The Election Debate

Sorting out who should appear in Election Debates is surely not rocket science. Let's start by acknowledging that there are four nations that make up the representation at Westminster and organise accordingly.

There should be one debate in England featuring all the Leaders of the English parties who currently have representation at Westminster. As these parties also campaign in the other UK nations, with the possible exception of Labour and the Lib Dems in Northern Ireland, the debates in these areas should feature those 'national' parties as well as the nationalist parties such as the Unionist and Republican parties and the Alliance and SDLP in Northern Ireland and Plaid Cymru and the SNP in Wales and Scotland respectively. Once again the qualification to take part in a debate would be that the party currently had representation at Westminster.

That would mean that the Tory, UKIP and Green Party Leaders would probably appear in all four debates whilst Messrs Miliband and Clegg would appear in three.