Sunak V Starmer

Granny23

"Labour must not flinch at flying the flag of St George – it is the patriotic party now”

The English Defence League couldn’t have put it better."

This quote from the show said it all for me.
If we are to have a Labour Government at Westminster, then those of us in Scotland must elect a strong SNP representation or our needs and wants will continue to be overlooked.

I wonder what Emily thought of that quote.

Regarding the spurious extra £2000 tax burden that Sunak wouldn’t shut up about - if Labour’s going to have to find that money to maintain public service's wouldn’t the Tories have to do the same?

How would the Tories maintain our public services whilst reducing tax - which Sunak says they would do. Where would they get the money from? Or would our public services slide even further into private hands - and that’s gone well so far hasn’t it

The polls appear to give Sunak a tiny edge over Starmer in the debate but, broken down into issues, however, respondents said Starmer did far better on the cost of living, the NHS, education and climate change. Sunak was seen as doing well only on tax and, by a narrow margin, on immigration.

The tax we know was fantasy and the Rwanda plan is never going to work.

So overall…… Sunak will almost certainly not move the dial on the polls.

"Labour must not flinch at flying the flag of St George – it is the patriotic party now”

The English Defence League couldn’t have put it better."

This quote from the show said it all for me.
If we are to have a Labour Government at Westminster, then those of us in Scotland must elect a strong SNP representation or our needs and wants will continue to be overlooked.

Yes, or Emily Maitlis.

Laura Kuenssberg would be a sight better than Julie Etchingham.

Curtaintwitcher

Didn't watch it but from the posts here, Starmer has shown what a weak, ineffective person he is. I should like to see Angela Rayner take part in this sort of thing. She has much more life in her.

He didn’t. He showed that he is the more considered and polite of the two, whilst Sunak was rude and reactive. Oh, and I did watch it - I’m not basing that comment on a few posts on a chat site

The trouble is that there is always going to be confirmation bias with things like this, plus, as Casdon says asking big questions and giving 40 seconds to answer is pointless. Also the presenter didn’t stop Sunak from shouting over Starmer. I’d be interested to see a content analysis of the show (and it was a show, rather than a debate) to see how much uninterrupted air time each of them got, to see if that’s my own confirmation bias - I doubt it though.

Where do your figures come from, Katie590?. They sound extraordinarily like the ones the tories have been pushing.

Katie590

The reality is that Starmer is going to need to find £35 billion to fund his budget, averaged out at £2000 per tax payer. Some will come from tax increase some from benefit cuts some from borrowing.

Ending Non Dom and VAT on private schools is popular with the supporters but is a small part of what is needed, those below average income will not have to pay much, if any extra, which means those above average will have to pay a lot more.

Starmer is going to need to be much better in any future debates, this is not a courtroom where everyone is polite and under control.

Those are assumptions though, based on little concrete information. The format was wrong, how could anybody have gone into the detail to explain exactly what their plans were and how they would be funded in 40 seconds?
In my opinion Starmer doesn’t needs to be ‘better’, he needs to speed up his response time - I don’t think his issue was what he said, it was the ums and ahs while he processed what he was being asked. In that respect Sunak and he are opposites, because Sunak over anticipates and almost answers questions before they are asked while Starmer waits for the final dot at the end of the other person’s sentence and then thinks about it for too long before answering.

Didn't watch it but from the posts here, Starmer has shown what a weak, ineffective person he is. I should like to see Angela Rayner take part in this sort of thing. She has much more life in her.

I 'lasted' eight minutes. Awful. Is this seriously the best our Country can come up with?

The reality is that Starmer is going to need to find £35 billion to fund his budget, averaged out at £2000 per tax payer. Some will come from tax increase some from benefit cuts some from borrowing.

Ending Non Dom and VAT on private schools is popular with the supporters but is a small part of what is needed, those below average income will not have to pay much, if any extra, which means those above average will have to pay a lot more.

Starmer is going to need to be much better in any future debates, this is not a courtroom where everyone is polite and under control.

I wonder if 1-1 in depth interviews would be a better format - asking them the same questions. It would cut out the arguing and posturing and get much more detail out of them.

Sunak might be able to “charm” and make his points well BUT has everyone forgotten he and his party have had 14 years to make decisive, effective, positive long term changes and have not done so?

IMO it would have been better to wait for the manifestos.

It’s just that, a circus, promises never to be realised a great big charade. I will vote for whom I’ve decided as don’t believe any election promises. I watch uplifting things or documentaries, my favourite is Sewing Bee.

I would think most people have already made up their minds who they will be voting for, and this tedious debate won’t change them.

Sunak was thought to have edged it 51%-’49%, but even the Tories don’t think it’ll shift the polls.

Waste of time.🤷‍♀️

Having slept on it, I have come to the conclusion that the whole thing is totally unedifying.

It is nothing but a circus that perhaps satisfies the media but no one else.

In my view they should be stopped.

Oh dear. Fiona Bruce is doing a Question Time leaders' Special on 20th. According to the BBC web site it will involve the leaders of the UK's 4 biggest political parties. Until Monday I would have taken that to be Labour, tories, Lib Dem and SNP. I'd be surprised if the SNP don't get ousted now...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c722nv38j88o

maddyone

We watched it through to the end. Nothing new in it that we weren’t already aware of. The next one is on the BBC. I hope Fiona Bruce won’t be the interviewer.

According to the BBC web site it will be Sophie Raworth. 26th June.I hope she's better than last night's presenter and that there are some better ground rules.

Nooooo! These one-to-one debates are worse than useless. A couple of Man-Babies sniping at each other and almost bitchy about it.
I can get plenty of that from listening to "Question Time" on Radio 4.

I can’t see the point in these artificial TV debates. It’s an American idea, seems to me, based on their equally pointless presidential candidate debates. They may display the candidates’ manners (eg talking over each other or shouting) but not much else.

We enjoyed Sewing Bee instead. 🧵🪡

Agreed, maddie. She would be just as bad. TV debates just don’t work, though.

Agree with many posters here. Didn’t like the format - how can you give a reasonable answer to an important question in 40 seconds? Sunak came across as rude and arrogant - talked over the presenter and kept interrupting Starmer. Starmer is a measured, thoughtful orator, not a short, sharp gimmick man - this format didn’t lend itself to his style of presentation. Will this debate change anything? We’ll have to wait and see. Personally, I’m taking nothing for granted in this election, despite what the polls say. Starmer has got the right wing media against him and I don’t trust the public not to be swayed by them. All I know is that this country needs a Labour government!

We watched it through to the end. Nothing new in it that we weren’t already aware of. The next one is on the BBC. I hope Fiona Bruce won’t be the interviewer.

Thank you for that fact check article.

"Some of the estimates in the document have been carried out by civil servants at the Treasury, using assumptions provided by Conservative Party special advisers. Other calculations were not provided by the civil servants.

Labour has disputed the figures in the document. During Tuesday night’s debate, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “What’s happened here is they put in pretend Labour policies to the Treasury, and then they get a false readout."