Leaders' debates are a bad idea & encourage all the worst trends in UK politics: presidentialisation, the cult of personality ("Cleggmania"?), the reduction of parliamentary parties to fandoms for their leaders and the mistaking of fluency/"authenticity" for statecraft. #NoThanks
These presidential-style debates also raise yet another barrier to new entrants/smaller parties, at a time of widespread disillusionment with the Big Two. You either shut out the Greens/LDs/UKIP/SNP/Plaid Cymru etc, or the format becomes hopelessly unwieldy.
There's also a constitutional issue. Leaders' debates make elections more explicitly about a personal mandate for a potential prime minister. That creates a legitimacy problem if the PM changes mid-term - yet the Fixed Term Parliament Act makes it harder to seek a fresh mandate.
Our constitution assumes that a PM can only govern while she/he commands the confidence of the House of Commons. When Thatcher & Blair lost that confidence, they fell from office. Yet increasingly, leaders are claiming direct mandates from outside Parliament that over-rule MPs.
We need to decide whether we want a parliamentary system or a presidency. Both have merits, but we're sinking into a dysfunctional hybrid, with parliaments cowed by quasi-presidential leaders whose mandates are only semi-democratic. Constitutions should be handled with care.
