That was Rishi Sunak‘s last shot. His last roll of the dice. And he did what he always did: he allowed his cynicism to undermine his own position.
After five weeks of campaigning, tonight’s BBC debate was the Prime Minister’s last chance to avoid defeat. The final opportunity to upset the dynamics of the election to avoid certain doom.
This morning, a poll for the Daily Mirror suggested Labour would win 450 seats to just 60 for the Conservatives, with Sunak himself set to lose in his constituency. Surveys like this come so often now you barely notice them. And each day, analysts desperately search for anything that might potentially avoid that outcome – some unforeseen event which could potentially give Sunak some hope of survival. But each day, we find fewer avenues for salvation.
We presumed that the polls would narrow as we neared the election. They didn’t. Then we presumed that they would narrow over the course of the campaign. They didn’t. Then we wondered whether the first TV debate would change things. It didn’t. Then finally we imagined the manifestos might alter events. That didn’t either.
This last TV debate was Sunak’s final opportunity – the final set-piece event that might upset events and turn the tide. No luck there either.
Sunak’s tactics in these debates is now clear: it is to be as aggressive as possible. He barracks, he interrupts, he issues snide comments, he reduces complex political issues to fake election binaries and then shouts “yes or no” at Starmer as if it were a meaningful question, like someone impersonating Jeremy Paxman with a sock puppet. He is an empty machine using vacuous political calculation for fuel.
“They run out of everyone’s money,” he said of Labour. “That is just an appetiser of the future taxes that are going to come under a Labour government.” His main mantra, developed apparently for this evening, was “do not surrender” – itself a tacit admission of his impending defeat.
This is the tactic Sunak has used since the first debate. Starmer is actually quite put off by it. He sighs. His eyes blink in exasperation. He tries to gather enough time to make a relatively complex point about policy only to find himself neutralised by the constant shrill interruptions from his left. As you watch it, you can feel the standards of debate start to erode around you – aggression and black-and-white thinking overruling nuance and complexity.
Sunak actually won several rounds of applause. Perhaps rather less than Starmer, but more than you might expect. His line about “surrender” seemed to have some limited effectiveness. On certain key issues, he could carry at least part of the audience with him. He was not destroyed out there. He held his own.
But the tactic has a key flaw: it is fundamentally unlikable. No-one sits there watching someone constantly interrupting and thinks they’re a fantastic leader. They come across like a recalcitrant child, a petulant prefect deprived of their natural authority by some inconvenient democratic mechanism. Each time Sunak does it, you cringe. A small irritation develops in your gut, a social anguish.
The tactic prevents Starmer from being able to reliably land a blow. It drives the debate into a hopeless bad-tempered muddle, with both men shouting over one another and the crowd visibly wishing for it all to be over. It allows Sunak to prevent a Starmer victory. But it does not permit him to secure his own.
The trouble is: he’s the one lagging at the back. He is the one who must turn the tables. But by actively sabotaging the debate into bad-tempered vacuity, he accomplishes the precise opposite. He neutralises it into a draw.
In the minutes after the debate ended, YouGov put out its snap verdict. It was grimly predictable. Fifty per cent for Starmer, 50 per cent for Sunak. And that was not just a result of people’s preconceived loyalties. It was a product of a prime-ministerial tactic which could only ever produce a tie, rather than a victory.
This was his last chance. And he fluffed it.