Sunak and Starmer clash over tax, borders and Brexit deal in final head-to-head before polling day – as it happened | General election 2024

• Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer have clashed over their responses to the Westminster gambling scandal, as it emerged the Metropolitan police is to widen its role in the investigation into bets placed on the general election. As Jessica Elgot and Pippa Crerar report, in the last head-to-head debate before voters go to the polls, the Labour leader launched a fierce attack on the culture at the top of the Conservative party, saying it showed the “wrong instinct” to place bets on the future of the country – likening it to the cavalier attitude to Covid rules. In the angry exchanges, Sunak repeatedly urged the country not to “surrender” to Labour’s plans on tax and migration and said the general election should not be decided purely based on frustration with the Conservatives. Here is Jessica and Pippa’s full story.

Here is Eleni Courea’s article on five things we’ve learned from the debate.

And here is John Crace’s sketch.

And this is what some journalists and commenators are saying about the debate.

From Lucy Fisher from the Financial Times

Well, that was Sunak unleashed tonight

Which prompts the obvious question… where was that sense of fight before now?!

I suspect his team will be thrilled with his performance, but one week out from polling day feels far too late to shift the narrative in any significant way

From Lewis Goodall from the News Agents podcast

Similar feel to the first debate. Starmer often quite slow off the mark to make his points. Sunak more spirited to the point of aggression. If he and the Conservatives hadn’t made so many unforced errors in the campaign it might have mattered. As it is it probably won’t.

From Robert Shrimsley from the FT

If Sunak had been able to be this guy all through the campaign the Tories might not be in quite so much trouble. They’d still lose but not in the way we are now discussing.

From George Eaton from the New Statesman

Sunak has channelled the ghost of Ian Paisley tonight: “No surrender”.

Starmer truly resembled someone carrying a Ming vase tonight; Sunak was simply intent on throwing it at him. https://t.co/1xZ0AzOeZk

From Lizzy Buchan from the Mirror

Not sure about the “do not surrender” to Labour line that Rishi Sunak is so keen on tonight. Bit patronising to voters?

From Christopher Hope from GB News

Rishi Sunak’s use of the word “surrender” is interesting on “tax rises”, cutting welfare and the border. “Don’t surrender,” Sunak keeps saying. An appeal to Reform UK supporters not to give up on the Tories?

From Paul Brand from ITV

This “do not surrender” line that Sunak has used at least a dozen lines is interesting. They’ve obviously tried to work out a line that sounds like a positive, active, even defiant action for voters, in an election where nobody feels massively motivated.

Sunak has clearly decided to leave everything on the debating floor tonight. As I said recently on @GMB you have to give him credit for fighting hard and never giving up. A lot of people would be feeling pretty wounded after the few weeks he’s had.

From James Ball from the New European

As with the first debate, Sunak needed a big cut through moment and didn’t get it. Starmer just needed to have no horror show moments, and did. 50/50 as an on-the-night verdict is frankly a bonus for Labour.

From Stephen Bush from the FT

The central problem with this format is that it allows two politicians who are not being straight with us about tax-and-spend to keep doing it, because no-one can intervene and go ‘but the IFS says you’re both full of it, doesn’t it?’ in an effective way:

From Harry Cole from the Sun

YouGov debate snap poll: 50% say Starmer won, 50% say Sunak won

Given Sunak is 20 points behind nationally.. that’s quite a feat.

And don’t forget YouGov also have 52 disapproval rating for Starmer….

Astonishing stat for someone heading for large majority.

From Michael Savage from the Observer

The extent to which Sunak is dominating this so far is quite striking. It all hangs on what people watching actually make of that approach.

From Kate McCann from Times Radio

This debate format isn’t currently working for Keir Starmer. He’s better when given time to make a logical coherent argument, not so good when confronted with constant barbs from Rishi Sunak (who has very little to lose, so doesn’t much care if he comes across as snippy)

From Peter Walker from the Guardian

That rather unsavoury small boats exchange on the BBC election debate illustrated what is essentially the entire point of the Rwanda deportation scheme: to give the government a way to say, ‘We have a plan!’ even when they know it’s not actually a plan, more of a slogan.

From Sam Freedman for Prospect

Sunak is the most unpopular party leader in history with a week to go before an election. It doesn’t make the blindest bit of difference how he does in a debate.

It’s genuinely astonishing that we’re getting “that was a good debate for Sunak” takes given the polls today. It’s likely complimenting someone on their shirt while they’re having a heart attack.

At the start of the election, the Tories said Rishi Sunak wanted to debate Keir Starmer every week for all six weeks. It was a daft proposal that was never going to be accepted, and at time it felt like a clumsy ploy to make Starmer looked scared when he said no. After tonight, you start to wonder whether there were people in CCHQ who genuinely felt that, with a campaign entirely focused on debates, Sunak might actually have turned things around a bit.

That is because, when the history of Labour’s election-winning campaign gets written up, the two head-to-head debates will stand out as Sunak’s best moments. Almost nothing else has gone right for him. But in the first debate he used a (fairly spurious) tax claim to keep Starmer on the defensive for the whole encounter, and tonight he was just as persistent and unrelenting. In some of the policy areas, like small boats and welfare, he was clearly winning the argument on points. And in terms of landing his message, he was probably more successful than Starmer too – even though, with the constant references to “surrender”, his message has become more alarmist and hysterical than when the election started.

And while technically the YouGov snap poll is a draw, the YouGov sample is weighted (not like the studio audience, which being 50/50 Labour/Tory, was in reality disproportionately Tory) and so if Sunak is drawing neck-and-neck with Starmer, in relative terms he is doing well. Debate snap polls often just reflect how the public feel about leaders generally, and on all those normal measures Sunak and his party are miles behind. (See 7.25pm.)

There are two caveats. While Sunak may have done well in terms of scoring debating points, he sounded increasingly like the sort of oddball that you would least want to be standing next to at a party. When he seemed nervous, or was facing challenge, his speaking rate starting speeding out and he began to get shouty and a bit monomaniac. Even if he had a point, it was not endearing.

And the other caveat, of course, is that it is too late for any of this to make any difference – which may be why there was a thread of desperation running through the Sunak performance.

If Sunak won on policy, Starmer won, very easily, on demeanour. He was more effective than he was in the first debate at pushing back at Sunak’s propagandist claims, and he delivered what was probably the best put-down of the night (the one about listening to people – see 8.34pm.) He was not afraid to accuse Sunak of lying, but he managed to come over as less petty than his opponent, and more authoritative and likable.

Sunak may have won in that he outperformed expectations. But Starmer presented as the next prime minister, and all he needed was a draw anyway; in that sense it was a win for him too.

YouGov has released the results of its snap poll on the debate. And it’s a draw.

The next question comes from Julie, who says she has lost 90% of her business with Europe since Brexit. How will they improve that?

Sunak mentions plans that will help small businesses, and largely avoids talking about Brexit.

Starmer initially talks about general business policy. But, when pressed, he says the Brexit deal was botched, and he would get a better one.

Sunak says Starmer “might be able” to get a better deal with the EU. But it would require free movement, he says.

Starmer says he will not accept free movement, or rejoin the single market or the customs union. But he says he will get a better deal.

Sunak says he has struck deals with the EU, on the Windsor framework and on the Horizon scheme. But he knows there is a cost.

Asked if he accepts that, Starmer says that is why he has set out his red lines.

Sunak asks if Starmer would accept higher migration as part of a deal.

Starmer says he would not. But he says net migration is at a record level under Sunak.

Q: Will you protect women’s rights to female-only spaces, regardless of whether people have a gender recognition certificate?

Sunak says he will amend the Equality Act to clarify that sex means biological sex.

Starmer says he will protect women’s spaces. He says he saw the importance of those when he was DPP.

But he says there are a small number of people born into a gender they do not accept. And he will treat those people “with dignity and respect”. And why? Because if you don’t, you end up with the PM making an anti-trans joke in the Commons with Brianna Ghey’s mother there.

Sunak says that is not what he was doing.

And he says Starmer won’t change the law to protect women-only spaces.

Starmer says Sunak has not been in as many of these women-only spaces as he has, because of his role as DPP.

Q: But how would you guarantee those spaces [are female-only]?

Starmer says the Equality Act actually specifies women’s refuges, and says they should be protected.

Sunak says, when it comes to these matters, sex means biological sex. That is the only way to deliver the protections the questioner wants, he says.

And he says, when a Labour MP said this, Starmer said she was wrong. She was hounded.

Starmer says Sunak should read the legislation. The protections are there. “Don’t just use this as a political football to divide people.”

Sunak says Labour won’t rule out a council tax revaluation.

And, under Labour, every state pension will be subject to tax.

Starmer says: “Don’t insult me by putting up falsehoods.”

As Sunak keeps putting questions to Starmer, Starmer jokes that Sunak has put a bet on how many times he will interrupt him.

Sunak asks Starmer to confirm Labour won’t match the Tories’ pension triple-lock plus.

Starmer does not confirm that.

Sunak claims that means pensioners will have to pay tax on their pension under Labour.

Asked to explain why that is wrong, Starmer replies:

Pensioners are not going to be better off with the prime minister. He’s making promises that he can’t keep because they’re not funded.

Sunak and Starmer are now talking about small boats.

Sunak says he has a plan, and he claims Labour does not.

Asked what he would do, Starmer says arrivals are not being processed, which means they cannot be returned. They are here for life.

Sunak keeps asking Starmer “what will you do with them?” He says he will put them on planes to Rwanda.

Starmer says that will take 300 years at the rate he is proposing.

Sunak says these people come from Iran, Syria and Afghanistan. The idea of getting a returns agreement with the Taliban is “nonsensical”.

This gets a big round of applause.

Sunak says the situation will get worse under Labour.

Q: So you are promising to send hundreds of thousands of people to Rwanda?

Sunak says he will start flights in July.

And he says Starmer said, when he was running for Labour leader, that he approved of free movement.

Starmer says he wants to smash the gangs.

Sunak says the government passed a law to enable this. But Labour voted against this.

“Do not surrender our borders,” Sunak says.