The ‘45 seconds to respond’ format was a mistake. Fewer topics with longer responses might actually have been interesting, but this stifled all opportunity for any thought to be expressed in anything more than trivial detail.

Question two: Be honest about the NHS and what it’s going to take to fix it.

Both candidates:

Starmer hits a clanger on Sunak.

Starmer: Explain how the waiting figures are coming down, they were 7.2 million and now they’re 7.5 million and he’s supposed to be good at maths!

Sunak: B…B…But they came down from a higher figure before?

Sunak actually getting a clap from the audience after saying he won’t bow to Junior Doctor Union demands of a 35% pay increase.

I’m actually surprised at that!

I thought Starmer started off well but he’s getting some push back from Rishi that he needs to tackle otherwise he’s going to get swamped by Rishi’s combative style. Round One pretty indecisive. 😕

Okay, I’m now done watching too. I dunno if this is because I’m biased, but while neither performance was fantastic, Starmer overall came across better than Sunak. By the incredibly low standards set by politicians, Starmer seemed more honest, and I definitely noted him being irritated with some of Sunak’s more blatant lies. Sunak came across as a smug public school boy who always feels like he has to be right. I was particularly not impressed with Sunak making out that Labour would require people to replace boilers and cars “when they don’t need to”, when it’s bloody obvious that the plan would be to replace them with more climate-friendly options when existing stock wears out. I wish Starmer had been more deft in challenging him on that kind of bullshit.

Starmer’s experience as a lawyer helped him here, I think. He’s used to debating, although clearly he’s more used to a courtroom where he can speak at length to make his point. He’s not good at succinct so the 45 second time limit didn’t give him a chance to do his best debating. Sunak treated it more as an argument where it was more important to win than to put across a serious and thoughtful point.

Overall, I’m not a huge fan of Starmer, but I’m still happy to say I would rather have him as prime minister than Sunak.

That’s it! Thanks for playing. My summary:

ӣ2000 worse off in taxes"

That’s all he said wasn’t it?

Unelected, jug-eared, toffy-nosed midget

Edit: From the BBC-

The chief Treasury civil servant wrote to Labour two days ago saying that the Conservatives’ assessment of their tax plans “should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service”.

The letter from James Bowler, the Treasury permanent secretary, risks undermining Rishi Sunak’s claim in last night’s debate that Labour’s plans include £38bn of uncosted spending, which he says would mean £2,000 of tax rises per working household.

In a letter to Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Bowler writes: “As you will expect, civil servants were not involved in the production or presentation of the Conservative Party’s document ‘Labour’s Tax Rises’ or in the calculation of the total figure used … the £38bn figure used in the Conservative Party’s publication includes costs beyond those provided by the Civil Service”.

“I agree that any costings derived from other sources or produced by other organisations should not be presented as having been produced by the Civil Service,” he adds.

GB Energy seems like a genuinely interesting idea from Labour. Say more on this old man! 😜

Rishi says you can vote for anyone apart from the Conservatives and it will count for Labour. Awesome, everyone vote with your conscious then.

Second audience clap of the night is for Starmer’s private school tax policy. 👏

Thank you everyone for your comments. I wasn’t going to watch and you’ve summarised nicely.

Something like the third time Starmer has told us his dad was a tool maker.

🎶 My old man’s a tool maker he wears a tool man’s hat…

Rishi coming off better in this question of retirement tax than Starmer. All he has to say is “under Liz Truss, under Liz Truss”. Poor from Starmer on that one.

In a post-Trump, post-Brexit, post-Johnson world, I thought journalists had gotten better at calling out direct lies. Yet the moderator allowed Sunak repeatedly to lie about Labour’s tax plans and to lie that the Treasury backed those figures. Just outrageous.