ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now there is no doubting that the televised leaders’ debates electrified the last General Election in 2010 and at their respected, respective and respected, conferences in the last few weeks Nick Clegg, Ed Miliband and David Cameron all pledged to do the same again for the 2015 General Election.

NICK CLEGG: I think it was an important innovation at the last General Election because it allowed people to see for themselves. You know, there are lots of people who don’t follow the endless ebb and flow of politics every day like you or I might do, there are people who quite understandably aren’t obsessed with politics but do want to engage in politics, do want to examine and look for themselves what the leaders have got to say for themselves at election time and I think for other leaders, if they weren’t to do it, in effect back out, that really would be cheating the British electorate.

DAVID CAMERON: I thought while they were very good and full credit to Sky for championing them so much, I felt three debates in the campaign took all the rest of the life out of the campaign so why not in a fixed term parliament, five years, start a bit earlier. But there’ll be discussions, there’ll be negotiations …

ADAM BOULTON: But you’re going to tell your people let’s start talking turkey?

DAVID CAMERON: Yes, whenever the broadcasters and others want to start. You know when the next election is so it’s not quite the same as last time, we can start planning.

ED MILIBAND: Well you have my commitment that I’ll do the same as we did last time. I think we need those TV debates. On energy we’re trying to cut, we’re trying to freeze prices, this government, the Tories, say they are going to raise prices. We’ve got a big debate to have about energy and a whole range of other issues, I say bring on those TV debates in the General Election campaign, I’m looking forward to them, I hope the Prime Minister will be there.

ADAM BOULTON: And Clegg?

ED MILIBAND: Absolutely.

DM: Well there we all, all singing more or less from the same hymn sheet at the moment, a lot of issues still to be discussed, a lot of details to be finalised but as the date for that next election is already set this time, Sky News is proposing that the timing of the debates is settled right now to address concerns over allowing time for traditional electioneering in 2015, as the Prime Minister was saying. Well I’m joined now by the Sun’s Chief Political Correspondent, Kevin Schofield, and the commentator and dramatist, Bonnie Greer. Very good to see you …

BONNIE GREER: A commentator, right.

DM: You can commentate on this. I take it we all agree they are a good thing and they should take place but the question is, how should they be different from last time round, Kevin? The Prime Minister was indicating timing is one of the issues, they were rather squeezed together last time round.

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: Yes, I think he’s got a point there to be honest with you. He said they sucked the life out of the election campaign and I think it’s easy to see where he’s coming from, to have three debates so close together in the four weeks running up to polling day, it just completely took over the entire campaign. It was different from previous campaigns because you had in the run up, everything was geared towards the first debate, then it was the fall-out from the first debate, then you were straight into the second one again. So it was a different kind of campaign.

DM: We have to re-examine that period a little bit to discover what should happen for the future. Bonnie, Kevin mentioned there the fall out from that first debate and of course the fall out was the Clegg effect wasn’t it? It was this drama, as a playwright it was like a piece of theatre.

BONNIE GREER: Well exactly and that’s why it’s wonderful because our politics are becoming more and more American, they are becoming more stage managed, they are becoming more shaped. What you do on live television of course is you don’t know what’s going to happen and it allows the public to calibrate our politics, it allows us to get nuance, it allows us to see different things up against other things which is why Nigel Farage is absolutely essential to this because what Nigel Farage brings to this debate – and I know there are arguments about oh he doesn’t have this and he doesn’t have that, that’s irrelevant. We are at the point now where Europe is such an important issue across the board, even though people aren’t talking about it on the doorstep, it still matters and what Farage brings to television and to the other three main parties is a recalibration of their point of view, it brings nuance, it humanises the space and is very, very important.

DM: It’s interesting to hear you say that. I was going to bring in UKIP later in the conversation …

BONNIE GREER: I’m on the other side of him but anyway …

DM: I know, I know, politically, absolutely but I want to know, how could that work Kevin? We know the other three oppose Nigel Farage, they deploy the arguments that Bonnie just touched on there, he’s got no MPs and he cannot become, as things look right now, he could not become Prime Minister.

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: No, but Nick Clegg couldn’t become Prime Minister either and interestingly David Cameron seemed to hint last week that his old friend Mr Clegg might not be there either, that the voters should be presented with a clear choice of who is going to be the next Prime Minister. Obviously we all know it is only going to be either Ed Miliband or David Cameron so why should Nick Clegg be there? It is going to be a tough sell to try and get Nigel Farage in it.

DM: Do you think it will kill it though if Nigel Farage keeps forcing it and the broadcasters say okay, we’ll have Nigel Farage, they wouldn’t happen would they?

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: No, I don't think it would kill it because I think it would be a brave politicians who would turn round and say I’m not willing to debate and almost making a political martyr of Nigel Farage. I think once the genie is out of the bottle, once the debates have begun …

DM: But doesn’t it turn it into a European debate in effect. We are going to have the European elections, we’ve got to think ahead of that, we’ll have had the European elections and as things stand UKIP might have done very well in those but that debate will have been had.

BONNIE GREER: I have no idea what UKIP stands for outside of Europe but I’m saying as a playwright, Nigel Farage is a free agent, he is an important part of the political landscape. He can recalibrate this whole thing. I mean these three guys will stand up there and the leader of the Green will stand up there and do their spiel as you like …

DM: So where would you draw the line, you’ve got the Greens in as well now?

BONNIE GREER: Well they have an MP so they need to be there.

DM: Who else?

BONNIE GREER: And the three main party leaders of course. Look, literally we don’t vote for the Prime Minister anyway, so why even ask questions like who would you like to be Prime Minister? The polls do that every other week but it’s for amusement, it doesn’t matter who we want for Prime Minister, we don’t vote. So let’s do the whole hog and give us something so that we can feel and understand what the politics are about because so far it’s so stage managed.

DM: But Kevin, Nigel Farage, he could have the Clegg effect couldn’t he, writ large? He is seen as the man down the pub, the reasonable bloke, people could be nodding along as they find out more about the wide variety of their policies?

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: Yes, absolutely and he could thrive in that environment but it is worth remembering that the whole Cleggmania thing had almost gone really by the time of the third debate at the last election and the Lib Dems in actual fact lost seats.

DM: Let me ask you about timing though, because this is important. We started discussing that and the Prime Minister said he wanted them further away from the election itself and more spaced out but there has to be a being a point where the public, the broad voting public, are prepared to engage with politics. It pains me to say this but I do understand in spite of the fact I do this programme that a lot of people aren’t really interested in classic politics.

BONNIE GREER: Well they are in a coalition who were the ones who gave us a fixed term parliament so we don’t have a chance, we don’t have the excitement any more of maybe this thing happening sooner than expected so we’re locked in an American situation, so we might as well have the whole thing. If I were David Cameron I’d be afraid to stand up next to Nigel Farage as well, that’s what’s going to be the interesting part of it. Yes, of course Nigel Farage is not going to be the prime minister because the electoral system won’t allow him to and I personally don’t want him to be because I’m a Europhile but at the same time I want to hear how they calibrate this.

DM: Kevin, delve into that politics for us, what are the calculations? The reason why they have never taken place and all the time I’ve been in television journalism broadcasters have tried to get those debates to take place and they never have until last time round and it always seemed to come down to the incumbent feeling they had the power and why on earth would they give their opponent, who wasn’t Prime Minister, any kind of air time like that? A chance to prove themselves and the possibility of making just one slip on which the election could turn.

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: You could see it was a little bit different in the last election with Gordon Brown at such a low ebb, he really didn’t have anything to lose. He almost called Cameron’s bluff because it had been David Cameron who had previously been calling for it and he agreed to it but as it turned out he was the one who had the most to lose and he did lose the first debate from what I remember, quite badly. So now we are in a situation where once you’ve had the first set of debates it’s out there, you can’t undo it. It would be a very brave politician who would turn round and say I don’t want to have a debate with my opponent.

DM: The genie is out of the bottle.

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: Exactly.

BONNIE GREER: Can I say quickly what I would do if I were organising them? I would spread them out and give them on certain topics, I’d be interested on one policy and I’d be interested …

DM: Well that did happen.

BONNIE GREER: Yes, but spread it out a little bit more and let it come in as a kind of a spaced situation which allows the public to think a bit, go back and look at their local MP who they are voting for and see how that stands up against particular ….

DM: And what about getting social media, technology involved in this? Even beyond 2010 things have evolved, particularly with Twitter. We see it in so many votes now, the way MPs react to what their constituents are saying to them via social media, would it be possible to incorporate those into those live debates?

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: The way Twitter has exploded in the last three years is quite incredible so I think you could have real time questions being posed by members of the public as the debates were going on. I know that Labour for instance in terms of format would like a more town hall feeling to it in one of the debates because they feel that’s where Ed Miliband is stronger …

DM: So people in the audience physically asking the questions?

KEVIN SCHOFIELD: Exactly, I’m sure he would have an advantage there but Ed Miliband has already come out and said at the party conference that they want to have it exactly the same, three debates inside the last four weeks.

DM: But the beauty of Twitter is that you can get one of those totally unexpected moments, whether that was the Belgrano question for Margaret Thatcher …

BONNIE GREER: You are not going to keep Twitter out of this anyway so the television networks need to think about being in partnership with Twitter in order to allow us to participate more, bring questions in. These guys, and unfortunately they’ll be all males, will have to stand up there and be able to speak to us, the electorate and that’s what we want.

DM: That’s why you want the Greens.

BONNIE GREER: Oh that’s right, I hope so, absolutely.

DM: Okay, well really good to see you, that’s the evolution of democracy. Kevin Schofield, Bonnie Greer, thank you both very much indeed.