TV debates: Of course Cameron is chickening out - so let's write a constitution and ensure no PM can EVER duck them again

The hunt for David Cameron’s missing backbone has begun, or so I read on Twitter today after the Prime Minister ducked out of a head-to-head TV debate with Ed Miliband.

The Tory leader’s “final offer” is a single live debate with a minimum of seven participants - more than a month before we go to the polls.

Of course, there are several good reasons why Cameron might want to dilute his and the opposition leader’s airtime to just 13 minutes during the 90-minute show.

First of all, he would have to defend a dismal record that includes the most sustained collapse in real wages for 159 years, a failure to cut the deficit, borrowing £245billion more than planned, provoking an NHS crisis, allowing the number of workers with no reliable hours to rise from 168,000 to 1.8million, cutting benefits to the most vulnerable people and forcing a million more people to rely on food banks while reducing the tax rate for millionaire bosses and boosting their profits by actively promoting this rising tide of job insecurity. Oh, and of course, Cameron’s “sack me if I fail” pledge to cap immigration that has both failed and fostered an ugly debate that masks the real causes of our problems.

Secondly, he has chickened out because he knows Miliband is not the useless sop the Tory spin machine have painted him as and – just like when the Labour leader bravely took on the Murdoch newspaper empire, the corporate elite, the foreign policy establishment and the pro-Israel lobby – he might actually win against a weathervane politician who uses Bullingdon bully tactics to put down his opponents and runs a government that serves as a favour factory for the rich.

Thirdly, Cameron is content to buy the election with City cash – raking in £25,244 a day from hedge fund bosses and by hosting obscene fundraiser parties like last month’s Black and White ball where Tory tycoons paid up to £15,000 for a table and where one wealthy reveller bid £110,000 to shoot 500 pheasants to fill the party’s already bloated coffers. Welcome to austerity Britain where we’re all in it together!

And last, but by no means least, Cameron can rely on the unswerving support of the dominant Tory press, who in turn shape TV coverage.

With the tax-exile owners of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and The Sun helping him, the last thing he needs is TV footage of him screwing up a debate filling time on the 24-hour rolling news networks.

Let’s not kid ourselves, though, if any leader had Mr Cameron’s advantages, they’d probably duck out of the TV debates too.

Tony Blair also chickened out before the 1997 election for broadly similar reasons to Cameron.

Most interestingly, it has been suggested that the media barons back then either supported or were benign towards the (now mercifully dead) New Labour project because they knew Thatcherism was probably safer in Blair’s hands than under John Major’s toxic Tories.

Anyway, my point is that, under the current arrangement, politicians will only debate if they think they have something to gain.

But this has to change.

Since the first ever TV debates were held ahead of the 2010 general election, it has become apparent how important they are to our democracy.

There is no better way of engaging a mass audience – and there are fewer more exciting political spectacles to boot.

Yet they do more than just provide drama to TV audiences. They provide an equal platform for party leaders to put out their messages and face a grilling.

Nowhere else – certainly not the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons, where Miliband largely chooses the agenda and Tory backbenchers are used as Cameron’s support chorus – does this happen.

So, if we want to ensure we have TV debates, the solution is simple: adopt a written constitution and write them in as an enshrined right.

At the same time, we could officially cap campaign finance and stop the farce of the Tories simply ignoring Electoral Commission recommendations by raising their election spending by 23% to £32.7million.

A written constitution – composed of a single written document and not several easily repealable laws and precedents - would also help bring much-needed power back to the people as we could ensure proposed changes required a referendum to be adopted.

The current system inspires little confidence, yet I suspect that we will not see the change we deserve for a very long time to come.