Labour has rejected an offer for Jeremy Corbyn to appear alongside his wife on the BBC’s One Show sofa insisting that the Corbyn family is out of bounds during the campaign.
On Tuesday night the prime minister, Theresa May, and her husband, Philip, will be interviewed together on The One Show, the BBC’s flagship early evening entertainment programme.
The BBC also invited Corbyn to appear alongside his wife, Laura Alvarez. A Labour source confirmed that Corbyn would appear on the show but on his own. “Family are completely out of bounds. But he will be appearing on The One Show,” the source said.
A BBC spokeswoman said: “Jeremy Corbyn will be appearing on the One Show, but we haven’t confirmed all the details as yet.”
Corbyn admitted to being “averse to talking about myself” in one-off campaign speech last month. “I am not going to spend the whole election campaign talking about myself any more,” he told an audience at London Metropolitan University.
Rather than Corbyn’s family and background, Labour wants to focus on policy issues and May’s continuing refusal to appear in a face-to-face debate with the Labour leader.
On Monday the BBC confirmed that May and Corbyn would appear one after the other on a BBC Question Time general election special.
David Dimbleby, who will be hosting the debate, defended the BBC’s decision not to challenge May’s refusal to take part in head-to-head debates.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme he said: “You cannot coerce people into coming into a studio. If they don’t want to do it, they won’t do it.”
Dimbleby also spoke up for the format of getting politicians to answer audience questions, claiming it produced fewer prepared soundbites.
He said: “It is not the same thing as a face-to-face debate ... it offers a different kind of combat. I think it is quite revealing. [It is] harder to have rehearsed lines. We all look back to American presidential debates as the best example of this and there is a terrible tendency to have rehearsed lines.”
May was the first leader to refuse to take part in head-to-head debates, saying she preferred on-the-ground campaigning.
Speaking in Harrow on Monday she told reporters: “I’m taking part in debates up and down the country, actually taking questions from people, getting out and about, and ensuring that I’m talking directly with voters and listening directly with voters.”
Prime Minister Theresa May responds to question on why she won't be taking part in televised debates during the #GE2017 campaign #Vote2017 pic.twitter.com/mdSeuWhnhO
— Sky News (@SkyNews) May 8, 2017
So far May has yet to take part in any debates with members of the public. On Thursday she is due to appear on LBC radio, where she will be quizzed by listeners and presenter Nick Ferrari.
Earlier LBC announced that May would only be taking listeners’ questioned read out by Ferrari. Later it said that May would take questions from callers live on air. A spokeswoman said: “It will be like a call Clegg format. She will be taking live calls and she’ll be facing Nick Ferrari as well.”
A Labour spokesman said May’s refusal to take part in head-to-head debates was undemocratic. He said: “The British people deserve to see a head-to-head debate between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn and for her not to do that is a sign of weak leadership.”
Labour refused to criticise the BBC for agreeing to accommodate the prime ministers refusal to go head to head with Corbyn.
The spokesman said: “I’m not going to get into that. The person who should have acted differently is Theresa May, who should not be hiding from the debate, but should be coming to defend the record of her government. The country deserves to see a debate between Jeremy for the many and Theresa May for the few.”
“What serves the public, what serves democracy and what everybody should be pushing for is a head-to-head to debate between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.”
