Cameron v Miliband: everything you need to know about the leaders' interviews

David Cameron is interview by Jeremy Paxman on the Sky News/Channel 4 programme on Thursday night. Photograph: POOL/PA

If you didn’t watch Thursday night’s debate-that-wasn’t-a-debate – and even if you did – here’s everything you need to know about the double grilling by Jeremy Paxman of David Cameron and Ed Miliband.

How they scored

In the polls immediately after the interviews, produced jointly by Sky News and Channel 4, David Cameron came out on top.

A Guardian/ICM poll of 1,123 viewers taken directly after the questions to both men gave the prime minister an eight-point advantage, by 54% to 46%.

A YouGov app poll for the Times put things rather closer, with 51% saying Cameron was the winner, against 49% for Ed Miliband.

Twitter came up with a different verdict again, with Miliband attracting more positive reactions – but with only a fraction of the tweets compared to those about Cameron:

How did Twitter react last night? Great analysis by @carljackmiller & co. Miliband clearly won but 1/4 as many tweets pic.twitter.com/bZ3lVI4UX8

— May2015 (@May2015NS) March 27, 2015

Guardian commentators’ verdicts: in a word

• Polly Toynbee: Cameron = dull; Miliband = human; Paxman = rude; Burley = impatient.
  
• Jonathan Freedland: Cameron = rattled; Miliband = assertive; Paxman = withering.
  
• Matthew D’Ancona: Cameron = wooden; Miliband = tetchy; Paxman = grudging.
  
• Hugh Muir: Cameron = supplicant; Miliband = hardened; Paxman = acid.
  
• Gaby Hinsliff: Cameron = miserable; Miliband = punk; Paxman = sadistic; Burley = cooed.
  
• Aditya Chakrabortty: Cameron = burbled; Miliband = regrets; Paxman = incisors.
  

If you’d like to read more than just one word about the combatants, you can see the full verdicts here.

David Cameron: what we found out

1. He thinks food bank usage has gone up since 2010 because the previous Labour government didn’t let jobcentres advertise their existence.
2. He couldn’t live on a zero-hours contract.
3. He thinks questions about his rich friends (and the jobs he gave to some of them) are “ridiculous”.
4. He accepts he has failed to meet the pledge to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands.
5. He says he had to raise VAT in 2010, despite saying he wouldn’t, because the economy was in a bigger mess than he’d expected when he took over at No 10.
6. He says if it were not in Britain’s interests, he would not recommend staying in the EU come a referendum.
7. He does not think Uncle Tom Cobley is his likely successor.
8. He shouldn’t have called Ed Miliband despicable, but wah, he started it.
9. He didn’t want to make cuts, but there are lots more coming.
10. He still loves the NHS. But he likes private companies too.

Ed Miliband: what we found out

1. He says leaving the EU would be a disaster, so there’s no need for a referendum.
   
2. His mum is pretty tough, even when her two sons were “bruising” each other.
3. He thinks Cameron got it right on equal marriage and overseas aid spending.
4. He accepts Labour got it wrong on the banks, and Ed Balls definitely thinks so too.
5. Oh, and they also got it wrong on immigration.
6. What was that millennium dome all about, eh?
7. He would cut the winter fuel allowance for wealthy pensioners.
8. Not all the mansion tax money will go to Scotland. Some will go to Newcastle.
9. He won’t need to negotiate with Alex Salmond, because Labour will win a majority.
10. HELL YES, he is tough enough for No 10.

The #notadebate in tweets

Because we don’t know anything until we know what Twitter thinks.

Labour probably won’t mind this one

It's the phil Collins mistake! vote labour, as often as possible pic.twitter.com/cbj7gCrTyJ

— John Harris (@johnharris1969) March 26, 2015

This one’s a bit more uncomfortable for Miliband:

Thanks for 2 mentions, Ed Miliband. Only met once for all of 2 minutes when you embarrassed me with over the top flattery.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) March 26, 2015

And this one will have ruined Ed’s night:

Farage tells me: "I might vote Labour."

— Tim Shipman (@ShippersUnbound) March 26, 2015

The Ukip leader said he would rate Miliband as seven out of 10, with Cameron on a measly four.

The Paxman verdict

How the two leaders would cope with the onslaught from a Paxman who’d been out of the cut-and-thrust of political interviewing for a while was always – in the absence of a genuine head-to-head between Cameron and Miliband – going to be the real test.

“Cameron’s most uncomfortable 20 minutes in an interview for ages,” was my colleague Andrew Sparrow’s analysis last night.

The Labour leader was generally thought to have put up a punchy defence. But for Stuart Heritage, there was one runaway winner:

If the people of Britain were allowed to go to the polls immediately after Cameron & Miliband: the Battle for Number 10, there’d a landslide. And our new prime minister would be Jeremy Paxman.

This was a man who’d clearly been straining at the leash since he left Newsnight; a man who’d spent too many months trapped indoors, fruitlessly barking questions at potplants.

John Crace agreed, pointing out: “If Paxo was a closet Tory, he was keeping it well hidden”:

Don’t Jeremy me,’ Jeremy salivated, while giving his trademark thousand-yard death stare. God, he had missed this. So had we.

‘Could you live on a zero-hours contract?’ Paxman demanded. ‘That’s not the question,’ Dave simpered. It was, though, and Paxman asked it again. And again.

By the end, Dave couldn’t even remember his own name, let alone any of the key economic statistics. Did he know how much the country was borrowing? ‘No, but I’m sure you will tell me, Daddy,’ Dave mumbled.

‘I don’t want to sound rude,’ Paxo lied. ‘You’ve failed.’ It was all Dave could do to stop himself from nodding.

Question of the night

“Are you OK, Ed?” (Spoiler alert: he’s OK. They’re both OK. Everyone is OK.)