Were you bored by the election? Fed up with the way the leaders were so stage-managed? Annoyed at how all of the action seemed to happen at the very end when all the drama combusted? Then you could be in for a big treat as Simon Cowell’s shown he’s got a fancy idea for producing the Leaders’ Debates next time an election swings around (that’s 2020, for all you fans of elections/disappointed Labour supporters).
When asked if he’d offer his support to X Factor-ify the live shows, which incidentally saw a massive increase in young people registering to vote, he responded: ‘I’d do it in a heartbeat! 100%. I’d have walk-ons, music, fire… and a trap door if people didn’t like what they [the politicians] said.
‘And I’d definitely have a clap-o-meter,’ the BBC reports him as saying: ‘I am deadly serious. I really would love a chance to do that!’
While it might seem like a ridiculous idea, there is some merit to it. Private Eye recently reported that 30,687,180 people casted votes in the general election whereas 40,000,000 votes were cast in last year’s* X Factor*.
So what if some people voted hundreds of time for whoever won (really, who did win?), maybe that element of X Factor should be transposed to our electoral system so that the people who really give a crap can vote loads, or the people who are confused about who to vote for can cast, for example, 35 votes for the Greens and 140 for Labour?
That, or we could all agree that by 2020 the only time we’ll ever see Nigel Farage on our screens is when he gets a good gunging on a reality show somewhere.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.