Picked by polling firm Survation, the audience was split three ways between Labour, Conservative and undecided voters. This means it had significantly more “undecideds” than in the country at large, where they sit at about 18 to 20 percent.
Even so, the exchanges in this brisk yet forensic event — the most compelling 90 minutes of TV in the election so far — showed an audience determined to cut through prepared lines, at times heckling to do so.
Starmer explained “the doctors say they want 35 percent” more pay — only for a junior doctor to cut in: “No we don’t. We want a path to pay restoration … The 35 percent thing is not what it’s about.”
UK NATIONAL PARLIAMENT ELECTION POLL OF POLLS
For more polling data from across Europe visit POLITICO Poll of Polls.
Sunak earned laughter when he insisted — after he made falling debt a priority for 2023 — that “I was never saying it would come down overnight.”
After his flat-footed response to Sunak in last week’s ITV debate, Starmer came to the stage more energized than Sunak, who one audience member said “looked like a defeated man.” This made him combative, even to the audience — hitting back after they laughed at his “toolmaker” line.
Unapologetically, he said he had “changed” some of his 2020 pledges to put “country first, party second,” promised “no surprises” in the manifesto, said he would not scrap the two-child limit on benefits, and on tax rises said: “I’m not going to sit here tonight and write the next five years of budgets.” He even made a reference to what “we will do in government.”
