alternatehistory.com

Having recently finished the fantastic Fourth Lectern, I've been wondering about when the earliest PM's debate could have taken place. Obviously there was the first challenge by Harold Wilson in 1964, which was declined, and Wilson declined Heath's own offerings for a debate. In 1979, Callaghan agreed to a debate, but Thatcher declined as she didn't want British Elections to become Americanized, and John Major rejected Neil Kinnock's offer in '92.

However, in 1997, John Major offered Tony Blair a debate, which Blair accepted. According to the BBC,

Tony Blair responded to Major's challenge: "Fine: his record against our polices, any place, any time."

But it didn't turn out like that. Secret negotiations to fix up the debate broke down amid mutual recriminations with the Labour's campaign director Peter Mandelson claiming the Tories had not been "negotiating seriously or flexibly".

For his part John Major claimed: "Tony Blair challenged me to a debate, to his dismay I accepted and to everyone's amusement he then chickened out."

Lance Price, then a BBC political reporter and subsequently a Labour spin doctor, said: "Labour didn't really want this debate to take place.

"Tony Blair was streets ahead in the opinion polls and when you're out in front why take the risk? Why put yourself through the possibility of something going horribly wrong like that."

It was this reasoning that prevented Blair from agreeing to debates in the subsequent two elections.

If an agreement was reached and the debates went ahead, how could it have played out? Could the debates have included Ashdown and the LibDems, or even Goldsmith and Referendum, or would they have been locked out and suffered as a result?
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