THERE’S a stitch-up being planned — one that could affect the outcome of next year’s general election.

The main broadcasters are planning to exclude the Green Party from the televised election debates in 2015, while including Nigel Farage’s Ukip.

The decision was announced last week and it has rightly led to outrage from all camps except, of course, the mainstream parties.

When you look at the figures, the plan to exclude the Greens is unbelievable. 

The Greens have the same number of MPs as Ukip. Moreover, the party has held a seat for far longer than Ukip’s Douglas Carswell, a Tory defector. 

Caroline Lucas won her seat in 2010 and has proved a formidable force in Parliament. And, rarely for a politician, she’s popular among the public too.

The Greens are now level pegging with the Lib Dems in the polls, at around 7 per cent for the general election. 

This follows monumental growth over the past five years, more than doubling their membership. The past year has been particularly successful for the party — growing more than 50 per cent to over 22,000 members in England and Wales.

Needless to say, the Greens also have three MEPs — triple the Lib Dems’ one MEP — plus around 170 councillors. 

All this is on top of coming third in the last London mayoral election and having MSPs through our sister party in Scotland, which incidentally has tripled its membership in a month.

The numbers, of course, don’t say it all. What is really at issue is the exclusion of choice — an attack on the principle of democracy. 

If Farage appears without the Greens, what we will have are TV debates between four austerity parties. 

We might as well just have a video of them drinking together while laughing at the masses.

Next year’s TV debates could therefore represent a slap in the face to millions seeking a progressive political voice, a dangerous thing indeed in an era of alienation and disenfranchisement. 

It’s no wonder the Greens are considering legal action, alongside the SNP and Plaid Cymru. Only these parties are challenging the neoliberal consensus.

Both Plaid and the SNP should also be included, of course. Democracy isn’t just about who you can vote for — it’s about representation.

That has to include Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. If not, what kind of a union are we?

In response to all this, the Young Greens are calling for a series of youth debates among young party leaders from across the spectrum. 

With the Greens becoming the third party of young people, polling around 15 per cent and doubling in size in 2014 alone, we are in a good place to pioneer such calls for experimentation in democracy.

Such debates could be online — via the press, YouTube and other mediums — as well as on radio or TV. Nothing is written in stone. 

But what is clear is that they should happen. Young people deserve a voice too — as the generation who will clear up the mess of the current lot in power.

Either way, the fact that over 180,000 people have now signed a petition calling for broader party representation on the TV debates shows just how strongly people feel. And they’re going to be very angry if they are ignored.

It’s time the media and political leaders wake up to the multi-party country we have become. As Green leader Natalie Bennett has said: “Democracy demands it.”

Josiah Mortimer is a member of the Young Greens National Committee. To sign the petition go to: chn.ge/1wjOxK7