Broadcasters to hold an FA Cup-style draw to decide order of proposed television debates

Broadcasters are to hold an FA Cup-style draw to decide the order of the proposed television debates between party leaders during the general-election campaign.

Under the plans three debates will be held during April: two with all seven mainstream British political parties included and one head-to-head debate between Ed Miliband and David Cameron.

But negotiations between political parties and the BBC, ITV, Sky and Channel 4 have failed to agree an order in which the debates should take place, leading broadcasters to decide that drawing lots is the fairest way to resolve the issue.

However, there are concerns that, with little more than a month to go before the campaign starts, so little progress has been made on the exact format of the debates that they may not take place at all.

This would suit the Conservatives, who have been intent on trying to sabotage the debates without getting the blame if they fail to materialise. Party strategists do not believe it is in Mr Cameron’s interests to take part but want to avoid the spectacle of him being “empty chaired”.

They will be pinning some hopes on a legal challenge from the Democratic Unionist Party, who have so far been excluded from the debates. If it fails, the Conservatives are expected to throw up other obstacles and demands in an attempt run the clock down.

Privately some senior Lib Dems are said to believe the decision by the broadcasters to include the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens in the debates, in addition to Ukip and the three main parties, has backfired and made it less likely that the events will go ahead. They also have reservations themselves, fearing Nick Clegg could become an easy target for the other six leaders.

“The broadcasters have made a massive strategic error,” said a Lib Dem source. “They needed to get to a position where all the main parties were signed up apart from the Tories and we could all pressure them into doing it. We now have a position where it’s not really in anyone’s interests to do that.”

The source added: “I don’t see how anyone thinks it is sensible that a party that got 6.8 million votes last time is competing on an equal footing with a party that got 100,000.”

A Tory source described the way in which debate negotiations were taking place as “pretty cack-handed”. The source added that the view in Conservative Central Office was that, in 2010, the debates “drained the energy from the rest of the campaign” and they were determined it should not happen again.

“The only thing people talked about for days was the debates,” the source said. “The Prime Minister’s view is [the debates] took up too much energy last time. We didn’t have an election campaign. We had a debates campaign.”