The Leader’s debate? Grumble grumble. Having seen a lot of US presidential debates, and seen how utterly vacuous they are, I am not climbing the walls with excitement over this one. I’m with Jonathan Calder in this in thinking this might not be a good idea for Clegg – I fear a repeat of the Ken/BoJo/Brian debate

Brown, yesterday, when asked directly if he’d take part said, “We’re not in a General Election period” which, translated into parent code, is the same as, “I don’t know. We’ll have to see,” which every kid knows means no.

The obvious solution is to empty chair the bugger, although I think on a subconscious level that might reinforce Brown’s message of “getting on with the business of Governing the country” (again, translated, means, “I’M PRIME MINISTER!”), while Cameron and Clegg spend their time doing fluffy “debates”.

The format for the American debates is like this – they get a topic thrown at them and they have two minutes to parrot the rehearsed line on that topic. After that, they get another 30 seconds to respond to each other. Letting the public come up with the questions does not improve the quality of the debate – it’s the same thing – the politician listens out for keywords during the question then does the same rehearsed line.

This isn’t a debate: It’s Miss World, except instead of showing off their bodies they’re showing off their ability to memorise carefully crafted soundbites.

So my condition for wanting a debate is quite simple: Before the broadcast, Sky News should run an expose of all the various linguistic tricks and shenanigans that politicians get up to. Give people an accessible and easy to digest guide to the most common fallacies.

You know the deal by now, but here’s an example: “Cameron was a Special Advisor to the Treasury during the 90′s” is Brown’s favourite fallacy of choice, and a contemporary classic, usually deployed when Brown’s in a tight spot – “So Brown, why’d you sell all that Gold at rock bottom prices?” asks Cameron. Brown, rather than answer, says “I’ll take no advice from the Honourable Gentleman, after all Mr Speaker, he was a special advisor to the Treasury on Black Wednesday” which if you think about it isn’t an argument or a reply at all.  It’s “YOU SMELL!”

Such a ‘pre debate special’ would guarantee two things: First, it would guarantee the debate wouldn’t take place. Do you want to perform your magic routine to an audience that’s just been told how you do all your tricks? I think not. Second, assuming you actually could get them to appear, the audience would spend the whole thing in a state of smug ‘hah I know what you’re up to’ which could completely upset the perception of debate and expose it for what it really is.