British leader Cameron accused of 'cowering' from head-to-head debate
Prime Minister accused of running scared after agreeing to just one contest and refusing to face opposition leader in head-to-head discusssion
Plans for televised debates between Britain's main party leaders collapsed into chaos yesterday after Prime Minister David Cameron vetoed the broadcasters' plans, barely two months before the general election.
His intervention injects further uncertainty into what is becoming the most unpredictable British election since the 1970s with neither of the two main parties able to establish a clear lead and the rise of fringe parties making it unusually hard to predict who will win.
The Conservative leader said he would only take part in one live broadcast contest involving at least seven party leaders, rejecting a head-to-head debate with opposition Labour leader Ed Miliband
His office said this was a "final offer" after months of discussions with the four main broadcasters over the format, and was intended to "cut through this chaotic situation".
Miliband said Cameron was running scared.
"David Cameron is ducking the debate with me," Miliband told British TV. "He is cowering from the public. I'll debate him any time, any place, any where."
A UKIP spokesman added: "After praising what a good thing debates were for democracy as late as 2014, why is David Cameron now acting chicken and running as far away from them as possible?"
In a letter to the team organising debates on the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky channels, Cameron's director of communications Craig Oliver set out the premier's terms.
He will take part in "one 90-minute debate" during the week beginning March 23 involving Labour, the Liberal Democrat junior coalition partners, the SNP, UKIP, the Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru and the Green party.
The broadcasters had proposed two seven-way debates followed by one head-to-head with Labour's Miliband on April 30, just days before the May 7 poll.
"This is our final offer, and to be clear, given the fact this has been a deeply unsatisfactory process and we are within a month of the short campaign, the prime minister will not be participating in more than one debate," Oliver said.
The broadcasters said they would respond to the proposal in "due course", but Cameron's opponents accused him of being a coward, noting his strong support for television debates before he was elected.
Former Labour communications chief Alistair Campbell told the BBC it was "pathetic... to watch his wriggling".
"A seven-way debate is going to be absurd, it's going to be like a Family Fortunes for politicians. It's got to be Ed (Miliband) against David Cameron, and David Cameron is running scared of it," he said.
Memories of the last pre-election TV debates - in 2010 - loom large in Cameron's thinking. Watched by 22 million people, they transformed that election, boosting the centre-left Liberal Democrats and depriving Cameron of an overall majority.
Cameron has been forced to govern in a two-party coalition with the Liberal Democrats ever since, an arrangement that has stuck in the craw of many of his lawmakers who argue that their plans to reform Britain have been watered down as a result.
"They had huge audiences and they made a difference," YouGov pollster Peter Kellner said of the 2010 debates. "The Liberal Democrats held on to enough of their gains (from the debates) to stop the Conservatives winning outright," he said.
London mayor Boris Johnson, who is hoping to return to parliament as Tory MP in May, backed his party leader against opposition "scaredy cats".
"The prime minister has quite rightly thrown down an ultimatum to all the other scaredy cat leaders and told them he wants a debate instantly," he said.
