Two contenders to be Britain’s next prime minister clashed angrily over tax, immigration and health policy in a televised debate on Tuesday that pitted political rivals at each other in a debate that at times descended into ill-tempered rows.
The confrontation comes a month before a crucial general election that will determine whether the opposition Labor Party can use its strong lead in the polls to end 14 years of turmoil under the Conservative-led government, during which the party has There have been five Prime Ministers.
Almost at the start of the debate, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that his opponent, Labor leader Keir Starmer, would increase taxes on Britons by £2,000 a year if he won the election, repeating the claim several times . “Absolute rubbish,” Mr Starmer finally replied.
Labor said the figure was based on wrong assumptions, while senior Labor MP Jonathan Ashworth claimed in an interview with Sky News after the debate that Mr Sunak was lying. But Mr Starmer’s failure to explicitly reject the claim at the start of the broadcast set the tone for what was to come: a steady but defensive display from the opposition leader in the face of a dynamic and sometimes brutal opponent sexual expression.
A snap poll of viewers showed Mr Sunak narrowly winning despite Mr Starmer being seen as more likable and trustworthy. While the debate is unlikely to change a large number of votes, Sunak’s performance may have stabilized anxious moods within the party.
With the Conservatives trailing badly in the polls for more than 18 months, the broadcast provides Mr Sunak with an opportunity to reinvigorate his stalled campaign. The prime minister’s prospects appear to have worsened on Monday after right-wing rebel Nigel Farage unexpectedly decided to run in the election after an early gaffe.
For Starmer, the main goal is to avoid losing momentum ahead of the July 4 election, which polls suggest he is on track to win, possibly comfortably.
Tuesday’s hour-long debate was filmed in front of a studio audience in Salford, near Manchester, and was the first of two live televised contests between Sunak and Starmer.
Despite host Julie Etchingham’s pleas for calm, Sunak, energetic and sometimes threatening, pushed his views more aggressively, accusing Labor of having no government plan and often Talk about Mr Starmer.
But Mr Sunak has struggled to defend the Conservatives’ 14-year record in power and Mr Starmer has mocked him for failing to cut waiting lists for more than 7 million surgeries in the health care system as he promised.
“There used to be 7.2 million, now there are 7.5 million. He says they are falling – and this is a man who claims to be good at maths,” Mr Starmer said of the Prime Minister.
Mr Sunak replied: “They are coming down from a higher position,” to a burst of laughter from the audience.
In a familiar exchange of claims and counter-claims, Starmer said the government had “lost control of the economy”, adding that it was ordinary people who “paid the price”. Sunak argued his plans would help revive economic growth and said Labor would put that progress at risk.
General election television debates are a relatively new phenomenon in the UK, with the first occurring in 2010. Mr Sunak has the onus to make an impact in a broadcast that has been described as “one of the last chances for a UK general election”.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Farage addressed hundreds of people in Clacton-on-Sea, a small far-right party dedicated to reducing immigration that has taken over as leader of Reform Britain.
Farage capitalized on his reputation as a political subversive, calling on voters to send him to parliament “to make him a nuisance.” However, not all bystanders were friendly, with one protester throwing what appeared to be a large milkshake at him. A woman was later arrested.
A leading supporter of Brexit, Mr Farage has tried and failed seven times to become an MP. But analysts believe he has a fair chance this time in Clacton, an area that voted strongly for Britain to leave the EU and was once represented by an MP from UK Independence Party, the party in which Farage was a pro-Brexit party. .
Nationally, Reform UK is unlikely to win more than a few seats under the UK electoral system, which favors the two largest parties and makes it difficult for smaller parties to break through.
But Farage’s party, which tends to get more votes from the Conservatives than from Labour, could lose dozens by siphoning off thousands of votes Sunak’s party won in the 2019 election seats.
Sunak made a new attempt on Tuesday to appeal to potential reform voters by promising to curb immigration by setting annual caps on arrivals.
Under his plan, a committee of experts would recommend the maximum number of immigrants allowed each year, which would then be voted on by parliament.
Labor dismissed the pledge as meaningless, pointing out that previous Conservative election promises to limit immigration had not been fulfilled, with net migration roughly tripling since the last election in 2019.
At one point during Tuesday’s debate, Sunak accused Labor of not having plans to limit the number of asylum seekers crossing the Channel in small boats. He has also suggested he would be willing to withdraw Britain from international deals if he remained prime minister, but his efforts to get some arriving on British shores on one-way flights to Rwanda have been thwarted.
Starmer called the plan an “expensive gimmick” and attacked Sunak over the surge in legal immigration since the 2019 election. “The Prime Minister said ‘it’s too high’,” Mr Starmer said, adding, “Who is responsible?”
