I was head of BBC TV news – and there’s one big problem with the election debates

I have always been in favour of televised debates in election campaigns. They have served America well, and are standard in many Western democracies. But this week’s ITV debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer has set the warning lights flashing – not just because it was poor television, but because it exposes risks to our democracy.

The skilled moderator Julie Etchingham grappled valiantly with the format, but the structure of the debate was terrible. The 45-second limit on many answers meant both leaders were forced into soundbites – “I have a plan” – and any time they hinted at a more interesting line they were promptly shut down. It was little wonder that the YouGov poll on the debate found that the most common word to describe the debate was “frustrating”, from 62 per cent of the viewers.

ITV made multiple mistakes. The first was to shoehorn the debate into less than an hour of airtime; and the second was to cram in so many different subjects that nothing got the time it deserved. Climate change and the future of the planet? Gabbled through in a couple of minutes. Peace in the Middle East? It only just avoided being in the quick-fire round.

It wasn’t so much that the leaders chose to rely on soundbites as that they had no other option: complexity was impossible. At one point, they were asked to set out their entire tax and spend policy on the show of a hand. The BBC’s Chris Mason, perhaps inadvertently, drew attention to what this reveals about the political media: “They [Sunak and Starmer] are both instinctively drawn to detail and nuance. But an hour and a bit of primetime live television doesn’t offer much scope for that.” A former senior TV executive was harsher in private: “The death-embrace triviality of politics and political journalism will destroy us all.”

However, the broadcasters look as if they will sail on regardless. There is potentially much, much more of this to come. In particular, we have some seven-way debates – featuring everyone from the major parties to Plaid Cymru – with the first of these on the BBC this Friday evening.

The corporation has set aside 90 minutes, but the arithmetic is daunting. If we allow for the presenter to speak and the audience to ask questions, that leaves less than 10 minutes each for the leaders to give their views on multiple topics. These debates, which are designed to give representation to the smaller groupings, have never worked in the past and they look even less likely to succeed now.

Broadcasters should therefore urgently rethink the format. Certainly, reduce the number of subjects in the leaders’ debates. It would be completely viable to spend 90 minutes on the economy or the NHS alone. Also, encourage the participants to give longer answers when the topic is a knotty one: the future of the United Kingdom is worth a detailed discussion which goes beyond the “lines to use” prepared by party apparatchiks.

But it may also be that debates are coming to the end of their usefulness. As opposed to spreading like pond weed across all the channels, perhaps it’s time to opt longer term for the usual American model with a more formal national campaign event. It is certainly not beyond our wit to offer fairness to smaller parties while avoiding them shouting at each other for 90 minutes in place of EastEnders. It would do them a favour.

What is also of value is the single interview. We will get more of these too in 2024 – Nick Robinson is lined up for the BBC in the role previously undertaken by Andrew Neil – and Channel 4 News has already started a series. Krishnan Guru-Murthy’s interview with the Greens’ co-leader Adrian Ramsay was a promising start, and refreshingly for Channel 4 had a theme of “aren’t you all dangerous lefties?” I am certain that a viewer would have been more enlightened by that than any soundbite the Greens contrive to squeeze into a seven-way bunfight.

Another urgent item for review is the way the debates are reported in subsequent bulletins. The Westminster correspondents love assessing winners and losers; they vibrate with excitement when the audience laugh or boo; and they want the key clips to be moments of aggression, not explanation. As one radio presenter texted me: “Watching the News at 10 has made me glad I didn’t see the whole thing.”

And yet more than five million people were tuned in at the peak live moment – and for many, this was their first prolonged exposure to the campaign. If they were frustrated by what they saw, it can only increase the risk of dwindling engagement and low turnout. People are keenly interested in housing, education, the effects of immigration and all the ways in which we run our society. It will be unforgivable if it’s television’s version of politics that kills any sense that there are different visions they can choose from.

We are still the best part of a month away from polling day, so there is time for the broadcasters to act – and for the politicians to tune in properly to what the electorate wants.

Roger Mosey is the former head of BBC Television News, and current master of Selwyn College, Cambridge