Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer to go head to head in their first televised leaders’ debate of the general election

Published

4 months ago

May 29, 2024

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Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer will go head to head in their first televised debate of the general election on 4 June.

The two leaders will appear on ITV at 9pm for an hour, the channel has announced.

Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate will be moderated by journalist Julie Etchingham and will take place live in front of a studio audience.

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The programme is the first in a series of clashes set to be held by various broadcasters.

Sky News is planning its own leaders’ event in the key battleground seat of Grimsby and Cleethorpes, where we have been regularly reporting on the issues facing local residents.

Voters will be given the opportunity to put questions directly to the leaders.

Labour leader Sir Keir has agreed to attend, while negotiations are ongoing with Mr Sunak’s team.

Televised leader debates have been a staple of US politics since the 1950s but the first TV debates in the UK did not take place until the 2010 general election when Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg took part in three.

Since then, they have been a key part of general election campaigns, with Theresa May in 2017 being the only leader refusing to take part since 2010 – a decision she later told Sky News she regretted.

The decision to hold the debate in Grimsby comes after the seat turned Conservative in 2019 for the first time since the end of the Second World War.

Many people at the time felt a cultural rift with the Labour Party.

Grimsby has now been combined with Cleethorpes, where the Tories have been in power since 2010, but support is fading.

Cleethorpes has been a bellwether seat since its formation in 1997, backing the largest party in Westminster in all seven elections since then.

The constituency contains a rural conservative base, as well as urban voters, who in more recent years backed the promises of levelling up and Brexit offered by the Conservatives.

The complex composition of this new constituency means it is shaping up to be a key battleground.

Politics

Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer ‘very sensible’ to accept football tickets worth thousands

Published

10 hours ago

September 21, 2024

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Lisa Nandy says Sir Keir Starmer 'very sensible' to accept football tickets worth thousands

Lisa Nandy has said Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to accept thousands of pounds worth of football tickets was “very sensible”.

The minister for culture, media and sport also said she had never accepted free clothes from a donor.

Speaking to Sky News at the start of the Labour Party conference today, the MP for Wigan said: “The problem that has arisen since [Sir Keir] became leader of the opposition and then prime minister is that for him to sit in the stands would require a huge security detail, would be disruptive for other people and it would cost the taxpayer a lot of money.

“So I think he’s taken a very sensible decision that’s not the right and appropriate thing to do, and it’s right to accept that he has to go and sit in a different area.

“But I know that he’d much rather be sitting in the stands cheering people on with the usual crowd that he’s been going to the football with for years.”

Ms Nandy also said while she has not accepted free clothes – joking “I think you can probably see that I choose my own clothes sadly” – she doesn’t “make any judgements about what other members of parliament do”.

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She said: “The only judgement I would make is if they’re breaking the rules, so they’re trying to hide what they’re doing. That’s when problems arise.

“Because the point of being open and transparent is that people can see where the relationships are, and they can then judge for themselves whether there’s been any undue influence.”

She asserted there had not been an undue influence in gifts accepted by senior Labour figures, adding: “We don’t want the news and the commentary to be dominated by conversations about clothes.

“We rightly have a system, I think, where the taxpayer doesn’t fund these things. We don’t claim on expenses for them. And so MPs will always take donations, will always take gifts in kind.

“MPs of all political parties have historically done that and that is the system that we have.”

She added: “I don’t think there’s any suggestion here that Keir Starmer has broken any rules. I don’t think there’s any suggestion that he’s done anything wrong.

“We expect our politicians to be well turned out, we expect them to be people who go out and represent us at different events and represent the country at different events and are clothed appropriately.

“But the point is that when we accept donations for that or for anything else, that we declare them and we’re open and transparent about them.”

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Sir Keir, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves said yesterday they will no longer accept donations in the future to pay for clothes.

The announcement followed criticism of Sir Keir’s gifts from donors, which included clothing worth £16,200 and multiple pairs of glasses worth £2,485, according to the MPs’ register of interests.

The register shows Ms Rayner has accepted clothing donations to the value of £2,230.

Sky News also revealed the scale of Sir Keir’s donations this week as part of our Westminster Accounts investigation.

Sir Keir was found to have received substantially more gifts and freebies than any other MP – his total in gifts, benefits, and hospitality topped £100,000 since December 2019.