Keir Starmer raised his game as Rishi Sunak fell flat in Sky News leaders’ event
No wonder Rishi Sunak wanted a head-to-head debate with Sir Keir Starmer. After being credited with a narrow win in last week’s ITV debate, here he came off second best.
The prime minister was flat under tough interrogation from Sky News political editor Beth Rigby. And he found the audience was hostile towards him on the NHS, the economy and even immigration.
It’s no surprise, then, that the YouGov snap poll published less than half an hour after the programme finished scored the performances as 64% for Sir Keir and just 36% for Mr Sunak.
What a turnaround in just over a week.
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From the outset, Sir Keir clearly realised he needed to raise his game after last week, when he was too sluggish in challenging or rebutting Mr Sunak’s £2,000 Labour tax grab allegation.
By the time the 90-minute programme was nearing its finish, Mr Sunak looked deflated by the audience criticism and almost as if he couldn’t wait for it to end.
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Did Sunak’s claims add up?
Mr Sunak even stumbled into a blunder that will reinforce his critics’ claim that this millionaire prime minister is out of touch with the cost of living plight ordinary people are facing.
When a father asked about his daughter’s struggle to buy a house, Mr Sunak talked about a property costing £425,000. In Grimsby? Oh dear. Really, prime minister!
A Rightmove search for Grimsby reveals that out of 914 properties currently listed for sale in the town, only 13 are up for £425,000 or more. His political opponents will seize on that.
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After his pummelling on tax last week, Sir Keir wasted no time in hitting back, declaring he’d take no lectures from the Tories on the matter. And later, tackled by a member of the audience, he took time to make the case for Labour’s controversial policy of VAT on private schools.
“It’s a tax break we are removing,” he said. “It’s not a new tax.” And his plea for raising standards in state schools with the money saved won applause.
This was a much stronger performance from Sir Keir than last week. He raised his game: this time the KC and ex-Director of Public Prosecutions was more Rumpole Of The Bailey than Mark Darcy from the Bridget Jones films.
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For instance, he kept talking when Beth Rigby tried to cut him short. Naughty, but determined. Here, he was much more assertive than last week.
Mr Sunak, on the other hand, was flat compared with his combative performance on ITV. He had to apologise for his D-Day snub not once but twice, begging for forgiveness again.
The D-Day fiasco appears to have damaged the prime minister’s confidence – and it won’t have been helped by several heckles from a hostile audience. Even on the Tories’ supposed strong subject of immigration, he appeared to struggle.
He was thrown by a question from Rigby about why he called the election before the first Rwanda flights are due to take off and, surprisingly for a prime minister with a reputation as a spreadsheet wizard, he didn’t know the numbers on questions about net migration.
Towards the end of the audience’s harsh questioning of Mr Sunak, a former Tory activist attacked him not only on his D-Day blunder, but also on the Queen being left alone at Prince Philip’s funeral during the Boris Johnson partygate scandal.
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PM ‘deeply sad’ over D-Day ‘mistake’
The audience reaction to Mr Sunak here confirmed that many voters want to punish the Conservatives for the failings of past prime ministers Mr Johnson and Liz Truss, and not just for the past two years.
Sir Keir now leaves Grimsby for Labour’s manifesto launch in the morning in good heart. For Mr Sunak, this was a bad night and unless there’s a Tory recovery soon, the mood among the party’s candidates and activists will be grim and potentially mutinous.
There are still three weeks until polling day, of course. But with consistently bad opinion polls, already time is running out for Mr Sunak and the Conservatives.
Sir Keir even said at one point: “The first day we get into government.” Beth Rigby instantly picked him up on his momentary lapse. He just smiled.
A hostile environment era deportation policy for criminals is being expanded by the Labour government as it continues its migration crackdown.
The government wants to go further in extraditing foreign offenders before they have a chance to appeal by including more countries in the existing scheme.
Offenders that have a human right appeal rejected will get offshored, and further appeals will then get heard from abroad.
It follows the government announcing on Saturday that it wants to deport criminals as soon as they are sentenced.
The “deport now, appeal later” policy was first introduced when Baroness Theresa May was home secretary in 2014 as part of the Conservative government’s hostile environment policy to try and reduce migration.
It saw hundreds of people returned to a handful of countries like Kenya and Jamaica under Section 94B of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, added in via amendment.
In 2017, a Supreme Court effectively stopped the policy from being used after it was challenged on the grounds that appealing from abroad was not compliant with human rights.
However, in 2023, then home secretary Suella Braverman announced she was restarting the policy after providing more facilities abroad for people to lodge their appeals.
Now, the current government says it is expanding the partnership from eight countries to 23.
Previously, offenders were being returned to Finland, Nigeria, Estonia, Albania, Belize, Mauritius, Tanzania and Kosovo for remote hearings.
Angola, Australia, Botswana, Brunei, Bulgaria, Canada, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Kenya, Latvia, Lebanon, Malaysia, Uganda and Zambia are the countries being added – with the government wanting to include more.
Read more:
Govt vows to deport foreign criminals immediately
First migrants detained under returns deal with France
Theresa May’s hostile environment policy proved controversial. Pic: PA
The Home Office claims this is the “the government’s latest tool in its comprehensive approach to scaling up our ability to remove foreign criminals”, touting 5,200 removals of foreign offenders since July 2024 – an increase of 14% compared with the year before.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said: “Those who commit crimes in our country cannot be allowed to manipulate the system, which is why we are restoring control and sending a clear message that our laws must be respected and will be enforced.”
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “We are leading diplomatic efforts to increase the number of countries where foreign criminals can be swiftly returned, and if they want to appeal, they can do so safely from their home country.
“Under this scheme, we’re investing in international partnerships that uphold our security and make our streets safer.”
Both ministers opposed the hostile environment policy when in opposition.
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In 2015, Sir Keir Starmer had questioned whether such a policy was workable – saying in-person appeals were the norm for 200 years and had been a “highly effective way of resolving differences”.
He also raised concerns about the impact on children if parents were deported and then returned after a successful appeal.
In today’s announcement, the prime minister’s administration said it wanted to prevent people from “gaming the system” and clamp down on people staying in the UK for “months or years” while appeals are heard.
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