Recently elected Rochdale MP and Workers Part of Britain leader George Galloway has been omitted from the invitation list for the second ITV election debate, although MP-less right-wing party Reform UK will be represented at the live showdown on Thursday, June 13.
Leaders or senior representatives from the Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, SNP, Reform UK, Green Party and Plaid Cymru will all take part in proceedings, which will be moderated by Julie Etchingham and screen at 8.30pm, immediately followed by the ITV News at 10.
Etchingham previously moderated ITV election debates in 2015, 2017 and 2019 and will host the broadcaster’s first televised debate between PM Rishi Sunak and opposition leader Keir Starmer from MediaCity on Tuesday.
Like Reform UK, the Workers Party of Britain has said it aims to stand candidates nationwide in July’s election, although unlike Reform it already has a sitting MP. Every party partaking in the Jun 13 televised debate except Reform UK has at least one MP sitting in the House of Commons.
Reform UK was founded in 2018 as the Brexit Party and is led by Surrey multi-millionaire Richard Tice, alongside founder and honorary president Nigel Farage. The party stands on an anti-immigration, Euroscepic platform and has faced a number of racism controversies, such as when its prospective candidate for South Ribble, Jonathan Kay, was dropped in April over 2019 tweets stating that the average IQ of Africans is “among the lowest in the world” and that Muslims “never coexist with others” and should be deported. Party leader Tice this week called for a crackdown on Turkish barber shops on Britain’s high streets.
.The Workers Party of Britain was founded in 2019 and is led by Scottish celebrity socialist, cat impersonator, and nomadic MP currently representing Rochdale, but previously of Bradford West, Bethnal Green and Bow, Glasgow Kelvin and Glasgow Hillhead, George Galloway. The party has had particular success in clawing support from Labour over its stance on Gaza in areas with large Muslim populations.
ITV and the Workers Party have been approached for comment.
Speaking more broadly of the upcoming event, Michael Jermey, ITV’s Director of News and Current Affairs, said: “ITV’s debate programmes will allow millions of viewers to see and hear the politicians debate the big issues facing the country. Many of our viewers tell us they greatly value the TV debates. We’re pleased that ITV will be able to provide a forum in which voters can question the political leaders and in which the politicians can debate directly with each other.”
A location for round two of ITV’s televised election debates remains TBC.
