The Salmond in the Room

Buried in depths of the Daily Telegraph website, much further down than Flash Gordon's Romeo and Juliet moment ("Sarah and I, we're a modern love story"), was the news that Alex Salmond is close to making a deal with Sky News over his inclusion in their TV election debate. If this does happen it will be highly likely that the BBC will be forced to follow suit.

Very little coverage is given to the debate behind the debate: why exclude all parties except the big three? Should the BBC, as an impartial broadcaster, include minority parties (in the SNP's case the party that has won both the European elections in Scotland and Scottish Parliament election)? I think they should, to some extent, include the minority parties. I suspect there may have been some deal with Plaid Cymru where they have withdrew their requests for inclusion in return for support of Alex Salmond's inclusion. Indeed, Alex Salmond's best strategy in the debates would be to look beyond the Scottish electorate to positioning himself as the underdog, the representative of the little man. This would certainly tie in with the SNP's current strategy ("We're on your side.").

Strategy aside, no-one seems to be talking about this development? The inclusion of Alex Salmond in the debates could have far reaching consequences not just for the election in Scotland but for minority parties in the whole of the UK. There'll still be a debate in Scotland which would include Secretary of State for anti-SNP Propaganda Jim Murphy, without Salmond there he would look irrelevant. In terms of the whole of the UK, even the rumour of Salmond's inclusion could rerail the whole debate: other minorities (UKIP, the Greens and even BNP) would be calling for their inclusion and the main parties won't contenance any of this. Labour and the Tories, long suspicious of TV debates would welcome any excuse to pull out - as long as they could blame the other for being the first to do so. Further, Labour and the Tories have already pledged to ignore the SNP in this election - they definitely wouldn't want to debate on TV with Alex Salmond.

Anyway, that's my rambling, incoherant thoughts on this issue. I just wish others were talking about it to, we've now had no news or further rumour on the issue since the Daily Telegraph article, so maybe this is all a bit academic.