General election ITV debate: Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer prepare for head-to-head clash – UK politics live

a good history of TV debates for the House magazine. Here is an excerpt.

Since the Brown-Cameron-Clegg debates of 2010, only one major party leader has not taken part in at least one direct debate – Theresa May in 2017 – although arguments about the format have continued, ensuring relatively few one-on-one encounters. The debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer on Tuesday night will be just the third head-to-head debate between the two main party leaders since Wilson first floated the idea over 60 years ago (the first and second being between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn in 2019).

Advocating for TV debates back in 1974, Alastair Burnet, then editor of the Economist, said that “men talking intelligently to each other gives a much healthier impression of the political process than men shouting at each other around the country”. We suspect that may be a naïve view of tonight’s proceedings.

Conservatives and now – after endless travelling and campaigning, thousands of leaflet deliveries and conversations, countless hours of TV news coverage and a torrent of print journalism in ink and pixel – the state of play between the two main parties is more or less exactly the same as it was.

Tonight, at 9pm, ITV will host the first TV debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. In 2010 the first ever TV election debate in the UK had an audience of around 10 million and that suggests that, if any single moment in the campaign is going to present Sunak with an opportunity to jumpstart the Tory poll ratings, it is now. There won’t be 10 million people reading his manifesto.

There are, though, three problems he faces. First, voters already have firm views about both leaders, and on balance they prefer Starmer. Second, it is not obvious that Sunak is a better debater; in terms of rhetoric at PMQs, the two are relatively well matched, but Sunak is massively handicapped by having to defend the Tories’ 14-year record. And, third, most election debates in the past have had little or no lasting impact on voting intention in the campaign.

Still, you never know. At the very least it might make good TV. And it is possible that we will learn something new. Starmer is fighting a safety-first election campaign, focusing on a series of policy proposals that have already been well publicised. But Sunak seems to be pushing buttons desperately, in the hope of finding something that might work, and we have yet to see out how radical he will be in terms of promising further tax cuts, or floating withdrawal from the European convention on human rights. Tonight we might get some clarification.

Archie Bland has more in our debate preview podcast.

9.33am.)

Speaking in the Senedd, Drakeford said the change of heart over holiday reform by the Labour administration was an abandonment of a manifesto commitment and would harm children from poorer areas.

It was Drakeford’s most notable intervention since stepping down as first minister and comes at a tense time for Labour. Tomorrow Drakeford’s successor, Vaughan Gething, will face a no confidence vote over donations he accepted for his leadership campaign.

Drakeford was clearly angry at the change of heart on school holidays. He said:

I regret the political damage, I regret the reputational damage. What I really regret is the damage that will be done to the life chances of the children who are at the heart of this.

Under Drakeford, the Welsh government had argued that some pupils, especially those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds and those with additional learning needs, find it difficult to get back to learning after long summer holidays.

Drakeford said: “This policy would have begun to close the gap in the lives of those children.”

Education secretary Lynne Neagles said she regretted the tone of Drakeford’s remarks. She said the decision had been made taking into account views made during an extensive consultation. She said:

But it’s also about recognising that we have to implement a series of major reforms and tackle some serious attainment issues in our schools. And to think that a week’s change in the school year is going to make a difference to the systemic challenges we’re facing in education is quite frankly fiddling while Rome burns.

for Politico, Tom Cruise has been there too – and at one point tried to get into Sunak’s limousine when they arrived around the same time.Nigel Farage.

I’m sorry to hear @Nigel_Farage has had drinks thrown at him in Clacton-on-Sea today – we may disagree, but every candidate has the right to campaign without fear of violence or intimidation!

a new analysis arguing that Labour and the Conservatives are not being honest about the spending cuts that will be needed if they are going to continue complying with their fiscal rules. The report explains what the fiscal rules are, and how they impact on the parties’ spending plans. Isabel Stockton, the IFS economist who produced the assessment, said:

Both main parties say they are committed to getting debt on a downward path between 2028-29 and 2029-30. This target has an unfortunate combination of characteristics. It is eminently gameable – and has already been gamed almost to irrelevance by the current government; it is the loosest debt rule we have had in the past 30 years; and yet it is currently so constraining that it will either be breached, or will result in policies in practice quite different to those currently being peddled. It is, to be kind, not a sensible rule, and neither party appears serious about the underlying principle of getting debt falling.

This has led to both parties avoiding the reality that they are effectively signed up to sharp spending cuts, while arguing over smaller changes to taxes and spending. The one exception is Labour’s plan to borrow £23.7bn over five years to spend on green investment, which will make a promise to get debt falling harder to keep. On the basis of the March budget forecasts and the sharp spending cuts they imply, it looks as though it will be just about consistent with the fiscal rule – at least on paper. If that remains the case come the autumn, then whoever is chancellor by then will be able to consider themselves fortunate. Labour, or anyone serious about government, should not rely on getting lucky.

1.42pm.) But Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary, who is standing down at the election, told Times Radio that he did not agree.

Referring to Farage saying he would like to stage a reverse takeover of the Conservative party, Gove said:

[Farage] should be careful what he wishes for because if he is successful in his aims, then we will have a Labour majority which will undo all of the things for which he has claimed credit. And he will be directly to blame for having ushered in a leftward shift in British politics.

So yes, Nigel Farage has been admirably honest. But a), it’s an ego trip and b), he’s also said that he wants to destroy the Conservative party. I’m all for working with people from other parties but if someone says it’s their explicit aim to grind you into bone meal, then they’re not your friend.

Nigel Farage in Clacton, according to Essex police. In a statement the force said:

Officers have made two arrests after responding to a report a drink was thrown at a man in Clacton.

We were called to the area of Marine Parade East, Clacton, at around 2.10pm today.

It was reported a man had a drink thrown over him as he left a premises in the area.

A 25-year-old woman, from Clacton, was arrested at the scene on suspicion of assault.

While officers were responding and making this arrest, a second individual, a man, was arrested on suspicion of assaulting an emergency worker.

Both individuals remain in custody for questioning.

2.41pm) will help the party win votes.

The juvenile moron who threw a drink over Nigel has just gained us hundreds of thousands more votes

We will not be bullied or threatened off the campaign trail

Source: theguardian.com