ITV leaders' debate: (dis)organised mess

Artwork by Ashley Broom

Dom Borghino gives an acerbic account of last night’s election debate.

To some, a televised debate between party leaders in the run-up to a General Election is an important thing – an opportunity for potential Prime Ministers to set themselves apart and clearly outline the policies that may bring voters on side. To others, however, these debates are nothing more than a watered-down PMQs – a straight hour of political grandstanding and party slogans thrown as non-responses to any question put forth. Personally, I fit into this latter category, which is to say, as someone who watches PMQs out of sheer enjoyment, I love televised debates.

The ITV leaders debate on November 19th, went largely as I expected. Tory leader Boris Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn toed party lines, delivered carefully constructed and party-approved catchphrases, and hurled pre-prepared attacks at one another across the stage, all while presenter Julie Etchingham did her best to keep the night on track. Topics were chosen using audience questions, à la BBC Question Time, and the ensuing rabble proved as much a waste of an hour as said inspiration.

Questions were preceded by the two leaders giving brief opening statements. Corbyn opened with a feeble address. He missed important emphases, failed to deliver his main points clearly, and seemed more unsure of what he was saying than anyone else – not great for winning over the voters who still don’t know exactly what he stands for. Boris’s signature rambunctious speech pattern might have fooled some into believing it was confidence that underpinned his plea, but his more-frequent-than-usual frenzied gesticulating, and constant nervous looking down at his script helped others see through this.

The first question, posed by Cath from Bradford, didn’t get the night off to a particularly sophisticated start – “can you reassure me that we will not be talking about [Brexit] forever?”. There could only be chaos. Boris wasted no time in pulling out the usual Tory slogans, almost without bothering with any words between them, conjuring images of the Sainsbury’s reduced section with his “oven-ready deal”, which would help “unlock [Britain’s] potential” and “get Brexit done”. He made sure to cast exaggerated comparisons with Labour’s plan to “dither and delay”. You may take issue with how abridged this translation is, but honestly you aren’t missing anything. 

Corbyn managed to make Labour’s Brexit proposal a lot clearer than Boris’s plan to “get things done” (form a Government, negotiate a Labour-approved withdrawal agreement with the EU27, put this deal back to a referendum alongside a choice to Remain). But what was glaringly obvious was that his plan faces the same pitfalls as Boris’s, that none of it is up to either of them. Corbyn also managed to squeeze in a jab about Boris’s inconsistencies as an MP and as Tory leader, though this backfired when it was returned to Boris, who swiftly pointed out that Corbyn refuses to declare for which side he and his party would campaign in their proposed second referendum.

If they’re a remain party, will they campaign for Remain? If so, doesn’t this undermine the credibility of the alternative Deal that Labour proposes to negotiate and approve? Corbyn clunkily dodged the question, saying his aim was to “bring the country together”. He attempted to further distract from the question by bringing up records of recent UK-US meetings regarding future trade deals, many redacted, and one alluding to the UK opening up a free market to the US within the NHS. Boris dismissed the clear evidence of meetings as “fabrications”, which was laughable given Corbyn was holding up records of such meetings, but it was enough to stop Labour’s obviously planned attack in its tracks. Boris repeated his demand for Corbyn to state which side he would campaign for, which Corbyn again attempted to dodge, only with much less grace than before. I just wish he’d straighten his glasses.

The rest of the night was equally shambolic, but much less entertainingly so.

A question on whether Brexit was worth the break-up of the United Kingdom was Corbyn’s opportunity to finally land something, and he almost made it. His wordy attack on Boris being responsible for a crumbling Union, by proposing a trade barrier in the Irish Sea (dividing Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK), despite having said he never would, was relevant and well-reasoned. But it was ultimately buried by Boris’s simple reply that “the Union is of course the most important thing,” if albeit it did take him until his second response to say so. Boris ran with allegations that the Labour Party are in cahoots with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, whose primary aim is to get another Scottish independence referendum. That is, the Union’s break-up in another form.

But as the night went on, Boris visibly started to feel the heat. More and more of his assurances of the Tory Party being the only ones capable of saving the country (despite being in power for the past decade and overseeing its collapse) were greeted with outright laughter from the audience – at him, not with him. Corbyn’s signature lowkey, energy-lacking rhetorical style actually began to play to his benefit compared to an increasingly blustering and visibly troubled Johnson. Calm won over flare.

Corbyn faced his own share of backlash from the audience, with a man even calling out “here we go again” at the mention of wealth inequality, and awkwardly loud laughs at the proposal of a 4 day work week. However, the latter was followed by an even louder round of applause once he’d finished his point.

Corbyn’s response to anti-semitism claims was the best he’s ever given, but was still not good enough, and indicated his lack of strong leadership. Boris could have laid back and revelled in the points this won him, but for some reason decided to incomprehensibly draw debate gracelessly back to Brexit, with groans of disdain from the audience. I was hoping that ITV would use the anti-semitism claims against Labour as an opportunity to interrogate the Tory Party’s issue of Islamophobia, but I was disappointed.

A question towards the end of the debate on the NHS was the point at which Boris really started to unravel. His response consisted of nothing but talks of unrelated plans that had nothing to do with the issues raised, and he couldn’t even finish his thoughts before he was cut off by Etchingham, which was lucky because they were too incoherent to follow and were giving me a headache. Corbyn expertly stuck the needle into the glaring flaw in Boris’s response – that the plans he’d mentioned weren’t even happening, nor would or could they. Boris failed to explain why that was.

The final question of the night was what each leader would give the other for Christmas, one which begged a light-hearted, non-political response so the debate could end without viewers wanting to gouge their eyes out. No such luck. Corbyn’s response was actually quite funny, and largely in keeping with the tone of the question (Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol – a clever jab at what may lie in store for Boris in the coming weeks), but Boris couldn’t help himself. He took the “literary” theme of Corbyn’s answer as an excuse to say he’d leave him a copy of his “brilliant Brexit deal”. I personally would rather coal.

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