leyton.org

Just finished watching the BBC leaders debate, and came away rather disappointed. More at the format and chairmanship than by the candidates themselves. I certainly think that it’s an important part of the election process to get all the leaders together, but the Question Time format they used didn’t really work here.

My main problem was the thankfully brief attempt by the chairperson to get the candidates to ‘look each other in the eye’, when talking about each other. Silly and repeated attempts to get, for example, Alex Salmond and Steven Nicholls having a chummy chat about referendum questions just left me wondering what he was trying to achieve. Whilst it can be frustrating that the panel talk to the middle-distance, it was childish and unproductive chairmanship that added nothing and detracted a great deal.

It’s clearly important to get audience participation, and I know from experience that when you’re a member of the audience you’re keen to say your piece, but it’s frustrating that so many audience members wander off the specific debating point and get carried away or have an unrelated point to drive home – frequently at length. Perhaps too many party members, or certainly passionate members of the public, seemed to be in the audience. Not always a bad thing of course, but I really don’t think the debate was chaired strongly enough.

For party leader debates with so many points being made by four strong debaters, and a large audience it struggled. I think it might well have been better to have had either a smaller audience, or manage things more tightly for broadcast – ensuring a more even and varied discussion – perhaps something more towards the American presidential debate format. Although of course that can suffer from being wooden and painfully pre-arranged.

I’m not sure any of the leaders came away victorious, and I’m not sure any of them came away having slipped up, although I think Alex Salmond had a sticky moment just before the halfway mark and barely got out of it when the question of his ’sticking with it’ (referring to his first stint as an MSP) was raised. No love lost between McDonnell and Salmond, that’s for sure. Goldie and Stephen fought very well despite, I think, the fact that they were struggling with the Labour/SNP dominated issue agenda driven by audience questions.

The body language is always very interesting to watch, but I suspect they each had careful coaching and practice beforehand. No real blunders. McConnell struck me as ‘distant’ throughout (but he didn’t have a sympathetic audience given the Iraq/Blair-poodle accusations that dominated at points), Goldie austere but confident. Salmond and Stephen seemed more relaxed, almost at ease. They certainly struck me as more naturally confident and trusting in the democratic voice. If I had to pick a winner, it’d be very close between these two, and I’d probably say Nicol Stephen: He seemed to get the mood, make eloquent points, and not speak down to the audience. BBC Scotland’s political editor has his views too.

So all in all a mixed bag. Not sure it necessarily swayed me in any particular direction. But I do hope that the BBC review the format before next time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2007 at 11:55 pm and is filed under Politics, Scotland, Scottish elections, UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.