Great Britain holds a parliamentary election on May 7. There will be four televised joint appearances for various candidates for Prime Minister.
On March 26, the Conservative and Labour Party candidates, including the incumbent, David Cameron, will answer questions from the press, although this is not a debate.
On April 2, the leaders of seven parties will debate each other. They are the Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democratic, UKIP, Green, Scottish National, and Plaid Cymru Parties.
On April 16, the leaders of five parties will debate each other. They are the same as the seven parties involved on April 2, except that the Conservative and Liberal Democratic Parties won’t participate.
Finally, on April 30, a joint question-and-answer session will be held with the Conservative, Labour, and Liberal Democratic leaders. See this story. Thanks to Thomas Jones for the link.
Seems to me that if Plaid Cymru and SNP get to participate then Sinn Fein and DUP should be invited as well. It is either a national debate or it isn’t.
Is not Sinn Fein a regional party, where UKIP is a national party which wants to keep all of Britain independent of the European Union?
It will interesting to see how the debates go, as well as how the vote comes out. Old voting habits are hard to break, although what was known as the Liberal Party in the early 1900’s was replaced by the Labour Party. History could repeat itself. Today, the Liberal Democratic Party – the successor of the original Liberal Party – is holding on my a string of hair.
UKIP represents the genuine Anglo-Saxon voter, though not many are willing to admit it. There is the fear of being tarred as “racist” for expressing one’s feelings. This is the problem in the United States today. People are afraid of speaking their real feelings, for fear of losing a friend, a job, or worse, being charged with some kind of “hate” crime.
We are all Americans – not hyphenated Americans. The sooner we learn to accept such, the sooner we will all get along together.
Hope that both the Cons and Labour each get less than 30 percent of the gerrymander votes in May 2015 in the 1066 DARK AGE regime having NO written constitution.
i.e. to have TOTAL pressure to get P.R. into the regime — along with wiping out the BARBARIAN so-called *House of Lords* — a vestige of the BARBARIAN 1066 takeover of the regime.
Think British Republic.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — even in the totally rotted UK regime of monarchs and oligarchs.
Bit more – the 1066 Dark Age regime has NO real 1st Amdt stuff — i.e. total govt control of what folks get to see on TV.
Minor good point — at least the election time period is somewhat SHORT – less torture for the suffering voters.
Only about 3 months of active ravings by the robot party hacks — as compared to the now nonstop USA Prez – Emperor – Dictator – Tyrant stuff — incumbent or ravings about the next Prez.
“Is not Sinn Fein a regional party, where UKIP is a national party which wants to keep all of Britain independent of the European Union?” – Alabama Independent
My point exactly! SNP and Plaid Cymru do NOT run candidates outside of Scotland and Wales, respectively. Why discriminate against the Ulster parties? The DUP has more seats than either SNP or PC. So does SF but they choose not to take their seats in protest.
The difference is that Great Britain’s important parties don’t generally run in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has its own set of regional parties that run against each other. On the other hand, the main parties in Great Britain do run in Wales and Scotland so they do run against the Welsh and Scottish regional parties.
Éirinn go Brach!
Yes, basically the Northern Irish parties contest Northern Ireland but not Great Britain while the British parties contest the GB but not Northern Ireland (bar UKIP). So it makes sense for the Northern Irish parties to have a separate debate on Northern Irish TV rather than mixing them into the British debates.
The Plaid and SNP do compete with the British parties and so excluding them from debates is clearly more of an issue.
I guess treating Ulster differently rather takes the “United” out of the United Kingdom.
UKIP has 11 PPC in NI; The Green Party has 5 PPC; and the Conservatives have 3 in NI. Are you claiming that these parties are no important?