Much about Wednesday night’s Conservative leadership debate — which included sound effects, props and questions about the candidates’ reading and streaming habits — seemed designed to limit the space available for actual debate.
Maybe that was a reaction by the Conservative party to last week’s debate, which became a story about how readily the candidates were willing to disagree with each other in public.
Maybe Wednesday night’s organizers were always planning to hand out paddles the candidates could raise if they wanted to say something during the half of the show allotted for open debate, and then tell the candidates that they
