What we learned
It was a debate of the many, not the few, in that Jeremy Corbyn turned up and it’s hard to keep track of seven politicians barking over each other. It was also a debate that will be remembered – as Andrew Sparrow noted in his pithy summary – more for the absence of Theresa May than for anything those present said or did.
So where was the PM on Wednesday evening? Not bingeing on House of Cards season five, apparently, but thinking really, really hard about Brexit. With negotiations opening just 11 days after the vote, May can’t waste time on the election she herself called just two years into a five-year parliament. No: she refuses to be distracted by herself.
May (who has appeared on the One Show, the Sky News/Channel 4 Q&A and an Andrew Neil interview, ahead of a Question Time special on Friday) accused Corbyn (who has appeared on the One Show, the Sky News/Channel 4 Q&A and an Andrew Neil interview, ahead of a Question Time special on Friday, PLUS last night’s debate) of craving TV attention instead of thinking about the Brexit negotiations that she insists he won’t be negotiating anyway:
I’m interested in the fact that Jeremy Corbyn seems to be paying far more attention to how many appearances on telly he’s doing. I think he ought to be paying a little more attention to thinking about Brexit negotiations. That’s what I’m doing, to make sure we get the best possible deal for Britain.
As the PM hits the stump again today, we’ll all be keen to hear what she came up with in her ruminations last night. No “dog ate my Brexit” excuses, please.
For those who did pitch up – including May’s stand-in, the home secretary Amber Rudd, who continued despite the death of her father on Monday evening – here’s a zip through what we heard.
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour
Key themes: public services. Fair migration (but let’s not get into numbers).
Have you been to a food bank? Have you seen people sleeping around our stations? Have you seen the levels of poverty that exist because of your government’s conscious decisions on benefits?
Amber Rudd, Conservatives
Key themes: there’s plenty of time to talk about social care caps after the election. Coalitions are noisy and bad. Corbyn’s “magic money tree” (repeat to fade).
His proposals don’t add up. It’s as though he thinks it’s some sort of game, a game of Monopoly perhaps, where you ask the banker for the red money to buy the electrics, the green money to buy the railways, and the yellow money to buy the gas works.
(The person who wrote this line has never read the rules of Monopoly. Do not play Monopoly with this person.)
Caroline Lucas, Greens
Key themes: politics doesn’t have to be this way, you know. Perhaps we ought to talk about climate change occasionally. And, to Rudd:
I genuinely wonder how you sleep at night … Arms sales to Saudi Arabia cannot be justified on the grounds of this being good for industry.
Angus Robertson, SNP
Key themes: austerity isn’t a must-have. SNP opposition is. So is immigration.
I don’t think there is anyone in this room, or anybody watching this debate from Cornwall to Caithness, who does not understand the positive contribution that people have made to this land who have come from the rest of Europe and the rest of the world, and demonising those people is totally unacceptable.
Paul Nuttall, Ukip
Key themes: immigration; extremism; boo to elites; Brexit.
A city the size of Hull came to this country, net: that’s going to be a Birmingham over a five-year period. It’s unsustainable.
Leanne Wood, Plaid Cymru
Key themes: Don’t take Wales for granted. Brexit – notably this line to Nuttall, who vowed the UK should “pay no divorce bill” to the EU:
Would you refuse to pay your dues if you were going through a real divorce? … We all know about blokes like you.
Tim Farron, Liberal Democrats
Key themes: Brexit. “Hair-shirt, muesli-eating Guardian readers” can’t solve climate change alone (at least we’re trying, eh, Tim?). Being there.
Amber Rudd is up next. She is not the prime minister. The prime minister is not here tonight. She can’t be bothered. So why should you?
In fact, Bake Off is on BBC2 next. Why not make yourself a brew? You are not worth Theresa May’s time. Don’t give her yours.
(Farron wins the inaugural Snap burn emoji award for biggest audience laughter of the night. Rudd came second, with the self-inflicted: “I would say, judge us on our record.”)
At a glance:
- Labour paper leak: Corbyn denies wanting ‘uncontrolled migration’.
- Tory candidate’s blogposts on rape ‘absolutely shocking’.
- Northern Ireland’s Alliance party launched its manifesto.
- As did the DUP.
- Catch up with the Guardian’s Election Daily podcast.
- The Financial Times endorses May, grudgingly.
Poll position
Another day, another Times/YouGov poll (and do take a moment to read my colleague Alan Travis’ take on yesterday’s hung parliament prediction). Today’s nudges the Conservatives down three points to 42%, and Labour up one to 39% – a three-point gap that YouGov pegged at 24 at the start of the campaign. The Lib Dems have slithered down two points to 7%.
YouGov – as with other pollsters predicting snug leads for the Tories – allows for a high turnout of young voters. Those with more gaping margins – such as this week’s Guardian/ICM poll putting the Conservatives 12 points ahead – assume that, as in previous elections, those aged under 24 are less likely to pitch up on the day. Consider that a challenge, youngsters.
And an STV/Ipsos Mori poll of Scottish voters projects the SNP will hang on to 50 of the 56 seats it won in 2015, with the Tories on course to add six to their current sole Westminster slot. Among Scottish party leaders, Nicola Sturgeon came off worst – but the most popular, Scottish Greens co-convenor Patrick Harvie, also scored highest in the “no opinion/no idea who he is” category, proving that the limelight can be a dangerous place.
Diary
- At 9.30am it’s Ukip’s education launch.
- A big Lib Dem contingent – Tim Farron, Nick Clegg, Sarah Olney and Ed Davey – are in Kingston upon Thames to back EU staff in the NHS.
- Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale and her Scottish Lib Dem counterpart Willie Rennie campaign – separately – in Edinburgh this afternoon, after Nicola Sturgeon takes first minister’s questions at noon.
- At 2.30pm Green co-leader Jonathan Bartley undergoes an LBC radio phone-in.
- At the same time, it’s Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit speech in Basildon.
- Theresa May will be in Teesside, thinking and speaking only about Brexit at all times.
- At 7pm it’s the turn of Tim Farron to face Andrew Neil on BBC1.
- David Davis, Barry Gardiner, Angus Robertson, Suzanne Evans and Clegg again are in East Barnet for BBC Question Time at 10.45pm.
Read these
Pollsters treat Northern Ireland as a lump of 18 MPs. It’s more complicated than that, writes Patrick Maguire in the New Statesman:
Should the pro-EU SDLP lose one or more seats to the DUP and Sinn Féin – a scenario that most informed observers agree is unlikely, but not impossible – then the 56% of Northern Irish electors who voted remain could end up under-represented in Brexit debates. The DUP are devout leavers, while Sinn Féin, of course, won’t be in the room…
Any lopsided composition of the Northern Irish cohort in favour of Leave could well distort the conversation around Brexit – and deprive voters of valuable parliamentary scrutiny – as negotiations begin in earnest.
Suzanne Moore, in the Guardian, challenges assumptions about the generational voting gap:
The inter-generational conflict is largely cultural. Parents and carers often know how unfair things are. We anxiously overcompensate for the squeezing of our offspring’s choices. The continuing idea that young people must vote because they alone can change the outcome of this election is appealing. But it is trite and untrue. There are just not enough of them. It also becomes a somewhat divisive way to write off older generations as Ukippy Tories.
Revelation of the day
With a week to go, Corbyn has been ladling out interviews all over the place: to the NME (“youth clubs will be properly funded”, the key news here being that youth clubs are still a thing); to the Guardian Sport Network (“Wenger in”); and to the Independent, in which he reveals that, if elected, he’ll be bringing his cat, El Gato, to join Larry, Downing Street’s resident feline:
There are socialist tendencies in Gato’s character. He’s allowing a stray cat to share his food.
The day in a tweet
Never tweet. (Here’s the original – and the BBC response.)
Since my tweet has become Mail splash, should say it was casual observation ("feels like"), not allegation of bias. pic.twitter.com/D5V5reGhcz
— George Eaton (@georgeeaton) May 31, 2017
And another thing
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