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.

If they’re lying about one thing surely it’s highly likely they’re lying about the other.

The increase is based on their made up numbers!

You need to read upon the facts about gas boilers etc. And not fall for the scare tactics.

A couple of examples of why "Treasury costings" of opposition policies are always bollocks.

They are based on "assumptions from Special Advisers" which are written to maximise the costings even if they are obvious nonsense.

(Thread)
Link here -

x.com/samfr/status/1791395667467772058?s=46&t=Uw4lJNwxFZFnX0Xs3doHYg

"Treasury use these wrong assumptions to then produce a range. And then in their attack document the Tories only use the highest number.

It's not subtle. Nobody should be taking it seriously.

One of the problems with having a few client newspapers is that because SPADs know they'll print any old nonsense they don't bother will the hard work of making this stuff credible to anyone else."

x.com/samfr/status/1791419491890450524?s=46&t=Uw4lJNwxFZFnX0Xs3doHYg

They are lying about the increase, because the figure of £2k is based on assumptions on future Labour policies made by SpAds, not the Treasury. So the figures are guesswork that have most definitely not been signed off by the Treasury, making them inauthentic. It's the £350million on the bus all over again.

I wouldn't want him near a bread roll!

Who promptly sold us out to the tories........ tosser.

I'm looking forward to a Labour government and the return to a culture of common decency

This is v. interesting: BBC Breaking News has sent out a push to 7 million phones this morning clarifying the Tory lie about the £2k tax, meaning the truth will reach more people than who actually watched the debate. It's also being suggested that the reason Starmer held back from answering is because he knew this letter existed and wanted to wait to use it to expose the lie. So he let Sunak keep repeating it to dig his own grave. Sounds like a very risky strategy though!
https://x.com/darrenmccaffrey/status/1798261683762368781

I think you're going to be disappointed if you're hoping for any common decency.

No more disappointed than I am now. The decency level could hardly fall any further.

I think £3k is more than enough to cover insurance.

Why on earth do you think that?

If £3k per person is what it costs to run our current NHS (stretched to breaking point) then why would an insurance company accept liability for health services (at an ever-increasing cost for an increasingly-unhealthy population in a world with ever-more-expensive medical advances) in return for insurance premiums which are only just the current annual cost?!?

Where do you think any additional money would actually come from? The insurance company's magic ever-expanding wallet? Where does that come from?

You can't just decide 'I want this stuff, and someone else should pay'.

oh my sweet summer child. £3k per person works out to £250 per person per month

My sister in law just immigrated to the USA and her insurance in a low cost of living state is 1k PER MONTH for herself, her husband and a baby minimum. This is the cheapest package and does not include co pays and has exclusions. This is the private market. Healthcare is a bloody expensive thing, most people cannot afford it if they have to get it privately. I have private medical healthcare but through my company, they can only afford to pay for it because the private healthcare companies know the nhs are going to pick up difficult and expensive operations and pallative care at 100k per year, they are generally doing hip operations, scans and GP appointments which are relatively uncomplicated.

Most countries who have universal healthcare and insurance- the government usually runs a healthcare insurance scheme which is pegged more to people's wages and that also comes out of general taxation. You do not get £250 per month PRIVATE medical health insurance in a country if the government doesn't pay for healthcare. You might get it if the government is also subsidizing your insurance through the provision of a countrywide affordable scheme i.e. european social insurance schemes which actually resemble NI because it is often pegged to income .

Government has to be involved somehow, but in other countries, they call it insurance and its a separate payment from tax (though also subsidised by tax). In the UK its free at the point of access and the money solely raised by tax. Honestly its just labelling different pots of money. Insurance systems however may have more private spending on healthcare but now that is growing in the UK too largely because the NHS is not working.

Neither covered themselves in glory last night and I’m still undecided. However Sunak for me was slightly better from the get go, his opening statement was better.

I don’t particularly want either of them as PM!

Starmer was like a wet weekend. I don’t trust Angela Rayner at all who I’m sure pulls his strings.

Labour has also ruined Wales and if that’s an indication of a labour government, I want it less. I’m also old enough to remember the shambles of the last labour government.

So it's down to who is the lesser of 2 evils.

Starmer was like a wet weekend. I don’t trust Angela Rayner at all who I’m sure pulls his strings.

What are the bad things that you think Angela Rayner would do?

Another poll about last night

https://x.com/JLPartnersPolls/status/1798258155391942656

NEW: @TheSun / JLP debate poll of 1,000 viewers

Who, in your view, performed best?

Starmer: 53%
Sunak: 33%

Conservative 2019 voters:

Starmer: 33%
Sunak: 60%

I’m also old enough to remember the shambles of the last labour government.

So am I. It was the best government of my lifetime so I guess recollections vary.

😂🤷‍♀️

I have to laugh about the idiot Johnny Mercer making a point of labour supporters and mps using Liz Truss as a stick to knock them with because she is the past and we are looking into the future.

Who is it who does the "yeah but Jeremy corbyn" each pmqs? And "lol they left a money from the Chancellor saying there's no money, they can't be trusted." (knowing full well it's been a tradition for every outgoing Chancellor to leave the exact same tone of letter since 1963!)

BBC News - General election live: Civil servant's letter casts doubt on Tories' tax attack on Labour - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-69088663

@Thisagainandagain nothing could be further from the truth ! I apologise for using the shorthand of slagging off ! What I mean is KS entire debate pretty much consisted of what the Conservatives have done wrong, not what his won policies were and what changes he would make RS asked him HOW so many times and he just couldn't answer. Don't really chat politics at home tbh, DD drew her own conclusions of the actual debate, which is what I was talking about.

The treasury aren’t happy with that figure. They’ve said it doesn’t come from them. Maybe Sunak lied (again).

I’m also old enough to remember the shambles of the last labour government.

Me too. At the time I took it for normal but the more I see of politics and governments since, the more my estimation of the last Labour government rises and rises.

What we have seen over the last 13 years has been abysmal. I have gone through stages of shock, anger, quiet desperation at the self-serving bunch of pricks and prickesses that have been in power since.

During my childhood and into my early adulthood, I'd occasionally hear interviews with people who were venomously against ever voting Tory in their lives, so deep rooted was their distate for them after the Thatcher years. At the time, I'd think they were a bit mad: surely (I thought) you take each general election as it comes, listen to all sides and choose afresh each time?

Now I know. Now I see. How an act of damage against a country can seem so great, you'd never trust that party again.

How? You won’t have to do anything. It isn’t ’everyone change for 2030’. It’s ’after 2030, when you need to change anyway, change for these things’.