The BBC's in charge

Emily tries to take back control 

Here's Sky's Adam Boulton on that Rob Burley-edited BBC Conservative leadership debate:

As it has demonstrated since 2010, the BBC isn't really comfortable losing control to debates in which the exchanges between the candidates are all that matters. The corporation has an institutional bias towards making programmes which its off-screen producers and editors can shape. So, for example, it shoves its presenters on stage, giving them equal or better prominence than the debaters. 

Further the BBC likes "to paint the lily" by the intrusion of the audience and questioners. The BBC would be happy if it could reduce debates to its shouty Question Time format. A debate between political leaders is about the public - but it is about what politicians will do to the public not what a random member of the public's views are.