The desire of broadcasters to have one politician saying one thing and another saying the exact opposite in order to produce a spurious notion of balance leads to sterile political discourse.

Oh what joy it was in June last year to see broadcasters suddenly realising that so many people see the issue of Europe not in terms of division within the two main parties, but as a question of whether it is in the national interest to be in or out of the EU. After the UKIP’s success, and for the first time since 1975, the value of EU membership was once more on the agenda.

If there are to be TV debates, the role of the smaller parties will have to be respected.

Joss Owtram, London SE20

Translation service

WHAT struck me in Alastair Campbell’s article is the contradiction that the media is to blame for the poor quality of political debate on TV. The reason that we rely on the insight of journalists such as Andrew Marr is that they are able to see through the fog of political briefings pioneered by spin doctors like Mr Campbell.

If politicians and their advisers answered the questions put to them clearly and concisely, then the focus would go back to the issues involved and we would not need a translation from BBC journalists.

It is laughable, too, that Alastair Campbell argues that “the problem with the broadcasters was that they were incapable of discussing and negotiating the detail (of a TV debate) without it all being made public”. I can’t imagine where he got that idea.

Neil Pendle, neil@waterscan.com

Loss of trust

YOUR columnist seems to be suggesting, after years of benefiting from his manipulation of the media’s reporting to suit his and Mr Blair’s interests, that we, “the ordinary voters”, should ignore what the media says now that it has turned hostile to the message he and Mr Blair would like it to report. How convenient.

Perhaps the disillusionment and weary apathy of the ordinary voter might just have something to do with the way that new Labour politicians are no longer perceived as telling the truth or being properly accountable to anything except their own self-interest.

Alistair Caldicott, alistaircaldicott@hotmail.com

Another planet

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL has donned his most effective blinkers. For him to claim that politicians are fitted in to suit media comment and/or criticism of the Government or political process is hypocrisy writ large.

Perhaps he should be questioning much more closely just how it was that a spin doctor (with no democratically appointed brief whatsoever) could storm into a TV news studio and verbally assault a senior reporter? Or, indeed, just how it is that his own former party political boss steadfastly refuses to appear for public scrutiny and questioning on a nationally broadcast public interest programme such as Question Time?

Inevitably, the obvious answers to such conundrums are far less than obvious to those who frequent the upper echelons of politics, divorced as they are from the humdrum realities back on planet earth.

J. H. White, Loughborough

Head-to-head

IT IS hard to know whether to laugh or cry after reading Alastair Campbell’s article. I watch Prime Minister’s Questions often and have yet to see Tony Blair engage in any debate. He either ignores the question completely or answers an entirely different and much easier one that he has posed himself. The Speaker has been forced to intervene on many occasions to stop his more blatant attempts to distort the opposition’s policies.

It is not the asking of tough questions either by members of the public or journalists, as Mr Campbell says, but that the answers are truthful and complete. The problem with any debate involving the PM is that he is very difficult to argue with since he either changes his position, denies the truth or gives a totally misleading answer. He has contaminated politics to such an extent that all politicians are regarded as routinely mendacious.

To see two people simply swapping misleading statistics will achieve nothing. To have ordinary members of the public given answers without knowing if they are true or false will achieve even less.

A head-to-head television debate will work only if the broadcaster appoints someone to act as a strong mediator. The mediator needs to have three things: impartiality, the trust of the public and a wide knowledge of government. Otherwise Blair will simply resort to his usual spin and distortion if he thinks that it will serve his purpose.

The BBC is the only broadcaster that could do this and be seen as being remotely fair.

Graham Rawlings, Selby, North Yorkshire

Off-putting

I WAS dismayed to see an article by Alastair Campbell in your comment columns recently.

If there is one thing calculated to stop me buying your newspaper it will your acceptance of him as an authority on anything other than bullying and misinformation.

As far as I am concerned, this man is utterly discredited and you do your newspaper no favours by employing him.

Tom Cunliffe, Guildford, Surrey