British broadcasters propose US-style TV debates

LONDON — A coalition of broadcasters called Friday for pre-election debates between Britain’s top three politicians, putting pressure on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to face his challengers in an unprecedented U.S.-style television showdown.

The BBC, Sky News television, and ITV have written to the leaders of the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties with a joint proposal for three live televised debates before the country’s general election, which must be called by the middle of next year. They would be the first such debates in Britain, where verbal sparring between politicians is usually limited to Parliament’s weekly question-and-answer session.

One media expert said the dramatic U.S. presidential contest pitting Barack Obama against John McCain — whose live encounters were widely covered in Britain — helped pique the public’s interest in a televised debate.

“The States has had this for some decades now, and the fact that Obama proved to be such a media superstar in his pre-election period — and that the debates with McCain were relatively popular — spurred it,” said John Lloyd, the director of journalism at the Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford.

Then again, it is not the first time presidential elections across the Atlantic have prompted calls to import the U.S.-style debates to Britain. As Republican candidate George W. Bush clashed with then-Vice President Al Gore in the run up to the 2000 U.S. elections, Conservatives called for the creation of similar debates in Britain, but to no avail.

The closest the country came to anything resembling a live debate was when prime ministerial candidates from the three major parties were grilled in succession on the BBC’s “Question Time” program in 2005, according to Lloyd.

This time the move for a debate has been championed by Sky News, an arm of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., and the 24-hour news network has aggressively pushed the idea before both politicians and the public, inviting viewers to sign a petition backing the debate and repeatedly needling Brown on the issue.

Tory leader David Cameron and his Liberal Democrat counterpart, Nick Clegg, both of whom hope to replace Brown as Britain’s prime minister, have backed the idea. Brown himself has so far remained uncommitted.

Lloyd said that, with the BBC and ITV closing ranks behind Sky, Brown was under even more pressure to throw his hat in the ring.

“Given that the three major TV corporations are now saying ‘we want to do this’ — makes him look pretty scared if he doesn’t do it,” Lloyd said.

Brown’s office did not immediately return a call seeking comment on the appeal.