Julie Etchington was the clear winner (Credit: Jonathan Hordle-ITV/Getty)
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There was one clear winner in last night’s prime ministerial debate on ITV. It was, of course, the moderator. While Keir Starmer droned and Rishi Sunak piped and yapped, Julie Etchingham radiated a sincerity that neither of the men on stage with her was able to rival. They were loathing every minute of it and pretending to relish the cut and thrust. She made no pretence. She was bored, she was tetchy, and she absolutely wasn’t having their bullshit.
“Please, gentlemen, we will lower our voices,” she said at one point like a primary school teacher enjoining a rabble of five-year-olds to “use our indoor voices”. Again and again, she interrupted the babble of one or other to insist they answered the question asked, or shut up and give the other one the chance to speak. “Gentlemen, please!”
Not that her interventions were always, or even often, successful. Noting that the IFS thought that both men were in a “conspiracy of silence” about having to either raise taxes or cut services, she asked something to the effect of “are you levelling with us about the public finances — one-word answer, yes or no”. And, of course, both men embarked on long dreary meaningless sentences neither of which contained the word yes, or no.
There was a nice bit around then — it’s a format that could be developed in the second debate — when she made them stop answering out loud altogether. Raise your hand if I’m wrong, she said, and reeled off a list of the unpopular taxes that they both absolutely definitely scout’s honour weren’t going to raise. Both men kept their hands clamped to their sides and hoped their noses weren’t visibly lengthening. Then she asked how they were proposing to pay for everything and, alas, they went back to talking.
This was a wretched, wretched debate — in both its format and in its performers. Who was its intended audience, given it was neither informative nor entertaining? The quickfire format — 45 seconds an answer — meant, even before you factored in the endless interruptions, that nothing remotely substantial stood a chance of being said. Which left rhetorical dash, style and personality: something neither of these earnest technocrats could summon if their political careers depended on it. Sir Keir comes across like the teacher that nobody else in the staffroom wants to include in after-work drinks; and Rishi comes across like the sixth-former who should by rights be head boy but missed out because the teachers found him too annoying.
Of the two men, the debate marginally favoured Sir Keir — if only because he was on easier ground politically, not having been involved in causing the omnishambles the next PM will have to try to clear up. Rishi suffered groans and derisive laughter from the audience a bit more often — blaming Covid and industrial action for the state of the NHS; muttering weakly that the record number of small boats landing was “because it’s a challenge”, and scoring the biggest laugh of the evening when he told a Gen Z that national service was going to be “transformational”.
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SubscribeI would vote for Spider-Man for prime minister. He has the proportional votes of a spider!
What is required from our leaders is good old-fashioned rugged common sense and bravery. We need a Churchill. My question is, where is he?
Yes, I agree. I’d also add pragmatism: the ability to know your principles and be guided by them but deviate from those principles when necessary to make decisions according to the facts on the ground.
The chance to adopt a New Churchill (Boris Johnson, Liz Truss) was deliberately revoked. Too much change might upset the comfortable gravy train.
Too many people getting rich off the status quo.
“The chance to adopt a New Churchill (Boris Johnson, Liz Truss)”
Doesn’t happen often but I am actually lost for words….
So that’s it then. Let’s just elect Julie Etchingham as PM.
Enjoyed reading this. Some choice phrases that deserve to be reused in there – theTory party’s rhetorical t**d polishing department, Starmer’s portrayal of the DPP role as some sort of action man hero.
Didn’t watch the debate (apart from accidentally for a few seconds passing the TV).
“Sir Keir comes across like the teacher that nobody else in the staffroom wants to include in after-work drinks; and Rishi comes across like the sixth-former who should by rights be head boy but missed out because the teachers found him too annoying.”
There you have it – packed in a joke, how else – one of Britain’s most idiotic, self-defeating traits: a chronic allergy to clever people. I might ask about these teachers – what are they like? Probably dull, dreary, thoroughly mediocre and so bored with their own sad lives of sipping bad Nescafé in the staffroom that they have to jazz it up by bitching about the students they’re probably slightly jealous of with their bright futures.
All very well bitching about Starmer and Sunak and their various faults and inadequacies. But it does raise the question: how DO you want your leaders to look? How do you want them to be?
Going from this, they’ve got to be clever and technocratically talented enough to be able to understand the process of governing and pull the right levers once in the driving seat – but also somehow be a visionary (you need a whole new country after all), yet not be boring or come over as too clever, or be too rich, or have been to too expensive a school, or…
Basically, the person has to be thoroughly excellent but be able to fool everyone into thinking they are mediocre because no-one likes a Smart Alec.
That is an impossible laundry list.
I think the British trait of relentlessly mocking anybody trying to portray an air of authority is one of its greatest strengths, and is arguably why nothing close to a despot has ever got anywhere near the levers of power.
Yanks might fawn over and suck up to their boss as a matter of course, whereas in Britain you’ll be ripped to shreds for doing so, and rightly too
I agree, but overdoing it means that a lot of really bright people won’t actually go anywhere near politics. And that is how you end up with Rayner & Lammy in senior positions. Which is not very good, especially when you’re in dire need of massive, tectonic change.
Laughter and derision are OK if it’s about getting accountability. It’s not OK when laughter and derision are done for laughter and derision’s own sakes. Then they are a counterproductive kneejerk reaction that doesn’t make anything better, it keeps you in a neverending mediocrity doom-loop.
Good observation
I don’t think the two are related myself. If it were then America with it’s kowtowing to power wouldn’t be stuck choosing between a half senile crook and a fully senile sec pest in their upcoming election
And again, here are the mystery downvoters…
A clear victory for Rishi. Starmer REALLY has no vision and no policies and his advisers, Opposition and a lazy media have shielded him from any scrutiny for so long he is getting caught out. His tacit promise of renewal for the greedy failing public sector and deranged net zero will cost us triple the Treasury 2k. So hey presto…his rigid failure to present any positive fresh vision was just embarrassing. He should be skewered far more for his reflex leftist ideological resistance to border control (this man helped stop the flight of murderers and rapists and liberated them bavk onto our street remember) and private medicine, his nasty negative class envy on private schools, and nonsensical tosh on him being Bond and smashing gangs. He looked pasty, panicked, robotic, weird, evasive. This man is not equipped for No 10. Good to see the audience cheer Rishi for facing down the ghastly greedy unprincipled Red Young Doctors too.
I’m grateful for the write-up but it confirms all my reasons for not being able to watch these excruciating spectacles. The teams that coach these politicians on how to communicate to us deplorables all need to be sacked. Unless I’m just wrong and it actually works?
It’s all a charade. A fugazi. Both committed to Agenda 2030 and Net Zero. You are literally voting on what colour tie your elected traitor wears.
My condolences that you have to decide between the two options.
Same slug, different rosettes.
This kind of hopeless circus surely points to the inadequacies of our ‘democratic’ system of government.
Increasing circuses, increasing numbers of clowns.
What a vacuous observation. Yes the referee was able to refrain from actually debating and looked much less combative than the other two. Chapeau Sam getting paid for these priceless observations.
According to Wikipedia:
The two debaters were aimed at each other, not the wellbeing of Britain.
Nice quote!
I’m practicing drawing the image I’m going to put on my polling card. It will be a part of the male anatomy. That’ll show ’em!
We know which side Sam is in favour of and it is not Rishi.
The UK has some £2.8 Trillion of public debt and rising, not once was this mentioned.
Welfarism is destroying our economy and our values, not once was this mentioned.
So not only are messrs Sunak and Starmer complicit in avoiding the real issues, so too are ITV.
By design, surely, and not limited to this debate is the concept of time. Start the proceedings by letting each candidate have a full five minutes to articulate their vision for the country. The debate begins after that with reasonable increments of time to respond. The requirement for the female interlocutor becomes less jarring and relevant then. Remove the handlers from the process and let the candidates reveal themselves in their entirety. What a novel concept.
Agree, this would be much better. Give them at least 10 minutes (perhaps 20) to talk without interruption on their vision and plans. Without any teleprompters or notes.
Then – and only then – start asking the questions.
The questions need to be a response to what they say. Not the main event or an outlier for on the make gotcha journalists or people pushing agendas.
As it is, the leaders don’t need to commit to anything. They never have to commit to a strategy and it all becomes tactics.
Someone I heard today pointed out that the leaders now talk about *what they won’t do* instead of *what they will*. They’re quite happy to talk about which taxes they won’t put up – but never those that they might (sorry, I mean will). They all promise to “do better”, but never quite get round to any convincing plans of how they plan to do this.
I wasn’t intending to make the comment partisan. But after 14 years out of government, you’d think that Labour might have something a little more concrete, practical and convincing to offer than some half-baked ideas like “pragmatic realism” in foreign policy, securonomics, putting VAT on private schools without any plan for the consequences, creating a new state company *Great British Energy) without any clear objectives, etc. Not saying these need all be bad things, but they clearly haven’t been thought through by practical people.
Of course, the Tories are no better.
Several wings of the same WEF nut. A real plague on ALL their houses.
These debates are utterly pointless. We learn nothing.
That’s when we have vaguely interesting candidates. With these two – it’s more fun watching paint dry.
Two cheeks of the same globalist derriere.
A (real) plague on all their houses.