouble”. //

Is that what is said on your ballot paper?
Mine asked the same question as everybody else's:

"Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?"
Exactly, and we decided to leave, so now we are discussing the best way to go. I can't see anything wrong in that.
I confess I enjoy TV debates for much the same reason as I enjoy question time - the dramatics rather than an actual serious way of choosing who to vote for.

Understandable that she has declined, but not terribly astute. TV debates are part of our landscape now, and networks are not going to abandon them - ITV and the BBC have already insisted that debates will go ahead and the PM will be represented by an empty chair.

As is so often the case with May, not a well thought-out decision.
Well she's getting a mauling on social media for it, and unwise to underestimate the power of that. It looks frightened, it looks inexperienced, it looks shifty, it looks like she has something to hide ( which obviously she does- she's not going to want to be questioned in a scenario she can't escape from live on TV on some of their dire policies- she just wants a nice safe platform to bang on about claiming our borders back, flag waving, tea drinking, stiff upper lipping and other fun things that seem to warm the cockles of the DM readers hearts). I think it's understandable why she isn't doing it, the only way is down for the person in control at the moment in a live debate, so she's keeping herself as safe as she can. Whatever happens in the election she's in a no lose situation- either she wins convincingly and she can then say she has a mandate from the people to continue to wreak her evil, or she loses to a coalition in which case history does not remember her as the creature that took us kicking and screaming out of Europe. Well played in my opinion.
"We need a team that will extract us properly because that’s what people voted for."

At risk of opening this can of worms once again.... that is an assertion, New Judge. You cannot prove that.

The simple fact is that people did see different things when they read the word "Leave". I understand that this probably seems nonsensical to a long-term dyed-in-the-wool leaver like yourself, but it's true. I know several people (one of whom writes regularly for Spiked magazine and organised the "Invoke Article 50 Now!" protests last summer, so not exactly a shy Leaver) who voted Leave on the basis that they assumed it meant a Norway-type deal, i.e. EEA membership.

Hell, there were even two separate Leave campaigns with completely different messages about leaving. Vote Leave, run by Gove and Johnson, were all over the place and multiple times suggested we could leave without losing single market access. Then there was Farage's Leave.EU which had a completely different message. If that's not evidence of ambivalence, I don't know what is.

Was it perhaps a bit silly to vote leave and not expect full withdrawal? Probably, yeah. I made that case several times. But people who vote for silly reasons carry just as much weight as more thoughtful voters like yourself.
kromo; // [ I know someone who] who voted Leave on the basis that they assumed it meant a Norway-type deal, i.e. EEA membership.//

Then they were foolish, nobody made any such promise or showed any such inclination.
Re. TV debates, Just because someone can score points doesn't mean they would make a good leader. In debates, Nigel Farage can usually run rings round everyone with his quick wits and rhetoric, but I wouldn't want him running the country.
Let the rest squabble. She doesn't need to.
If they go ahead I for one will not be watching them. I also agree with the theory that Clegg's performance in 2010 may have been instrumental in denying the Tories a majority.
//Then they were foolish, nobody made any such promise or showed any such inclination//

Loads of people did, Khandro. Aaron Banks described the Norway model as "the best option" for the UK and predicted that it was the most likely outcome of a leave vote. Owen Paterson MP did the same thing. The Adam Smith Institute published tons of opinion pieces supporting a Norwegian-style arrangement. Some Leavers (like Farage and Douglas Carswell) published pieces in newspapers supporting Norway as a model for post-Brexit Britain, only to then completely reverse their positions and claim they didn't support it when asked.

"Brexit means Brexit" is the most vacuous and meaningless slogan of our times.

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