Reports

Squeezing Out the Oxygen - or Reviving Democracy?

The impact of the TV debates during the 2010 Election campaign has led many to assume they will now become a permanent feature of UK general elections.

This firsthand account examines the arguments over whether debates are appropriate for the UK’s parliamentary democracy, and warns that despite their galvanising impact on the 2010 campaign, future debates cannot be taken for granted if old difficulties recur and some new ones emerge.

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Meet the authors

Ric Bailey

I've been a political journalist with the BBC for most of my career – as a network lobby correspondent and presenter in Mrs Thatcher's time, then later as the political news editor of the BBC's Westminster unit. For six years, from 2000, I was... Read more about Ric Bailey

Authors

Ric Bailey

Chief Political Adviser, BBC