Conservative leader Rishi Sunak and Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer will face off in a televised debate.
The two main candidates for British prime minister will face off in a televised debate, with Conservative leader Rishi Sunak hoping to improve his party’s bleak outlook and Labour’s Keir Starmer aiming to cement his status as front-runner.
Tuesday’s bilateral leaders’ debate comes a day after populist Brexit supporter Nigel Farage dealt a blow to Sunak’s hopes of winning the July 4 election by announcing he will run for Parliament ahead of the party right-wing Reform UK.
Farage kicked off his campaign on Tuesday in the eastern English seaside town of Clacton-on-Sea, where he visited a pub before a protester doused him in what appeared to be a milkshake. She was later arrested on suspicion of assault.
Farage is making his eighth attempt to win a seat in the House of Commons. All seven of his previous attempts have failed.
The return of the populist politician, a key player in Britain’s decision to leave the European Union in 2016, is a major headache for Sunak’s party, which is already trailing the Labor Party in opinion polls. Farage and Reform appear likely to siphon off votes from the older, socially conservative voters the Conservatives have been targeting.
He claimed that the Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010, “betrayed” Brexit supporters because immigration has increased, rather than decreased, since the UK left the EU.
Farage has injected volatility into an election that will almost certainly result in either Starmer or Sunak becoming Britain’s leader.
The two men will face off in a debate on broadcaster ITV, with Sunak likely to highlight his management of the economy, which has seen inflation fall to just over 2 percent, after a peak of over 11 percent at the end of 2022. .
Starmer, whose main campaign refrain is the single word “change”, aims to persuade weary Tory voters that Labor can be trusted with the UK economy, borders and security.
Other debates are scheduled by other broadcasters before voting day, some featuring multiple party leaders and others with just the two leaders.
Sunak announced the election on May 22, marking it six months earlier than necessary and getting it off to an inauspicious start in a widely ridiculed rain-soaked speech outside 10 Downing Street.
A YouGov survey carried out on Monday – using the same national model that correctly predicted the 2017 and 2019 general elections – showed that Labor is on track to win 422 of the 650 seats in Parliament.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
