{"id":156259,"date":"2024-10-18T07:34:37","date_gmt":"2024-10-18T07:34:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/18\/why-bbc-tory-leader-debate-is-not-happening-and-why-it-matters\/"},"modified":"2024-10-18T07:34:37","modified_gmt":"2024-10-18T07:34:37","slug":"why-bbc-tory-leader-debate-is-not-happening-and-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/18\/why-bbc-tory-leader-debate-is-not-happening-and-why-it-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Why BBC Tory leader debate is not happening, and why it matters"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Why<\/div>


\n<\/p>\n

\n

You can learn a lot about modern election campaigns by looking at the rows about TV debates.<\/p>\n

And the current Conservative leadership race is no different.<\/p>\n

More often than not, the perceived frontrunner is rather more circumspect about putting themselves on a potential collision course with calamity or embarrassment than the perceived challenger.<\/p>\n

And, therefore, they might find reasons to turn down appointments with the cameras.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

So it appears in the tussle between Kemi Badenoch<\/a> and Robert Jenrick.<\/a><\/p>\n

As they each vie to replace Rishi Sunak to become the Leader of the Opposition, Jenrick\u2019s holding position is to say “yes” to invites to interviews and journalistic scrutiny and Badenoch\u2019s is to often say “no”.<\/p>\n

To be clear, it is of course their prerogative to choose who to talk to and this is a popularity contest among tens of thousands of Conservative Party members rather than tens of millions of the wider UK electorate.<\/p>\n

So, understandably, the focus principally, for now, is on reaching them rather than a broader audience.<\/p>\n

Last night, both candidates took part in a two hour special on GB News.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t a debate between the two of them directly \u2013 each appeared separately to take questions from a studio audience of Conservative Party members and viewers at home.<\/p>\n

At the end, for what it is worth, an overwhelming majority of the audience in the room endorsed Badenoch.<\/p>\n

But a planned Question Time special on BBC One next week and a programme planned by The Sun are currently off, after objections from Badenoch.<\/p>\n

The BBC wrote to both candidates inviting them to its live programme next Thursday, in which around half the studio audience would be recent Conservative voters with a \u201cbalance\u201d of those who had a strong preference for Jenrick or Badenoch.<\/p>\n

The other half would be people \u201cwith a variety of political sentiments and voting history, many of whom will have voted Conservative at some point in the past,\u201d the letter set out, adding:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the Conservative party leadership will be decided by party members, but the election of the Leader of HM Opposition is a moment of clear and wide public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Jenrick, I understand, had some issues with this plan, he said yes to the invitation and was willing to attend.<\/p>\n

Badenoch said no.<\/p>\n

Her team argue that the Conservative Party has stipulated that the programme must be in-keeping with rules set out by the Conservative Party Board.<\/p>\n

One of these rules is that the live audience must be made up of people who have a vote in the contest \u2013 in other words, Conservative Party members.<\/p>\n

The BBC has said that the audience \u201cmust be compliant with the BBC\u2019s duties as a public service broadcaster, which are not the same as for a party event.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so there is deadlock, an impasse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is in cold storage,\u201d said one source.<\/p>\n

Were both candidates to accept the BBC\u2019s invitation \u2013 or any other from another outlet \u2013 there is little the Conservative Party centrally could likely do to stop them, I\u2019m told.<\/p>\n

All this illustrates a wider gulf between the two camps about their campaigning approach.<\/p>\n

It is a gulf Team Jenrick have sought to emphasise, by adopting a \u201cany time, any place, anywhere\u201d philosophy to requests for public debates or hustings.<\/p>\n

They have done this knowing their opponent is less keen and in the hope they can point to this as an illustration of why Jenrick, in their view, is better suited to be Leader of the Opposition than Badenoch.<\/p>\n

The thrust of their argument is the job is all about making your case publicly and taking questions from all comers, so prove you can do it now.<\/p>\n

But Team Badenoch argue they don\u2019t knowingly throw rules set down by the national party out of the window on a whim \u2013 unlike their opponents — and they are ruthlessly focused on talking to those with a vote in this election.<\/p>\n

And, they argue, they have the most MPs, the most former MPs, the most peers and the most councillors backing their campaign.<\/p>\n

The new leader of the Conservative Party will be announced on Saturday 2 November.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


\n
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You can learn a lot about modern election campaigns by looking at the rows about TV debates. And the current Conservative leadership race is no different. More often than not, the perceived frontrunner is rather more circumspect about putting themselves on a potential collision course with calamity or embarrassment than the perceived challenger. And, therefore, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156260,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/12ae\/live\/1494dde0-8ce3-11ef-b6b0-c9af5f7f16e4.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[7341,2610,11505,1891,1462,492],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156259"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":156261,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156259\/revisions\/156261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}