Will there be televised leaders debate?

Sky News has lobbed a David Frost sized bomb into the political scene by sending an open letter to all three major party leaders inviting them to a TV debate in the General Election campaign. They say it is going to happen with whoever has the guts to turn up. David Cameron has already accepted.

It's interesting to see what will happen with this, if we have this debate it will be fantastic. I think a lot of the country will tune in to a political programme, and it will most likely be the biggest factor in improving turnout at the next GE, forget dodgy postal votes.

There still has to be many months of behind the scenes negotiations on format length of questions etc. Anyone who has watched The West Wing will be familiar with the concept in the states. Should it be 2 minutes to answer the question each and then a 30 second comeback? Maybe the leaders are allowed to ask each other questions. Would Nick Clegg get the same airtime? That would be something of a coup for him. In the end, for the support staff, it can be more trouble than its worth.

For the PR consultants and press officers, they have to put the leader through days of training and working out whether the Leader calls the others, opponents, Leader of the XXX party, or Gordon/David/Nick. Should they make eye-contact, what should they wear? What kind of language should be used? It's quite tricky.

I'm getting excited already. Unfortunately, though, I have the hunch that it won't happen. Traditionally it is seen that the one with most to lose backs out, in this case it would be David Cameron. So would he? I hope not, but look out of some squabble of procedures as an excuse if it doesn't happen.

My feeling is that Gordon Brown will back out though. Why? Because he has backed out of every tough confrontation going so far. He backed out of a leadership tussle with Tony Blair, he backed out of the coup attempts against TB and backed out against the election that never was. He also goes to ground when things get difficult, such as the al-Megrahi case. So, if there is an empty chair in the Sky studios where the Prime Minister should be, I hope that Sky take a leaf out of Have I Got New For You's book (when they replaced Roy Hattersley with a tub of lard), and replace GB by his own tome, entitled 'Courage'.

Squiffy.