Tonight’s Sky TV election event saw Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak face some occasionally uncomfortable questioning from host Beth Rigby, before the studio audience got their chance to interrogate the leaders. Here our writers give their verdicts on who performed best.
Tim Stanley says the public came out worse from the tetchy encounter. Sunak might as well give up. Tom Harris argues that Starmer’s swagger saw him struggle under scrutiny. Janet Daley says Sunak was the more convincing.
Winner of the Sky debate was Grimsby Town Hall: its mural looks gorgeous. Runner up? Beth Rigby. Her questions were rigorous; the opening interrogation of Keir Starmer’s love affair with Jeremy Corbyn was compelling.
As for the candidates, Starmer came off as tedious, Sunak as tetchy. Keir’s first mention of daddy toolmaker earned a big laugh; he was accused of being a robot and replied with a series of ones and zeroes. Nevertheless, his claim that the country is broken went down well. You can tell he’s going to win.
As for Rishi, he took a battering from an audience that seemed drawn from a representative cross-section of the far-Left. He apologised profusely for leaving D-Day early (so much attention has gone into it, you’d imagine he cost us the Second World War), but when Beth challenged his numbers on debt, migration and the NHS, there was a flash of the “furious calculator”.
The real downer was the audience. As these debates go on, one grows exhausted with the candidates, obviously, but also with the public – who sit with arms folded, demanding billions for their sector and booing when the answer doesn’t reflect their lived experience.
“Police numbers are at a high,” said the PM with a sigh – instantly disbelieved. He might as well give up.
Keir Starmer approached Sky News’s “Battle for Number 10” with an impressive degree of confidence and swagger.
But within minutes of the start of his interrogation by political editor Beth Rigby, that confidence had morphed into something less attractive. The Labour leader knew what he wanted to say, and nothing – certainly not any questions from Rigby herself – was going to stop him getting out his message.
It’s not a good look for any male politician to treat his interlocutor, especially a female one, with that degree of discourtesy, flagrantly ignoring her repeated pleas to keep his answers short and address the substance of her questions.
In this campaign, Starmer has so far largely avoided scrutiny of his now famous series of U-turns, first as Jeremy Corbyn’s “friend” and shadow Brexit secretary, and then as a candidate for the Labour leadership when he promised to deliver full-throated socialism in the Corbyn mould. Professing that his Damascene conversion was founded on his conviction of “country before party” convinced few in his audience.
Perhaps aware of the dangers of talking over Rigby and even some audience members who had asked questions, Starmer started to give more concise answers, and the applause as he gave his bow seemed genuine enough.
His opponent, Rishi Sunak, was given a much less friendly reception, despite offering more direct answers to questions. This is a Prime Minister who simply can’t afford to waffle or dissemble. Yet direct answers on immigration and tax – areas in which he has every right to feel defensive – cut no ice with a sceptical audience, in the studio or at home.
Beth Rigby’s questions were professionally designed to hit the weakest points on both sides. Keir Starmer seemed determined to talk over the challenges rather than address them. The only way that he could avoid the unanswerable was to make this all about his character rather than his plans for government.
What was the reason for his repeated reversals on policy? And his newfound repudiation of Jeremy Corbyn to whom he had once sworn allegiance? This was not an opportunistic volte face at all, it was a virtue: he had simply decided that loyalty to “my country” was more important than tribal loyalty to “my party”.
You may notice that this does not answer the pertinent question: did he ever believe that Corbyn’s Labour would be the right answer for the country? If not, why did he support him at all? On the most fundamental issue of whether tax rises would be needed to fund his improvements to public services, there was no convincing answer.
Rishi Sunak was made to apologise repeatedly for his D-Day mistake and, rather unfairly, for Liz Truss’s Budget which he had opposed and immediately scrapped. His account of his own plans was certainly more detailed – and therefore more convincing – than Starmer’s and he seemed to be speaking in good faith where Starmer had appeared evasive and alarmingly vague.
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