261. Sunak vs Starmer: Who won?

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics Special Post -Election Debate. Is you with Mirorys Jutt? And me, Anastak Campbell, with the debate that we, Rory and I had last night about the debate between Rishi Sunak and Kierstammer. So if you didn't watch us on YouTube immediately, late last night, here it is. Looking forward to hearing what you think of it and our reactions, both from Auster who tells you about what it's like, training labor and peace to go into these debates by playing the other side and some rather depressed reflections from me on my experience and trying to perform or not perform these debates.

1:25Anyway, here it goes.

1:31Anastak, what's your first thoughts? My first thought is that it's not going to change much. I thought the format was not great. When my heart sank when Julia Jim said, you have 45 seconds to respond. And I think that, I mean, it was pretty obvious to me what both of them were trying to do. And I'm not sure the format really helped either of them. Rishi Sunak desperately wanted to land this label, put your taxes up by 2000. He said it 15, 20 times. I thought Kier was a bit slow to knock it down. And by the time the knockdown came, it's obvious to me, Sunak is just going to keep doing that sort of thing.

2:18And I think I said one of our earlier podcasts that the Tories strategy, I think, is all about when it comes to television, just getting these clips and then they're bombarding them out onto social media through the people that they want to reach. And I thought that Kierstammer, he wanted to land 14 years. This isn't just about now, it's about 14 years. And I think he did that. I think that Sunak, if I've got a big criticism of Sunak, he was the worst at the talking over and the techiness and so forth. And I think if I had a criticism of Kier, it's that he was good at the prosecution against the Tories, but there wasn't enough maybe of the forward plan for labor.

3:00Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it? Because when you watch it on social media, and I've been struck with this, I guess you must have seen this all your life, how we see it through such a prism of prejudice that Tories basically watching it. I was watching it with my mother who's more sympathetic towards Rishi Sunak and with Shoshana who's more sympathetic towards Kierstammer. They might as well have been watching different shows. And I think the same is true if you go on Twitter, it's very, very difficult. I mean, I think you hold on. What would they say? Well, so on immigration, for example, Shoshana would be very taken with Stama's kind of clear defense of the ECHR.

3:44My mother would be like, yeah, but what is Kierstammer going to do? I mean, to be fair to my mother, I think the bit that really connected with her is a conservative later. She's the loyal conservative. She's going to vote conservative. The one that worked for her from Kierstammer was the 14 -year stuff. Even she squirmed a bit and thought, well, that's kind of a point. I mean, why didn't we manage to do this? And when he said, listen, this national service stuff, you just put it out of the election, you won't you do it. And my mother said, well, he's got a point there. He's got to point that.

4:17What an incentive. So I think that I think Stama's fundamental idea has to be the right one, which is he had that line where he said, listen, you just keep talking about the future because you can't talk about the past. You can't talk about your record. You can't talk about your leaders. You have to keep promises. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the bits they were, I mean, this may be a bit going back to my own debate against Boris Johnson when I was when I was got myself in a model. It's this question of how do you deal? You go in there and my strategy with Boris Johnson actually was exactly where she's in that strategy.

4:58I wanted to say to Boris Johnson, how, how are you going to do this Boris? How are you going to do this Boris? But of course, the, in the case of Emily made this, she didn't let me. She said, where to say, you're not here to ask the questions. Every time I try to come in, I'd get cut off. And I try to say, when I'd say, how do you do it? She would treat this as my one minute intervention. I'd lose my whole intervention. I can see that Sunak will be irritating. And there was a moment where Shashana said, I said, oh, that's a good point by Sunak. And she said, I literally, I'm just stop listening to him.

5:28I missed that whole point. But I also think he needs to do it. Even if he comes across as rude, even if he comes across as man's planning, his only hope is to say, how are you going to do it? £2 ,000 in tax. Yeah. The only thing I felt though, I mean, I suppose that's right. But I said a couple of weeks ago in the podcast that I feel there's something deeply inauthentic about as soon as he's it's like he's been given a script. Okay. And I really felt that strongly tonight. So clear plan, bold action. It was in his first sentence. It was in his second sentence. Then you got on to the £2 ,000 and he just kept coming back.

6:05Okay. I'm the great believer. You land a message. But I feel you've got to sort of believe it. And I just didn't, I just felt the tension is there. And also, and I actually think that having a woman moderator, I think you've got to be particularly careful about the sort of the shouting and the shouting across. And I think in the first half, Keir Starmer tried to stay right out of that. But you get drawn into it. But I think that's the fault of the former. So here's you and I. And you know, looking at the hundreds of questions coming in, we've clearly got quite a lot of people who come on to hear us talk.

6:40I would know more thing of cutting you down after 45 seconds. That was the own, you have to get everything into 45 seconds. And I just think that why can't we have a debate where it's a real debate where you get real time to explore stuff. It sort of felt a time. And I get the thing you want to bring in the public and the, you know, and you can see who's got more empathy. I get all that. But it felt a little bit to me like a cross between a political program and a bit of a game show. There, there, there's sort of raised your hands and all that stuff. I'm not, I just, I just wanted something a bit more serious.

7:14I think. So for the, for the all world came in saying formats terrible. You can't talk about ideas and 30 second answers. And I, I couldn't agree more. I mean, you could make it much longer. I don't know, I make it a couple of hours long. Give them longer to talk, give them longer to answer. And actually might get more interesting because yeah. And also if you take the, when they started at the start, I mean, Kierstarmers only remarks. They were about 20 seconds. The ending. I actually, I thought the, the endings were better. Maybe more than they sort of got warmed up a bit. And given the personalities, oddly, they're better and more interesting when you give them a bit of more space because both of them actually are quite interested in policy.

7:52And, and I think one of the interesting things was that Stammer got going and sounded much more credible and detailed when he got onto education. For some reason, he, he wasn't putting in as much detail on health, but he did well in education. And obviously he had clear things to say about energy, clear stuff to say about boats. And what did you, you got to say, you gave him more time, he could do more. And soon, I, of course, with all his flaws, he knows his stuff, he's got his facts. He can talk in quite a lot of detail. I mean, so you could have had the two of them talking in much more detail about lots of these issues with a bit more time.

8:35And it probably would have been a bit more interesting than seeing them try to jump down each other's roads. What did you think about the national security exchanges when Juliet Kim said to me, do you seriously, are you seriously telling those that this guy can't be trusted with national security? And that was the, that was the point where I felt here, Stammer got most passionate and a bit angry. Yeah, well, that, that was interesting. One, two, sorry, slightly off the subject, but that was something where Shoshana said to me, he, he, he can't afford to look that wound up. It doesn't look prime and serial.

9:08And she said, it reminded her, there were just a couple of moments when Stammer closed his eyes and was wintzing. She said it kind of reminded her of my taking my tie off. It's, it's a kind of horrible moment where I was, it was bad, it wasn't as bad as that. No, definitely not as bad as that, but, but that sense, I can completely sympathize with him. He obviously is very, very irritated. He's very angry with what Sunak's saying. He thinks that Sunak is being dishonest. He's saying, thinks Sunak's not facing up to his record. And, and that's showing on his face, but I, I do think there's a sense in which, and this is something that the awful Boris Johnson of course is quite good at.

9:44Is that he projects the kind of happy optimistic warrior, whatever's coming at him. And I think the public doesn't want to see you looking flustered. Yeah, I don't think it looked fostered. I think, I think he looked pissed off at the format. I think he felt my sense watching them both. I quite enjoyed it when there was the split screen. But I think my sense was that he was feeling that Juliette Jim was cutting into him more than Sunak when Sunak was, you know, but do you agree with me? He should, do you agree with what? However, we describe it. He shouldn't really show that. That it would, in an ideal world.

10:17I think if you're standing there to be Prime Minister and the occupant of the post is saying or trying to say without saying it, I wouldn't trust you with national security. I thought the substance of his answer about I was, you know, dealing with an operation to take, take down a terror as gang while it was about. Oh, that was good. Yeah, that's good. That's, that's the better that I meant. And so, so I thought there was kind of real passion there. That that was strong. I was thinking more about the bits, you know, split screen bits where he was just like shocking, shocking death. And I just, it doesn't look strong.

10:49Doesn't look strong. That reminded me of I think was it our gore and George W Bush when do you remember that the sort of lasting memory of it was our gore constantly sighing. Yeah, exactly. George Bush is a bit of a, I mean, it'd be interesting to, it'd be interesting to know what, if anything, people really take out of this sort of sticks. The Tories will want the £2 ,000 stick and that will be being pumped out now all across social media. I think Labour definitely is clear to me. And you can see this as well from, I think one of the, I saw the election broadcasts on social media tonight absolutely going on Tories switches who have fed up with the fock chaos of the 14 years living standards, etc.

11:33The other, the other moment that really stood out to me and sort of, most of it was quite predictable was actually when, Rishi Srinath was talking about his national service plan and people started laughing. I thought that was a good question. Yeah, yeah, no, no, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that was must have been very kind of upsetting for him. And on the £2 ,000 stuff, I, I felt there was an opportunity for Starma to shut that down much more quickly. When, when, when I said that on Twitter and I can see some of this in the, in the chat in the comments now, people saying she didn't give them the chance to.

12:07That's not quite true. He, he had five or six things where he said, I'm not sure I'll talk about other stuff. No, I kind of agree with that. I, well, first of all, I think they should probably have seen it coming and should probably therefore have, yes, the very first time he should have done the answer that he did later on when he said, look, let me explain what's happened. They've fed it in a load of assumptions to the treasury. The treasury has, has, has costed them. They're made up policies. They're their policies. Our policies. And now you're going to get the only Facebook feed and you get that on social media, just ignore it.

12:39It's garbage. And then you can have moved on from that. And I've got another one he could do. I, I mean, I'd be tempted to turn around and say, look at the numbers. We will be costing you £9 ,000 or whatever it is, less than the conservatives because remember the conservatives are now pumping out these new ideas. You know, triple lot pluses on pensions. They're signaling on VAT. So he could have produced a counter figure and he said, not only is that bullshit, but actually they're going to be costing us, the two servers are going to cost you £7 ,000 more than we will. And that would have thrown, that would have thrown soon out on the back foot and he would have been like, where does that number come from?

13:18That's rubbish. And then then you could have said, you've said that you're going to cut the VAT. You said you're going to get rid of inheritance assets. You could have just turned all around on top. It's interesting. There's a, there's a question here from Rob Roy. By the way, Rob, I've, I actually visited your grave last week when I was up in, in Scotland. I'm assuming you're not the dead Rob Roy. Rob Roy says, we who follow politics, I think he's saying people who come on to listen to us talk about this after the event. We're not the target audience. Starma was making his opening pitch to millions of viewers who don't know it.

13:47I think there's something in that. And I, I think that he, because of the format, because of the tensioness and talking across each other, I think he probably managed to do less of that than he would have wanted to do. Because it did get, it just got, I think, to, to, to, to, to, to, to, I thought the other, the other moment that I, I thought was, he did, I thought he did, he did learn the blow on Surak, when he got to the numbers about the waiting lists. How could you say they're coming down where they were 7 .2 at the 7 .5? And soon, again, soon, next answer was met with a little bit of ridicule in the audience.

14:22Yeah, obviously, it's hard to know if you're not there as well. Because I mean, Juliette Jim said that the audience sort of reflects the, the country and all that. But you, if you're in the room, you get a sense of the politics of the place. You can see whether they're smiling when they walk in. You can see if there's anybody there who really dislikes one of them. But I got the feeling that the moments where soon, that was very controlled and sort of constantly argument, argument to putting the point, putting the point, putting the point. I think he will have felt he was doing the job that, as it were, if it was a boxing match, that the, you know, the seconds are told him to do.

14:54But I, you know, if, if the, if the goal for Surak and his team was to change the fundamentals, I'm not sure that worked. No, he's definitely not changed the fundamentals. But he shouldn't have been allowed to get away. I, I'm afraid, with landing that 2000 pound point, you know, whatever you said, 14, 15 times, I think, look, it's not going to turn the election around at all. But, but just if, in so far as this debate matters at all, that's something that was an unnecessary victory for Surak. And I think with a little bit of thought, a little bit of prep, Starma should have found ways of shutting that down more quickly.

15:32And it's, instead of just kind of getting around it, I'm, there's some questions coming in. And I wanted to, bring some of them. And a lot of people asking us now about the English football question. I mean, boy, I would have been completely finished by the English football question. Hordebate encapsulated by the all four football question. What did you think about Garas Southgate sending it off question? I mean, he, I can't believe it. One second, he would have done it without being asked to do it by ITV. I'm assuming it was Garath from the English football camp. I don't think I'd added anything to the debate.

16:07I'd, I think if they wanted to. And again, I think this goes back to my point about, you know, the broadcasters being, well, we have to try and get them to show a human side. That doesn't show a human side. It sort of tries to catch the mountain bit. And neither of the answers were great. And there was, there was nothing great. You can really say in that. And, but, you know, and, and, and soon act, because I don't think he is very quick on his feet in those ways. He actually said, you've got to have a clear, clear plan and take bold action. What did you say? It's the last question. Is that, is that actually good advice and football?

16:37I mean, does bold action really sit? I mean, does that, does it? Well, it's right. But bold action, not necessarily. If you play very defensively. No, I didn't, I didn't think that much. Listen, one more that Thomas Wicks has just asked question. There's why nothing on the EU. There's been another, I think, nine questions on this. Surely there was a chance, you know, whatever we think about. And, you know, we've talked about this obviously, Sunack and Rachel Reeves and Stama are all pushing for these Red Wall voters. So they don't want to sound like they're anti -Brexit. But presumably there was an opportunity to say, whatever you think about Brexit, you guys have got nothing out of it.

17:14You've really screwed this one up. How come you're not talking about it? You boasted about it in 2019. You got a Brexit done. Why aren't you talking about it? Why isn't the, what, what have you actually delivered? You know, what's it? I don't know. I think, well, when he, when he, when he, when towards the end, when Keir Star was doing his, you know, you can't fight on your record. You can't, you can't do your leaders. So you just sort of bang on about, you know, the pastors of foreign country kind of thing. I think if you're talking about the big consequential changes of the Conservative 14 years, Brexit is a big one.

17:46And I do think that, I think again, though, that I think that's a failure of the broadcasters. You know, from, to my mind, I think two questions. The one on the economy and the one on leadership in the world, I think we're an opportunity for Keir Star to take up the cudgles against them on Brexit without, you know, changing Labour policy or anything like that. And I, I, I also think that the failure of our broadcasters to understand that out there, there are millions of people who least want to see this as part of the debate. There was a very interesting thing on the PM program this afternoon.

18:22And it was rather refreshing, actually. They said, we're going to have a sort of election panel. This is normally where we'd bring in a few sort of political correspondents or former Downing Street communications directors. But we're actually going to get three people who done none of that. And they got Justin King, business David Oman from the Securaging Intelligence and the former Children's Commissioner. And they sort of taught them as a panel. And so two of the three said they found it unbelievable, David Oman and Justin King, and it's unbelievable really depressing that Brexit's not even on there.

18:55Interestingly, by the way, Rory, I must tell you this. And if people haven't listened to the main podcast, which you can also see on, also see on Channel 4 at 10 past 11 tonight, you having sort of gone for Ed Davy, overall his stunts, Justin King said that Ed Davy was so far the man of the match. The other two, the other two Webric years, Thomas. And Ed Davy has done some very strong interviews recently, returning to some of the themes that he did in our much longer interviews and leading where he talks wonderfully as family. And there is a sense that neither of them are quite fully connecting.

19:33So I thought let's just go back to the beginning again for a second because we've had a couple of questions on this. I think a Kierstamer at the beginning was much better connecting with the woman asking about basically cost of living and how financials are. And it was very, very odd that Rishi Suneak wasn't able to just stop for a second and say, this is Paula, I hear you, that's terrible. And I understand how bad this is. I mean, he just sounded kind of touched. But neither of them were that great on the NHS stuff. I couldn't understand why they really weren't able, because as we know, Rishi Suneak's dad's a GP, he's a pharmacist, and am I right that Kierstamer's wife is a doctor?

20:17No, no, she was not a little service. She was a large beside Ed. But anyway, I mean, she had a huge opportunity for both of them to really lean into that. And actually, they didn't, you know, we've got this in few coming up with words, treating, where I thought he was so good. And it would have been lovely to hear Rishi Suneak say what his shadow health secretary says, which is the fundamental problem in the NHS is that we're spending too much money in hospitals, not enough money at the front line with GPs and pharmacies. And if you're treating stage four cancer, it's far too late and far too expensive, we should get it at stage one.

20:51And we're going to, he could have done that, right? It might even be able to do that in 45 seconds. Yeah, possibly. But again, the reason why I think when we put out the West Treaty interview, people will enjoy it is because it's got time to breathe. And I think that what that debate didn't have was time to breathe and to give people a sense of two serious people having serious debates about serious issues. And I think that the format, I think that these TV debates have just got themselves into a bit of a rut about how they how they do them. I mean, to be honest, if we go back to, I was, I think I told you before, I was David Cameron to both Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, can the debate preparations?

21:39I can see it. You're just like him. It's that old Etonian. I was whacked. I was okay at David Cameron. I mean, the mess we inherited, I could do a good mess we inherited for you. But I think that for you put hundreds of hours into it. I don't know how much time, care, start, you know, put into this. You put a lot of time into it, a lot of people working on it. And then I can remember at the end of all of the debates, as you say, you go out, the law will be, there's the spin room. I don't know if you know where the whole, the spin alley phrase comes from. It was back in the, one of the first American presidential debates.

22:18Where you had the, the, the, the Democrat and the Republican up against each other. I can't remember which election it was. It was one of the, you know, way back in when television was just starting. And so you had the debate. And then as they came out of the debate, the candidates went off. And then the media hundreds of journalists there. And there's this thing called spin alley. It was actually called spin alley. And if you go on the right, you'll find the people who tell you that the Democrats, why did you go that side? They'll all tell you that the Republicans won. And of course, they're lined up there well before the debate takes place.

22:50So you'll have that in Manchester now, they'll be running around rebutting this, rebutting that. John Ashford. And repeating repeating the central lines, weren't they? So the Conservatives will all be saying kind of people to listen to us. But if you left us and went into those rooms, you'd have one light saying, well, you know, Labour's going to cost two thousand pounds and the other side saying in the end, they've done nothing in 14 years. Because they've got nothing to say about their economy. Exactly. Exactly. So we didn't have the debates. And John Major wanted us to have debates in 1997.