The candidates for the office of British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, engaged in a heated exchange on television. This did not help.
The first TV debate between presidential candidates took place in the USA in 1960, when Richard Nixon was sweating noticeably pale against the lively John F. Kennedy, and the election result was accordingly. In Germany, the first TV debate before a federal election did not take place until 2002, and in the United Kingdom even later, in 2010. All of the premieres and most of the subsequent shows have one thing in common: they are hardly about content, but only about impact. This is of course not surprising, but the first TV debate of the 2024 British election campaign showed particularly clearly how pointless and superfluous this format has become. Yes: even dangerous.