Sunak V Starmer

No problem, Dd. The more often it's said, the better. That's the politician's technique, isn't it?😂

Germanshepherdsmum

Starmer came across as weak and without answers. It doesn’t bode well for his future as party leader.

Does running a party (or a country) rely on snap answers and charisma? I don't think so, although in today's media-heavy world many people judge on that sort of thing. When important decisions have to be made I think that a more considered response is better than dealing with someone who constantly interrupts with slick comments that lack substance.

Germanshepherdsmum

Starmer came across as weak and without answers. It doesn’t bode well for his future as party leader.

As Sunak was shouting lies incessantly and ignored the 'moderator' what was Starmer supposed to do, shout louder?

I don't think that's how KCs behave, is it? Or civilised people..

£35 billion is the sum stated by Sunak, regardless if that is accurate or not public spending needs to be increased by either party to improve services.

How much do you think needs to be spent?

Sunak: 'Bold! Plan! Bold plan! Two thousand pounds! Bold! Bold! Two thousand! Plan!'

Starmer: Shuts eyes, gently shakes head, patiently waits for yapping to stop, opens mouth, and....

Sunak: 'Ah! Two thousand pounds! Bold! Plan! Bold plan!'

And so on ad infinitum.

Apart from the moment of comic relief when Sunak mentioned National Service as a solution to the problems besetting Covid affected school leavers. That raised a laugh.

MaizieD

Germanshepherdsmum

Starmer came across as weak and without answers. It doesn’t bode well for his future as party leader.

As Sunak was shouting lies incessantly and ignored the 'moderator' what was Starmer supposed to do, shout louder?

I don't think that's how KCs behave, is it? Or civilised people..

Political debate is not a courtroom, a barrackroom is probably closer

Another who didn't watch it and glad I didn't! I did listen to Farage though. What a horrible man, just a vile racist attention seeker! I live in a very safe Tory constituency so tbh I feel somewhat disenfranchised but it will be interesting to see how many votes go to Reform if they put up a candidate here.

MaizieD

petra

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.

Oddly enough, I came across this on X/twitter this morning, it made me think about the outrage over Emily's image from Rochester.

The author is Nitin Sawhney . A British musician and composer of International repute (says Wikipedia)

I grew up watching flag-waving little Englanders parading their nationality around Rochester like Dickensian caricatures, puffing their chests out in pride over an imperial history carefully reimagined to paint over barbaric cruelty with Constable landscapes and Churchillian swagger… As if the accident of where they were born had been an achievement…

These folk were everywhere… with their arrogant smiles and entitled condescension. They were the National Front-supporting parents of school friends, avoiding eye contact if I dared visit their house via their sons, asking me transparent questions about my ethnicity and explaining how mixed race marriages never work, in case I propositioned one of their vulnerable teenage daughters…

I was taught to consider myself both lucky to be here and self-evidently inferior by virtue of my heritage.

So when I see those same superior, colluding, patronising smiles on the over-rehearsed faces of attention-seeking rabble-rousers like Farage and Tice, I have to remember…

We can’t change the past but we can make damn sure those who belong in the past don’t destroy our future…

Farage is a disease, a malicious vessel of hate… A gleeful provocateur. Everything he touches becomes a toxic wasteland of hopeless misery. He is a cancer waiting to destroy the same host over and over again.

I said this about him in a Channel 4 News interview back in 2014.

I say it again now

This should go on the Farage thread, too...

Oh ! I like him! He's so articulate and interesting and funny. Unlike that creature.

In a letter from the permanent secretary the Treasury has denied that they had anything to do with the £2,000 'extra tax' figure and that the tories had been asked not to use it

Yes, just seen extracts from this letter on BBC news. I wonder if KS was slightly taken aback that RS still actually pushed that (forcefully) throughout the debate - saying it was from independent treasury figures when he (Sunak) knew this was not true. It was RS’s main threat throughout, and this morning it’s been shown to have been made up by the Tories.

I want to know what exactly was meant by Labour will tax your state pension.

Back to Miss Marple - the episode with Joanna Lumley - just struck me that the England portrayed in this series has long gone. If it ever existed that is. But where are we now as a nation?

maddyone

I want to know what exactly was meant by ^Labour will tax your state pension.^

Sunak has said that the Tories won't. They will add another 'lock' so that the pension is taken out of tax. What he didn't say, of course, is that the nil-rate band was frozen by him, so more and more people who work for a living will be dragged into tax who wouldn't have been if the nil-rate had risen with inflation. He's disguising a tax raid on the poor as a benefit to pensioners.

Starmer does indeed need to understand that political debate is not a courtroom. He just didn’t have the answers. He should have been ready with them - as a barrister he knows the importance of preparation - but he really wasn’t. He looked lost, like a frightened rabbit. If he disputes the £2k per person cost of a Labour government he needs to come up with evidence rebutting it. This was a forum where he had to have his answers ready - but he didn’t.

maddyone

I want to know what exactly was meant by ^Labour will tax your state pension.^

It means nothing more than Sunak is reckoning onLabour not raising the tax threshold.

He doesn’t actually know because Labour haven’t spoken about it yet.

Also

Sunak was lying about the Treasury producing the fantasy £2k tax.

The Treasury said that no civil servant has been involved with producing the figures as Sunak claimed.

So Sunak has lied about the £2k and also how it was produced.

No wonder KS didn’t want live tv debates! But he should have been provided with a few punchy takeaway sound-bites. He is bad at this kind of thing and RS is good at it (fair do’s) or has better speech writers. “If you think Labour are going to win this election start saving now” was neat, and KS had nothing like that.

Would rather see Rachel Reeves v Jeremy Hunt. Angela Rayner v Oliver Dowden.

The format was poor as everyone says and the presenter was hopeless. Too many topics for the time available and 45 seconds absurd. Let’s hope ITV can improve on those fronts.

Katie590

£35 billion is the sum stated by Sunak, regardless if that is accurate or not public spending needs to be increased by either party to improve services.

How much do you think needs to be spent?

As the Treasury has disowned Sunak's figures I think they are best ignored...

Of course there needs to be a massive increase in public spending, but taxation of 'ordinary people' is not the way to go about it, for reasons that I am tired of repeating over and over again. It should be presented as investment, not ordinary spending...

No company would increase prices in order to amass money to invest, it would borrow it. Labour could 'borrow; there is plenty of appetite for investors to buy government bonds, but a government also has the option of creating it's own currency to invest which a business doesn't. (Though much business investment is by way of 'loans' created by banks out of thin air)

Yes, thanks Doodledog. I understand that the Conservatives have locked the nil band tax rate, till about 2027/8 I think, so if the state pension keeps rising each year, pensions would surely be dragged into taxable income. Is he saying that this situation will continue under Labour?
I pay tax anyway as I have a professional pension.

Germanshepherdsmum

Starmer does indeed need to understand that political debate is not a courtroom. He just didn’t have the answers. He should have been ready with them - as a barrister he knows the importance of preparation - but he really wasn’t. He looked lost, like a frightened rabbit. If he disputes the £2k per person cost of a Labour government he needs to come up with evidence rebutting it. This was a forum where he had to have his answers ready - but he didn’t.

Starmer did not perform well - but he didn’t need to because he is not on the back foot like Sunak.

Digging down into the immediate polls after the debate, Starmer was considered to have done best on all areas except the £2k tax and immigration

Both of these areas will be lost to Sunk once the issues are made clea to the voter.

Nitin Sawhney's music is quite beautiful, if anyone is interested.

“If you think Labour are going to win this election start saving now”

It might have been 'neat', but it was b*llocks...

So is Sunak saying they will have a separate tax rate for pensioners?

MissAdventure

Nitin Sawhney's music is quite beautiful, if anyone is interested.

I don't think anyone is, MisAdventure. Thornberry is never going to be forgiven by some 😁

I don’t think Keir Starmer performed well at all, but it won’t change the outcome of the election in my opinion.
My son is a barrister and is far more hard hitting in his arguments then Starmer was, just in political discussions at home.
None of it matters, it’s a done deal this time.

What Sunak is trying to do is mitigate against the loss of votes to Reform, to at least gain enough seats to look like an opposition, which at present looks highly doubtful. So much of what he has announced lately is to appeal to our age group.

He has nothing to say to the under 50s

He has nothing to say to anyone as far as I can see.