Ed Miliband demonstrates exactly why Labour are so frustrating...

It seems that young Mr Miliband has got it into his head that what we need is legislation to ensure that debates between party leaders take place. In doing so, he reminds me of the Labour belief that you can legislate for anything and everything.

Having chaired, or managed, far too many hustings in the past, I have to admit that they're usually pretty dull. Or, if they aren't dull, they consist of a series of soundbites designed to wind up the opponent. It was one of the reasons why, when the Party's Selection Rules were last reviewed, I sought to remove the obligation to have a classic hustings as part of the process, instead introducing a rule where by a members' meeting was held and that it offered an equality of opportunity to every applicant making it through to the all-member ballot.

What that meant was that candidates might, for example, make a presentation or tap dance or whatever, so long as every candidate was given the freedom to make their case in a way that suited them and showed them to best advantage.

So, whether we want them or not, and I suspect that many people really don't care, we will have televised debates, including any party which has more than 5% of the vote (how does that impact on the Nationalists?) but which reinforce the dominance of the big two by ensuring that they have a debate to themselves.

It would be far more entertaining if, by deciding to opt out of any debate, the broadcasters left an empty chair. Giving an uncontested opportunity to your opponents so that they might attack your policies or your record wouldn't look good, especially as it would give them even more time to do so. And yes, the broadcasters would have no obligation to offer a right to reply, because one has already been turned down.

I would rather see a range of formats on offer, on different media, to reflect the changing way in which we now seek information. That might mean via Facebook or Twitter, using You Tube or radio. I would also like to see policies presented, rather than soundbites delivered, what a Liberal Democrat, Labour, Conservative or Green government might look like, what their ambitions for our country are.

We have one of the most complex tax codes in the world, thanks mostly to thirteen years of Labour government. Now, it seems, we may have the most complex electoral rules too, and all to such little effect...

#IbackEd... with friends like these, who needs enemies?...

It seems not to be the fashion to indicate a degree of sympathy for one's political opponents these days. Often, such an expression is seen as either weakness or as a thinly-veiled attack. I disagree - my political opponents are people too, with all the same weaknesses, personal foibles and contradictions as the rest of us, politically active or otherwise. It is the reason why I have always been loathe to attack someone for making a mistake in their personal lives (within reason, I draw the line at acts of illegality).

Today, I had one of those experiences which leads you to wonder whether or not there is a future for politics as it is now done too frequently these days. Having woken up and peered myopically at my Twitter feed, I was moved to post

Can't help feeling that having to say #webackEd is a sign that you've got a problem. It's as if loyalty can't be assumed...

— Mark Valladares (@honladymark) November 9, 2014

It is, if you like, the "doth protest too much" school of sloganising. I understand the reasoning behind it, certainly I do, but in an increasingly cynical world, an orchestrated defence of the leader which appears to fly in the face of the polling evidence looks like just that, an orchestrated and not spontaneous display of on-message social media. The public don't really buy it.

And Ed Miliband is exactly the same person he was when the Labour Party elected him as their leader four years ago. Is he a bad leader, are the policies wrong, or do the media just hate him because he isn't what they want him to be? Whilst I disagree with his solutions to our nation's problems - I'm a liberal, he isn't, so that should really go without saying - he is expressing opinions that are shared by a respectable proportion of the population. But I really couldn't say that he is a bad leader - I don't know how good a leader he is allowed to be, either by his own Party, or by the media. I do get the impression that large swathes of our national media don't like him - they do seem to delight in finding opportunities to belittle him.

And I got a reply from someone using the Twitter name @killingbritain, who seemed to think that an appropriate response to my thought was to refer to a local government by-election in Nottingham where the Liberal Democrat candidate was beaten by the 'Bus Pass Elvis' candidate. An interesting response, I thought, entirely irrelevant to the point being made, but simply a cheap attack on an unknown political opponent.

I wasn't impressed - if someone anonymous thinks that David Cameron is killing Britain, I would suggest that they need to get out more, frankly - but politely replied, generating more irrelevant, cheap invective in response, a point I again politely alluded too. The response was to suggest that, if I felt attacked by someone on Twitter, there was an established reporting mechanism. So I reported him. After all, he or she (but probably he) wanted the attention...

I tend to think that such pointless aggression on the part of an anonymous partisan is the very sort of behaviour that puts the vast majority of people off the notion of involvement in politics. After all, who needs to put up with such stuff when there are many other things to do which involve less aggravation and probably higher levels of personal satisfaction?

But then, people like @killingbritain probably don't want anyone to play in their playground who doesn't slavishly agree with them. It might be easier, but I think that they'll find it a bit sterile... and perhaps a bit lonely one day...