The two men clash over taxes, healthcare and the cost of living in a turbulent debate that has failed to land any decisive blows.
The leaders of the UK’s two main political parties faced off in their first live television debate of the election campaign, attacking each other on issues ranging from taxes to immigration and the National Health Service (NHS).
Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labor Party, took the floor on Tuesday night in the northwestern city of Salford, with a month to go until the July 4 election.
Sunak, whose party is around 20 percentage points behind in opinion polls, took a combative approach, attacking the Labor Party over taxes, noting that inflation had slowed to 2 percent and that he had a plan to boost the sluggish economy.
Starmer highlighted the austerity of the early years of Conservative rule and the chaos of the more recent past, which saw the ouster of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson amid financial and ethical scandals, and the brief but devastating 49-day tenure of Liz Truss , whose tax cut plans sent mortgages soaring.
Sunak became party leader and prime minister in October 2022.
The Labor leader said the election was a choice between more “chaos and division” with the Conservatives and “turning the page and rebuilding with Labour”.
Both men were repeatedly told not to talk over each other and to lower their voices as they clashed over issues ranging from immigration and education to health care, but neither outlined any new plans.
Sunak, a former banker and one of the UK’s richest people, sparked protests when he blamed NHS waiting lists for doctors’ strikes, and was greeted with laughter when he said numbers were falling “because they were higher” before .
But he appeared to gain ground with the public when discussing how he planned to handle immigration, claiming that his controversial plan to send certain asylum seekers to Rwanda was a deterrent.
Starmer said he also had a plan to combat immigration and would consider processing asylum claims in a third country, as long as it did not violate international law.
After the debate ended, a YouGov snap poll gave Sunak a slight lead, with 51 per cent saying he performed better overall, compared to 49 per cent for Starmer.
Split on the issues, however, respondents said Starmer had done much better on the cost of living, the NHS, education and climate change. Sunak was seen as performing well only on tax and, by a narrow margin, on immigration.
Rob Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, said the night would probably be seen as a good one for Sunak as his party is so far behind in the polls.
“Will it matter in the end? Probably not. But it’s good news for Cons[ervatives] after some very difficult days. It will help with morale, at the very least,” he wrote on X.
The build-up to the showdown has been overshadowed by populist politician Nigel Farage, who announced this week that he would campaign for a seat in parliament as leader of the right-wing, anti-immigration Reform party.
Farage, who once sat in the European Parliament, has failed to become a UK MP seven times. This time he is running in the eastern seaside town of Clacton, which supported his favored Brexit policy and where the incumbent Conservative won a majority of almost 26,000 votes in 2019.
Opinion polls suggest the Labor Party leadership has held firm against the Conservatives, who have been in power since 2010, in the nearly two weeks since the campaign began.
Several other debates are scheduled before voting day, some featuring multiple party leaders as well as the top two candidates.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
