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As we all know (or at least all of us who follow current British politics), the 2010 general election saw the first ever series of televised debates between party leaders. It is very arguable how much importance the debates had on the ultimate election, though the media (unsurprisingly given their own role in them) placed great weight on them. Regardless, this was far from the first time debates had been mooted. A summary from Wikipedia:

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.

Now there were generally good reasons why debates never happened before--mostly along the lines of what John Major said, about how debates are always wanted by leaders who think they're going to lose and want a new way to connect with the public to turn a campaign around, and always refused by leaders who are confident of victory and have nothing to gain. 2010 was something of a perfect storm where all three leaders thought they could potentially gain from the debates. But if we stretch plausibility slightly, perhaps by suggesting that another media organisation could lead a campaign like Sky News in the run-up to 2010 and the more confident of the party leaders might think there was sufficient clamour about it that saying no would be seen as a sign of weakness...what if one of the elections mentioned above had seen a leaders' debate? How might that have changed the results?

An important question, of course, is that if debates had started as early as the 60s or early 70s, at what point do the Liberals / Alliance get to take part and with what qualifications for doing so?
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