For Keir Starmer, the TV election debates could be seismic – but not in the way he hopes

Labour is 20 points clear in the polls and try as they might, the Tories don’t seem to be able to close the gap. Why then, asks Sean O’Grady, would Starmer risk it all in a TV debate against Sunak?

‘If their exchanges at PMQs are anything to go by then by the end, the audience might have found something more enthralling to do, like filling up the dishwasher’ (PA Wire)

I’m still not entirely sure why Keir Starmer, gingerly transporting that Ming vase of a Labour landslide across a slippery floor, ever agreed to two head-to-head TV debates with Rishi Sunak.

Sunak, after all, only has to nudge Starmer off-balance a little and the chance of Labour winning an election for the first time in two decades will likely end up in shards on the floor. Sunak has little to lose at this stage but for Starmer, with a steady 20 percentage point lead in the polls, there is only downside.

The now commonplace Ming vase metaphor was coined by that agreeable figure Roy Jenkins, who, with characteristic elegance, deployed it to describe Tony Blair’s path to victory in the run up to the 1997 general election.

Though Blair, with some bravado, challenged then premier John Major to televised gladiatorial combat, when Major unexpectedly accepted (prime ministers usually don’t), Blair quickly found excuses to avoid the confrontation: participation by Paddy Ashdown, the Lib Dem leader, was the chosen weapon of distraction. It worked. Blair’s vase was deposited safely.

Starmer may not be so lucky. Let us face two facts, aside from the obvious sheer recklessness of starting to sprint towards the finish line, vase in hand.

First, Starmer can be a bit leaden. Forensic, yes. Hilarious in private, so they say. Obviously more than up to the job. But he’s not always that quick on his feet.

Neither, in fairness, is Sunak. However, if their exchanges at Prime Minister’s Questions are anything to go by then by the end of the first debate, the audience might have found something more enthralling to do, like a sudoku or filling up the dishwasher.

At best, Starmer will come out with a score draw, and a level of disappointment that mirrors the recent record of his beloved Arsenal – not quite good enough.

Second, Starmer is plainly vulnerable. His ratings are not as strong as his party’s. Sunak therefore may as well start playing dirty, Trump-style.

Try as I might I simply cannot think of a satisfactory answer that the Labour leader can give to the question: “What is a woman?” If he stalls he looks evasive. If he says anything definite it will offend someone and set off a damaging culture war. If he doesn’t offer any of his previous answers he will look like he’s flip flopping.

Obviously much the same goes for the Diane Abbott fiasco. Starmer also cannot win on this one; either he’s a bullying control freak beating up a Labour treasure; or he’s a wimp giving in to Angela Rayner and what remains of the Corbynite left.

Or, to take another example, what does Starmer say if faced with the choice, as poor old Ed Miliband was in 2015, about the use of the British nuclear deterrent? “Hell, yes, I’m tough enough” was the right answer, but somehow, coming from the earnest features of the “killer panda” it sounded like a school kid being dared to go shoplifting.

History shows that debates can make a difference to campaigns – in 2010 they hugely boosted Nick Clegg, who found himself sandwiched between Gordon Brown and David Cameron as they fell over themselves to win his support, with “I agree with Nick” becoming the catchphrase of the evening. There followed “Cleggmania”, and the once-relatively obscure leader emerged as the election kingmaker, later becoming deputy prime minister before, well, for the Lib Dems, the less said about that, the better.

A no-show, meanwhile, can have similarly seismic consequences. Theresa May sent Amber Rudd in her place for the 2017 election debate as her popularity plummeted in the polls. The strategy may have stopped the then prime minister humiliating herself any further, but other party leaders pounced on the opportunity to suggest she was running scared, with Lib Dem leader Tim Farron quipping to viewers that May “might be out there sizing up your house to pay for your social care”.

Boris Johnson, too, found himself the subject of ridicule when he was replaced by a melting ice scuplture after failing to show up for the Channel 4 climate debate in 2019.

Couldn’t stand the heat? Johnson’s stand-in for a climate debate in 2019 (PA)

True, on their respective and generally underwhelming track record in parliament, the television debates could be non-events, where both sides lose. Had they also had the much more charismatic figure of Nigel Farage on the stage, we’d be guaranteed lively, unpredictable if sometimes unpleasant viewing, but neither man was ever going to give Reform a platform.

It would have been wise for Starmer, emulating Blair, to have demanded that Ed Davey and Farage also be invited to participate, in the interests of democracy. Sunak would then have had to chicken out or risk boosting his most potent enemy, Farage. It would have been good for the ratings, but bad for Sunak and Starmer.

So we’re left with this pair. Here’s hoping for some zingers and a real moment of history. There’s a very valuable vase at stake, after all.