I’m not surprised that the SNP and Liberal Democrats have lost their challenge to ITV’s rigged leaders’ debate tomorrow night, but this is a dark day for what purports to be “British democracy”, and make no mistake – this will distort the outcome of the election. The only question remaining is how severe that impact will be. I’m not sure the SNP’s position will be dramatically worsened in relation to the Tories, because people thinking of voting Tory to “stop Indyref 2” are unlikely to be SNP-Tory floating voters anyway. The much bigger danger to the SNP is in seats where Labour are their main opponents. Traditionally there has been considerable overlap between the SNP and Labour support, with a large number of voters open-minded about voting for either party. If ITV succeed in presenting Jeremy Corbyn as the only alternative to a Tory government, Labour could start to come back from the dead in a number of Scottish constituencies, most obviously the six marginals they currently hold.
Subject to legal advice, I hope the SNP are at least still considering their options about challenging the BBC and Sky debates. On the face of it, they ought to have a better case against Sky, who are planning to exclude the third-largest party but include the fourth-largest party. But as far as ITV are concerned, we’ll just have to get our prayer mats out and hope that this shameful attempt to stitch up the general election has a relatively limited effect.
