Boris
Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn clashed over whether the future of Britain should be
capitalist or socialist as they presented two wildly different visions for the
country in the final leaders' debate. From austerity and the NHS to Brexit and
racism, these are the highlights of the night
Johnson v
Corbyn: who won the day?
BBC debate:
Corbyn hits out at Johnson's ‘racist remarks’
The Corbyn
and Johnson TV debate: our writers’ verdicts
With less
than a week until polling day, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson made a late
pitch to voters. What did we learn?
Martin
Kettle, Katy Balls, Owen Jones, Gaby Hinsliff
Fri 6 Dec
2019 22.34 GMTLast modified on Sat 7 Dec 2019 00.58 GMT
Martin
Kettle: A better Labour leader could have destroyed Johnson
Martin
Kettle
The
question that matters about the second TV debate between Boris Johnson and
Jeremy Corbyn is not who “won”. This isn’t Strictly Come Debating. If you like
Johnson, he won. If you like Corbyn, the victory was his. But that’s
irrelevant. What matters is whether the debate has changed anything in the
election dynamics as we enter the final week. The answer to that is
overwhelmingly likely to be no.
Corbyn made
his pitch on ambition and hope for change, which is his strongest card. He had
some sharp responses. He was the only one of the two to even mention climate
change, though only briefly as there was no question on the subject. Johnson
pitched again and again for his usual “get Brexit done” promise. Both are
vacuous approaches that we know already. Neither of them contains much in the
way of practical detail – that isn’t possible in the studio glare anyway. But
Johnson’s constantly repeated Brexit lines came round so often that it is
obvious his campaign thinks they have momentum on the issue.
The tragedy
of this second debate is that it so often revealed the tawdriness of Johnson’s
policies and his slapdash mind without Corbyn ever being quite able to nail
him. Johnson’s lines are as tediously familiar now as Theresa May’s were in
2017. He told lies about Brexit and was evasive on his spending plans. Corbyn
did his best and made some principled points. But my overwhelming feeling at
the end of the debate was that a better, quicker and above all a more
confidence-inspiring Labour leader could have destroyed Johnson.
Katy Balls:
Johnson will have sounded like a broken record to many
Katy Balls
Those
hoping for a breakout performance in the final debate of the election campaign
must feel disappointed. Both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn were fairly
successful in moving their answers back to their preferred terrain: Johnson on
Brexit, Corbyn on austerity.
To many
watching at home, Johnson will have sounded like a broken record. The prime
minister even managed to move questions on Islamophobia and antisemitism back
to Brexit. However, to those sitting watching in Conservative campaign
headquarters, it was a case of much-needed message discipline.
What ought
to give brains over at CCHQ pause for thought, however, was a question from an
audience member asking what punishment a politician should receive for lying
during an election. Rather than discuss other parties’ broken Brexit promises,
Johnson attempted to joke his way through it with a plan to get guilty
politicians to kneel before parliament. He sounded embarrassed by the question.
The Labour
leader, however, struck a more sombre tone, emphasising the need to hold
government to account. It was Corbyn’s response that won most applause.
The
Conservatives see Johnson’s biggest strength as his clear Brexit message. But
his biggest weakness as the campaign has progressed has been whether voters
trust him. Tonight he doubled down on the former. But his answers will have
done little to ease voter concerns on the latter issue.
Owen Jones:
Let’s hope Corbyn’s sincerity and passion cut through
The
greatest problem facing Labour in the final lap of this election campaign is
disillusionment among leave voters. The claim that Labour’s necessary pivot to
a second referendum would be a cost-free exercise has collided with reality.
That’s why Jeremy Corbyn went in hard on the threat posed to the NHS by a deal
with the US, and challenged the “get Brexit done” lie with the reality of years
of protracted trade negotiations.
A question
on whether socialism or capitalism is superior for lifting the living standards
of the poor was home ground for Corbyn. Polls show Britons have a more
favourable attitude towards socialism than capitalism, and Corbyn spoke
passionately about a wealthy society unable to meet the needs of its citizens.
The
trickiest moment for Labour would always be on security. But the line “you
can’t have security on the cheap” does resonate. The words of the father of
Jack Merritt, who was murdered at London Bridge – about how his son was
committed to rehabilitation, not punitive sentencing – were rightly lauded.
Johnson’s crude attempt to pivot to Brexit even during a discussion of racism
was perverse.
I sat there
wishing that Corbyn would hit even harder on Johnson’s lies, his racism, the
fact he’s scared of being interviewed by Andrew Neil. But that’s not brand
Corbyn: he fears anything that could be construed as a personal attack. In any
case, he trumped Johnson on detail, on sincerity, and on passion: Labour must
surely hope that can cut through.
Gaby
Hinsliff: The PM put on a slicker performance than before
This was
Jeremy Corbyn’s last chance to turn things around, we were told; one last
heroic attempt to trigger the sudden Labour surge that has so far eluded him.
But that’s
the wrong way to think of televised leaders’ debates, for all that the party
lagging behind is usually the one under pressure. A zinger on the night
generally means zilch on polling day. But even if they don’t shift many votes,
debates can be very revealing about where campaigns are headed in its closing
days.
For Johnson
it’s all about saying nothing interesting enough to jeopardise that lead, and
the strain of being so boring occasionally showed; can he really stand another
week of dragging “get Brexit done” into everything? But it was a slicker
performance than he put in for the ITV head-to-head debates.
For Corbyn,
these last few days will be all about values: dignity, justice, hope. There was
genuine anger when he talked about patients forced to wait for NHS treatment.
But given his best hope of avoiding a second defeat now is to squeeze the
Liberal Democrat vote as shamelessly as Johnson has done Brexit party
supporters, it was alarmingly unclear how he means to achieve it.
These
voters aren’t just worried about Brexit or the credibility of Labour’s spending
plans but about Corbyn’s own personal fitness for office, which is why
Johnson’s strongest moment came when he accused the Labour leader of failing to
take a lead on tackling antisemitism just as he had failed to take a lead over
Brexit. These are not things, the prime minister concluded, on which it is
possible to be neutral. Expect this last week to get very personal
indeed.
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