The two contenders for Britain’s prime minister clashed Tuesday over issues of tax policy, immigration and health care, in a televised debate that at times degenerated into bad-tempered exchanges as the political rivals argued.
The showdown came exactly a month before a crucial general election that will determine whether the opposition Labor Party can capitalize on its strong lead in opinion polls and end the crisis. 14 eventful years Conservative-led government during which the party had five different prime ministers.
Almost as soon as the debate began, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that his opponent, Labor leader Keir Starmer, would increase Britons’ taxes by £2,000 a year if he won the election, repeating the claim several times. “It’s absolutely rubbish,” Mr Starmer finally replied.
Labor said the figure was based on flawed assumptions, and Jonathan Ashworth, a senior party figure, claimed in an interview with Sky News after the debate that Mr Sunak lied. But Mr Starmer’s failure to clearly reject that claim at the start of the program set the tone for what followed: a strong but defensive performance from the opposition leader against a forceful and sometimes ruthless opponent.
An instant opinion poll among viewers Mr Sunak declared a narrow winnereven though Mr Starmer was seen as more friendly and more trustworthy. Although the debate is unlikely to generate a significant number of votes, Mr Sunak’s performance may have eased some nerves within his anxious party.
With the Conservatives lagging in opinion polls for more than 18 months, the broadcast was an opportunity for Mr Sunak to revive his stalled campaign. After a gaffe-prone startThe Prime Minister’s prospects had apparently deteriorated on Monday when Nigel Farage, a right-wing insurgent, made a statement surprise decision to run for office.
For Mr Starmer, the main aim was to avoid losing momentum in the run-up to the July 4 general election, which opinion polls indicate he is on course to win, perhaps comfortably.
There were no knockouts in Tuesday’s hour-long debate, which was filmed in front of a studio audience in Salford, near Manchester, and was the first of two scheduled televised contests between Mr Sunak and Mr Starmer.
Animated but sometimes tyrannical, Mr Sunak has been more aggressive in making his point, accusing Labor of having no plan for government and often discussing Mr Starmer, despite calls for calm from Julie Etchingham, the moderator.
But Mr Sunak struggled to defend the Conservative Party’s 14 years of government, and Mr Starmer ridiculed its failure to reduce waiting lists for treatment of more than seven million procedures in the health system , as he had promised.
“There were 7.2 million, there are now 7.5 million. He says they’re going down and he’s the guy who says he’s good at maths,” Mr Starmer said of the Prime Minister.
“They are coming down from where they were when they were higher,” Mr Sunak replied to laughter from the audience.
In a familiar exchange of claims and counterclaims, Mr Starmer said the Government had “lost control” of the economy, adding that it was ordinary people “who are paying the price”. Mr Sunak argued his plans were helping to revive economic growth and progress would be undermined by Labour.
Televised general election debates are a relatively recent phenomenon in Britain, with the first taking place in 2010. This time it fell to Mr Sunak to make an impact, in a broadcast which has been described as “l ‘one of the last opportunities for the general elections’. The prime minister must change the political fortunes of his party,” said Lee Cain, who worked in Downing Street for Boris Johnson, one of Mr Sunak’s predecessors.
Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Farage, who took over as leader of Reform UK, a small far-right party campaigning to reduce immigration, addressed a crowd of several hundred people in Clacton-on- Sea, who is part of the party. area in which he plans to run in the general election.
Playing on his reputation as a political disruptor, Mr Farage called on voters to send him to Parliament “for being a bloody nuisance”. However, not all passersby were friendly and one protester threw what appeared to be a large milkshake at him. A woman was then arrested.
A staunch supporter of Brexit, Mr. Farage tried unsuccessfully seven times to become a member of the British Parliament. But analysts say he has a good chance this time in Clacton, an area which voted strongly for Britain to leave the European Union and was once represented by a UK Independence Party MP. pro-Brexit that Mr Farage used to represent. lead.
Nationally, Reform UK is unlikely to win more than a handful of seats under Britain’s electoral system, which favors the two largest parties and makes it very difficult for smaller parties to break through.
But Mr Farage’s party tends to take more votes from the Conservatives than Labor and could siphon off the thousands of votes Mr Sunak’s party won in the 2019 general election, potentially costing it dozens of seats.
Mr Sunak on Tuesday made another attempt to attract potential reformist voters, pledging to limit immigration by imposing an annual cap on entrants.
Under his plans, a committee of experts would recommend a maximum number of immigrants that would be allowed each year, and that number would then be voted on by Parliament.
Labor rejected the promise as meaningless, pointing out that previous Conservative election promises to limit immigration had not been honored and that net migration had has tripled since the last elections in 2019.
At one point in Tuesday’s debate, Mr Sunak accused Labor of having no plan to reduce the number of asylum seekers crossing the Channel on small boats. And he suggested he would be prepared to withdraw Britain from international agreements if he remained prime minister and that his efforts to send some of those arriving on the British coast on one-way flights to Rwanda have been thwarted.
Mr Starmer called the plan an “expensive gimmick” and attacked Mr Sunak over the increase in legal immigration since the 2019 general election. “The Prime Minister says ‘It’s too high’,” Mr Starmer said, adding: “Who is in charge?”
