I thought Sunak won last night’s debate on all traditional counts. He was more aggressive, more on the ball and he was fluent in his delivery. His opponent was boring and consistently lost his way half-way through his sentence. Sunak had a new word “surrender” and he used it well, Starmer went on and on about his time in the legal system and reminded us why we don’t care for lawyers.
Despite all this, only one in three people of the 3,000 who voted in the FT poll, agreed with me and even the YouGov post debate poll – where punters are a little closer to the action – put the result as 50-50.
The point is that we are beyond listening to and trusting Rishi Sunak and so he simply can’t win a debate any more. This should be a big lesson to populist politicians, at the end of the campaign, you are judged by actions and not words.
We know our pensions and we know how they get taxed. As LCP and others have commented, the Conservative claim to have lifted us out of pension taxation and their claim that Labour will deliver a “retirement tax” is nonsense.
It is full of hot air like a lot of promises about new hospitals, funding the NHS with a Brexit dividend and the public has decided not to listen to oratory but to mark Sunak as a loser, however he performs.
It is sad that Starmer comes across as such a loser and I applaud the questioner who asked whether these two were the best that Britain could offer us.
But I would rather have Starmer, for all his haplessness, than five more years of the Johnson/Truss/Sunak continuum. And this is what the public sees more of Sunak as. As I have written elsewhere on this blog this morning, you cannot divorce yourself from previous Governments when those Governments were your Governments!
I am looking at a leaflet from a Conservative politician which arrived last night. It is asking me to vote for him to hold a Labour Government to account. That is the authentic voice of the Conservative party and it is why Sunak cannot win a debate, an election – anything,
