Election grilling was revealing but won’t change result
Sunak is still sorry and Starmer dodges question on Corbyn.
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The Sky News Battle for Number 10 special was the best of the televised events we’ve seen so far in this election.
Beth Rigby put forward rigorous questions, although at times her execution was awkwardly done (who can blame her with the pressure of live TV and more to get through than 90 minutes of airtime will allow).
I watched through my fingers at times and rolling my eyes at others. Watching a political interview or debate is, for me, what I imagine enjoying watching televised sport must feel like. This is my (nerdy) Super Bowl Sunday.
Rather than taking a broad view at particular issues, Rigby zeroed in on the weakest points for both sides on major issues such as the NHS, migration, tax and trustworthiness. It’s that broad brush approach that has given leaders the chance to dodge the specifics at previous debates and interviews. Here they had to face up to numbers. While they still gave the usual scripted responses, it was good to see them confronted with the facts contradicting some claims and flounder at times.
This is the roughest ride I’ve seen Sir Keir Starmer experience since the election campaign got underway. He wobbled and dodged the question when asked if he could be trusted given his track record of backing Jeremy Corbyn, and dumping left-wing promises he once made.
In answer, Starmer repeatedly said he did not believe Corbyn (his predecessor) could win the 2019 election, but would not provide a yes or a no response when pushed on whether he really did think Corbyn would make a fantastic PM.
Starmer also stumbled on specifics over tax - promising tax rises were not in the manifesto but unable to commit to what future budgets may hold. One could argue its reasonable not to promise anything on numbers without a crystal ball, but viewers won’t be clear on what taxes Starmer may target when faced with hard decisions.
Both Starmer and Rishi Sunak fumbled their answers when challenged to reveal something about themselves people may not know. This should have been an easy win to show people they’re not dull or robotic.
Sunak said he had a terrible diet consisting of Haribo and Twix bars, and Starmer went through the highlights of his CV again. However Starmer was stronger in the segment where he answered audience questions, robustly defending policies like his plan for VAT on private school fees and the decision not to back a 35% pay rise for junior doctors.
Sunak could not escape more questions on his D-Day snub. He repeated his apologies for skipping the world leaders commemorative service last week. However this one is likely to follow him for the rest of the campaign.
He also floundered on trustworthiness when presented with his party’s record on delivering on promises like bringing down migration numbers and reducing NHS waiting lists. Sunak tried to make an argument for these issues requiring more time, but the data shows it all going in the wrong direction and confronted with that it all felt very unconvincing.
A snap poll for Sky put Starmer as the winner of the battle. Sunak did very much feel like the underdog in this fight. You still cannot help but wonder why he didn’t wait to call the election until autumn, when he may have stood a better chance of defending his record.
It is worth noting that a Telegraph poll on who did best put Sunak as the winner - the paper has a very right wing readership so this is not surprising but shows Sunak still holds some sway with his core voters.
If the Sky News event was a lose for Sunak, there was little comfort to be drawn from his ITV News interview that also aired last night.
This was the interview that Sunak ditched D-Day for and made headlines yesterday after he revealed he had gone without Sky TV as a child in response to being asked what sacrifices his parents made.
As a general rule I don’t like to assume anything is a foregone conclusion, however the general election result is pretty much that.
The real thing to watch is what happens with the results for the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Reform. The political landscape may look very different post-election, and not just because of who is in Number 10. It will be interesting to see whose allegiances shift - will Nigel Farage be recruited to the Conservatives or will he convince right wing Tories to jump ship and join Reform?
With three weeks left in this general election, although the ultimate result seems certain, there are still a lot of moving pieces.
Key moments
Here are the key things we learned from Wednesday night’s Sky News special:
Labour won’t scrap the two-child benefit cap introduced by the Conservatives.
Starmer held firm when asked if he would raise taxes, insisting he has no plans to do so and the manifesto promises to not increase income tax, national insurance or VAT. However when it came to more specific tax increases such as fuel duty, which has been frozen since 2011, and council tax he was a lot more woolly.
The audience groaned when Starmer mentioned his father was a toolmaker. It’s perhaps time to retire this line, at least from the televised events.
Starmer’s biggest fear about becoming PM is for his children, aged 16 and 13. Starmer and his wife Vic have deliberately kept their names out of the press, as they want them to retain anonymity. Starmer said: "These are really difficult ages. My only fear really is the impact it's going to have on them.” I wouldn’t expect a family photo on the steps of Number 10 after election day, and I totally understand where Starmer is coming from with this one.
Starmer promised to “roll up our sleeves” and get “grown-ups in the room” to settle the pay dispute with junior doctors. However he said the country cannot afford a 35% pay rise, which is what is being asked for. A junior doctor in the audience argued this was pay restoration, however Starmer again repeated its not affordable.
On VAT being placed on private school fees, Starmer said he has “nothing against private schools” but that every parent should feel the same benefit whether their child is at state or private school. He said removing the tax break for private schools would fund 6,500 teachers for state schools and he didn’t believe large numbers of people would ditch private education. He said: ”It's a tax break that we are removing. It's not an introduction of a new tax. We're simply saying we need to find the money to properly fund our state secondary schools.” The parent who questioned Starmer on this point argued that if more kids are forced into state school it would cost the taxpayer more money. FACT CHECK: The IFS predict that 5% of private school children could move to the state sector at a cost of £200m-£300m, leaving a net gain to the Treasury of £1.3bn. Demographic trends suggest schools are unlikely to be overwhelmed, with state secondary school rolls forecast to shrink by 7% in the next decade.
Starmer promised 700,000 urgent dentist appointments and to incentivise newly qualified dentists to open NHS practices in places he called “dental deserts” with limited NHS availability.
Sunak was booed when he brought up NHS staff strikes as being partly to blame for high NHS waiting lists.
Rigby challenged Sunak on his five pledges. He’s met two - halving inflation and growing the economy. However on NHS waiting lists Rigby pointed out they’re higher than before the pledge was made, to which Sunak replied they are higher but now coming down. On rising national debt there was a laugh from the audience when Sunak argued the number was “meant to come down over time”.
Net migration is at a record high after Brexit - up from 836,000 in the three years up to 2016 to 1.9m in the last three years. Rigby pointed out people voted for Brexit on the basis of taking back control of borders. Sunak agreed the numbers are too high and he wanted to introduce a migration cap. He argued numbers are down 10% last year and the number of visas issued this year is down by a quarter.
Flights to Rwanda are due to take off in July, if Sunak wins the election.
For young people, Sunak said scrapping stamp duty fo first-time buyers on homes up to £425,000 and offering more apprenticeships would help them.
The Conservatives will put 8,000 more police officers on the street.
In one of the standout moments of the evening, Sunak was confronted by a “lifelong true blue” Conservative who said she was ashamed of the government after lockdown parties and Sunak’s D-Day snub. Sunak said he “deeply regrets” what happened.
Want more political debate? ITV is screening the ITV Election Debate 2024 at 8.30pm tonight (Thurs). Leaders or senior representatives from the following parties will participate: Penny Mordaunt for Conservative Party, Angela Rayner for Labour Party, Daisy Cooper for Liberal Democrats, Stephen Flynn for SNP, Nigel Farage for Reform UK, Carla Denyer for Green Party and Rhun ap Iorwerth for Plaid Cymru. This is the same line-up as we had on the BBC last week.
Want to read more on what the parties are promising?
Labour manifesto is out today. Reform UK will release theirs on Monday.
In brief
Back to Sunak’s D-Day snub, and there was a new wave of criticism when a clip from the ITV interview Sunak ditched those commemorations in France for went viral. In the clip he explains the events he had attended for D-Day had “run over”. That’s been criticised widely online for appearing overly casual and dismissive of the importance of the event. In my personal view, it was casual small talk and I didn’t feel the meaning behind it was he thought D-Day wasn’t important. This sort of knee-jerk outrage could be one reason why politicians are so terrified to speak like normal people. And as a a result we get so many robotic, repetitive, droning answers to questions. This election campaign has been at times fun, largely thanks to Ed Davey and his summer vacay antics, and at times cringe-worthily bad, but it’s also been more scripted than an episode of Love Island.
Ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel are hanging in the balance after Hamas proposed changes to the deal. Hamas wants Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza and commit to a permanent ceasefire, however Israel cannot tolerate the future governance of Gaza by Hamas because the terror group is committed to the eradication of Israel. US secretary of state Antony Blinken is in the region working with mediators Qatar and Egypt to push through the deal. Blinken said this week: "A deal was on the table that was virtually identical to a proposal that Hamas put forward on 6 May - a deal that the entire world is behind, that Israel has accepted, and Hamas could have answered with a single word: 'yes'," he said. Instead, Hamas waited nearly two weeks and then proposed more changes, a number of which go beyond positions that it had previously taken and accepted. As a result, the war that Hamas started… will go on, more people will suffer, Palestinians will suffer, more Israelis will suffer.”
Rishi Sunak's closest parliamentary aide Craig Williams placed a £100 bet on a July election just three days before the prime minister named the date of the snap poll, The Guardian reported.
The G7 leaders’ summit kicks off today. This is a chance for the world’s wealthiest democracies to renew old friendships and pose for photos. However there are serious points of business on the agenda this year and it comes at a time when European politics is fraught, with far-right political parties making gains in the European Union elections. Ukraine and Russia, and China will be big topics for leaders to discuss.
Conservative MP Andrea Jenkins has been handing out election leaflets featuring a picture of herself with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
After suffering a defeat at the hands of Marine Le Pen’s far right National Rally (RN) in the European parliamentary elections, French president Emmanuel Macron unexpectedly announced a snap general election. The president won re-election in 2022 and cannot stand in the next presidential elections due in spring 2027. Macron’s centrist coalition lost its parliamentary majority in the 2022 elections. He’s hoping these elections will either win him back a majority, or produce a messy result with no overall majority where the far-right causes enough trouble that they may become unpopular enough not to win at the future vote.
Watch the moment Green Party leader Carla Denyer tries to justify giving up the UK’s nuclear deterrent. She tells Lewis Goodall: “Those who carry knives are more likely to be stabbed, sometimes by their own knife.” He replies: “We’re not going to nuke ourselves, are we?"
Politicians and celebrities can rejoice as X, formerly known as Twitter, is now hiding likes on the platform. Previously you could see publicly what posts people had liked on the platform, something which has led to criticism of public figures who have “liked” controversial content. Now it will default to private status for likes.
What I’m Watching
Under Paris (Netflix). Silly shark movie (is there any other kind?) where Paris’s River Seine is invaded by the villains with fins. This film has more of a nod to the need for conservation of sharks than other movies of its kind. However ultimately it descends into your usual man vs shark fodder. The effects are mostly good and there’s a pretty bold ending. If you like this sort of thing you’ll probably enjoy it, although I do think Shark De Triomphe would have been a way cooler name.
Bridgerton (Netflix). The second half of the third series landed on Netflix today - a fun and zero brain effort required show. Perfect for escaping from the political overload of this month.