It’s all getting rather serious now
… And so last night we reached one of the critical milestones on the way to the General Election vote on 12th December – the live TV debate between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn on ITV1 at 8.00pm, chaired by Julie Etchingham.
The build-up had been tense and exciting.
First up, the legal action brought by Jo Swinson and Nicola Sturgeon, leaders of the Lib-Dems and the Scottish National Party – seeking a determination that they should also be given the opportunity to be seen in a TV studio alongside the two main contenders to be the new Prime Minister on Friday 13th December (and given equal airtime as well) on the grounds that they were (1) women; (2) also leaders of UK political parties; (3) opposed to Brexit; and (4) just ‘entitled’ to such a privilege – had been thrown out.
Secondly, no doubt the Tory and Labour Party ‘backroom string-pullers’ has been burning the midnight oil for the past month trying to devise strategies that would present their contenders in the best possible light – or rather should that instead be “least worst possible light”(?) – against the knowledge that, despite being a traditional part of the UK political election process scene, leaders’ TV debates have a notorious habit of being primarily a matter of damage limitation as regards critical and general viewer reactions.
Bluntly, the incumbents, main (and indeed only true) contenders have little to gain from these set-piece TV debates and plenty to lose.
Meanwhile, of course, quite the opposite applies to any or all no-hoper (third party) political party leaders permitted into the proverbial ring – simply because their status and credibility is massively raised simply by association (being allowed on the same stage), plus their madcap views and policies provide a degree of light relief compared to the already well-aired and analysed stodge that the main parties’ leaders have been peddling for weeks.
I haven’t seen or read the Court’s stated reasons for rejecting La Swinson and La Sturgeon’s legal application but I wouldn’t have been surprised if one of them hadn’t been the line that – to be frank – the purpose of this particular TV debate was to put the only political party leaders who had credible chances of gaining the keys to Number 10 before the watching (voting) public.
Given that La Swinson and La Sturgeon’s basic thrust behind their demand for inclusion in the Debate was that they were leaders of political parties that were taking part in the General Election – and if the Court had agreed with that proposition – then also (logically) it should also have ruled that no only the co-leaders of the Green 
Party, but the leaders of (respectively) the British Communist Party, the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Brexit Party, UKIP, Plaid Cymru, the Independent Group for Change, the DUP, the Ulster Unionist Party, Sinn Féin, the SDLP, the Alliance Party, the Independent Party, the Monster Raving Loony Party, the North-East Party, the People Before Profit Party, the Christian Party, the Veteran & People’s Party, the Peace Party, the Yeshua Party, The Mebyon Kernow Party, the Scottish Libertarian Party, the Advance Party, the Renew Party, the English Democrat Party, the Workers’ Revolutionary Party, the Womens’ Equality Party, the Gwlad Gwlad Party, the JAC Party, the Young People’s Party, the Alliance for Green Socialism Party, the Socialist Equality Party, the Scottish Family Party and (of course) the Communities Family Party should also have been allowed to appear.
Thankfully, however, in the event our learned judges saw the sense in not ruling thus and thereby did us all a national public service.
Rusters will no doubt be sympathetic when I reveal the dilemma that I personally was faced with at 7.45pm last night.
Having given myself the task of reporting upon last night’s TV debate for this organ – whilst also knowing from bitter previous experience of such things that the overwhelming likelihood was it would be a desperately disappointing, unrevealing and uninteresting hour of my life that I would never be able to get back – I was faced with the stark choices of either (1) tuning to ITV in order to prepare for the Great Debate; (2) staying turned to BBC1 and watching the latest episode of the classic live reality TV show Holby City that shows how brilliantly our put-upon and overworked top surgeons of the NHS manage to deal with terminally-minimal resources 
provided over the last nine years by the Tory Government during its austerity campaign, whilst not only coping with the various twists and turns of their own red-hot love lives involving everyone else at work, but also the different and diverse moral issues that come their way every week … or (3), given earlier my various busy commitments during the day, retire early to bed.
At 7.49pm last night I opted for the last of the above.
I can further report that – having since risen and overnight flicked through the various newspaper website reports upon the Great TV Debate – I have seen and heard nothing to change my view that I made the correct decision.
