does anyone else think politicians should come on a web chat or not at all?

Hi there and thanks for reporting this.

It's tricky - we always encourage guest posters to come on to the thread and engage, but realistically politicians have many commitments and it's often not possible. And as you point out, a guest post is by nature a different animal to a webchat, in that there's no obligation to stay on the thread. We think there's value in them nonetheless - they often spark really interesting and passionate debate, and are a prompt for those MNers with an impressive knowledge of the subject in hand to share their perspectives too.

The question of airtime is also a bit tricky. We do try hard to offer a balance on crunchy issues like this one (the junior doctors' strike is another example). In fact, it was we who approached the Department for Education yesterday - we asked if they'd like to explain their thinking with regard to academisation, because we had a very strong guest post from a deputy head teacher on this issue putting the opposing view. If we stopped having guest posts from politicians, quite possibly we'd have missed out on the deputy head's post too.

But thanks for your feedback; it's an interesting area and we'll certainly give it some thought.

Talk

does anyone else think politicians should come on a web chat or not at all?