Tonight's TV debate Sunak v Starmer - any predictions?

[CallingOccupantsOfInterplanetaryCraft]

Anyone up for a watch thread? Maybe even debate bingo. I know I know, don't threaten me with a good time. (Bingo suggestions: natural party of business, Labour has no plan, end the chaos, Rayner will take over, assorted references to Starmer's time as DPP probably blaming for Jimmy Saville again, inflation is down etc etc.)

At this point I seriously doubt anything like this will remotely change the game Nick Clegg style. I read somewhere the only way Sunak could come out of this ahead in the polls is if Starmer pulled off a mask scooby-doo style to reveal he's Jeremy Corbyn, which admittedly would be great telly.

I'm so fed up with the endless rhetoric but will definitely watch later anyway.

People see what they want to see and disregard the rest..

Yea. The question is really whether it makes any difference to the polls and voting intention. My guess is not much!

Totally infuriating. Sunak repeating the £2000 thing and every time Starmer tried to say that isn't true he was talked over and then both were shut down.

Also saying that Starmer wouldn't support the nuclear deterrent..didn't he go on record saying he would push the button earlier this week ?? (I want to avoid nuclear war, but the enemy need to believe you would be prepared to use your nukes)..

So frustrating ... of course the right wing press now saying RS was strong (rude and shouty) and that KS will put up taxes arrgghhhhh.....

Well of course, wild horses wouldn't make me vote Tory, they are purely a party for the very wealthy.

However, i do try and listen to Tory ministers and their policies, its just that when i look around me, everything is broken, i spend some time in Europe, they have not seen the collapse in public services that we have, yet have had financial crash, a pandemic and Ukraine too.... why has the UK suffered so badly?

Why has national debt tripled, since 2010, yet services have fallen off a cliff? where has that money gone?

This is not how it works. They can't spend all the years in opposition writing their manifesto because everything changes all the time. Things they would have put in the manifesto even 3 years ago would have shifted so much by now.

Every election the manifestos come out later than this.

Cmon now, that isn’t the inference at all. Don’t be so sensitive. He clearly wasn’t saying if you sent your kids state you couldn’t be aspirational or hard working, what a silly little comment. 😂

My take away last night was that I don’t want either of them . Starmer came across as faux sympathetic , nowhere near as sharp as Sunak and avoided several issues . Sunak is not likable but much sharper

Things change but the core ideas should remain the same and ready for immediate tinkering to stay up to date.

I find all this frantic defence of labour to discredit its followers tbh. Better to be realistic and gain trust than doggedly stick to the same refrain which now sounds tired

Well of course, wild horses wouldn't make me vote Tory, they are purely a party for the very wealthy.

But loads of not at all wealthy people vote for them. What does that say about them?

You’ve hit the nail on the head - Sunak was much sharper. Massive shame, I actually got ice cream ready to see him have his arse handed to him and then got that performance 😂

Ha,haha, this is of course ridiculous! Tories have been attacked for 14 years by Labour. So tell the bloody great plan.

But to be fair, Labour have been an incredibly weak opposition. It should have been easy for them to show up the Conservatives but somehow they floundered.

IMO many people are only considering voting Labour because they are not the Conservatives, not because they actually want to vote Labour.

bottom line is our services have been cut to the bare bones since the 2008 crash. The government never reinvested in them when things got brighter and just kept cutting until now.

the level of investment needed to get them back to acceptable let alone good service is huge.

whoever gets in needs more money to do that. Anyone thinking there won’t be tax rises is living in cuckoo land. If there was spare money knocking about it would have been found and used

I actually think starmer is very moderate, and it’s not he is incapable of coming up with a plan, I think it’s he’s still got a lot of hard left in his party and he is unable to agree a plan. That’s what he’s incapable of, getting them to agree,

and that’s bloody terrifying, if he can’t agree it before he’s in power, then he’s no chance if he gets in. As said, I certainly couldn’t vote for them after last night. He had every chance to tell the public his plans on all the key issues and failed on every single count.

i can see there is a lot of hard left supporters on here, a lot of fervent Labour supporters, but it was very obvious starmer avoiding answering the question on any plans he had. He was asked one thing and would answer another. At one point he was havering on about the Second World War, and repeatedly told us how he’d prosecuted terrorists, but was totally unable to answer the question on why he voted against the legislation to to after the people smugglers. The man looked like a fool.

Yes - a millionaire wouldn't access life saving care privately for a family member if the NHS was failing him? He lied. We would ALL do this if we could.

It says that irrespective of personal wealth, lots of people don't like Labour ?

I am glad you think it is funny. I am not the only person on the thread who noted that inference.

Sunak has no idea of the lives of ordinary working people because he doesn't know any. That is no laughing matter.

Ah the moral superiority fairly drips from my screen.

This would be impossible. Plans have to be costed and adapted to budgets- a bit like real life.

When the torys have screwed up the budget, and spent billions on schemes like dodgy ppe through covid, allowing the likes of tory peer Baroness Mone to buy a bloody yacht with money Sunak claims was spent on the NHS, then obviously Labour's plans have had to change. Anything else would be idiotic.

Ds2 called it before the debate started

he said sunak would come over better than starmer

we both preferred starmer overall , sunak was very shouty and rude and the moderation was poor (incredibly difficult job…id have ben shite at it)

a poster upthread mentioned negotiations and deals with other countries and preferred sunaks ‘style’, id rather have someone like starmer, less yelly

😂

Oh so predictable. He was shit get over it.

I am completely fucked if they bring this in for 2030. Fucked.

They are incredibly noisy- we live very rurally and we can hear a neighbour's about 100m away at night. It's noise pollution tbh.

The hard left would throw him out very quickly. Bloody terrifying.