A proposal for leaders debates was first mooted at the 1964 general election when Harold Wilson challenged then Prime Minister Alec Douglas Home to an election debate. Home rejected the proposal on the grounds that: "You'll get a sort of Top of the Pops contest. You'll then get the best actor as leader of the country and the actor will be prompted by a scriptwriter." Wilson himself rejected Ted Heath's proposal for debates, worried about the unpredictability of such a debate and not wishing to give Heath exposure as a potential Prime Minister. In 1979, Jim Callaghan became the first incumbent Prime Minister to agree to a debate but the idea was rejected by Margaret Thatcher on the grounds that presidential-style debates were alien to Britain. Both Thatcher and her successor as Prime Minister, John Major, rejected Labour leader Neil Kinnock's debate proposal, with Major commenting that "every party politician that expects to lose tries that trick of debates and every politician who expects to win says no."
However at the 1997 general election, Major then called for similar debates, which did not take place as the political parties and the broadcasters could not agree on a format acceptable to all sides in the time available. Since 1997, Prime Minister Tony Blair and his successor Gordon Brown had argued that the weekly Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons was sufficient. For the 2001 general election Tony Blair turned down a debate with William Hague. On 28 April 2005, Tony Blair, Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy took part in a special edition of the BBC's Question Time, although they did not debate directly, and were questioned individually by host David Dimbleby.