A “debate” between the major-party leaders ends in a draw

By J.P.

UK politicsRead more British election coverage

IT COULD hardly be called a debate, as the two main candidates did not appear together. Yet last night’s Channel 4/Sky News quizzing of, first, Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn and, second, the Conservatives’ Theresa May by a television audience and then by Jeremy Paxman was the nearest the election campaign has come to a presidential-style event. And the overall verdict? A no-score draw, which will probably benefit Mr Corbyn. For although the opinion polls have narrowed recently, he has consistently been the underdog in the campaign.

In this, indeed, the evening neatly summed up the story of the election so far. When she called it on April 19th, Mrs May was confident of winning by a large majority. The polls put her far ahead of her rivals. Voters seemed confident that she was the best bet to handle the formidable task of negotiating Britain’s exit from the European Union. Unlike her opponents, her personal popularity rating was far ahead of her party’s. Some of those around her even began to talk, incautiously, of a Tory landslide that might wipe out Mr Corbyn altogether.

Yet it has not worked out quite like that. Under pressure, Mrs May has often seemed simultaneously wooden and uncertain, undermining her slogan of being strong and stable. This was epitomised by her U-turn on social care, after the Conservative manifesto ran into shrill criticism for its proposal to make better-off old people pay a lot more. Her pretence that the cap on social-care costs was not in fact a change of policy was wholly unconvincing. Not surprisingly, voters who had previously believed that she would be a reliably tough negotiator in Brussels began to have some doubts.

At the same time Mr Corbyn, for so long demonised as an extremist left-winger, has seemed in the campaign and on television to be both more human and more moderate than many might have expected. Concerns over continuing cuts to public services were always likely to help Labour. But the longstanding Tory claim that Mr Corbyn is simply incompetent and unfit to be prime minister seems less convincing than it did, given that Mrs May has at times seemed less than competent herself.

In the end Mrs May still looks most likely to win on June 8th, not least because Mr Corbyn remains vulnerable on matters of defence and security, to which the Manchester bombings have given new prominence. But judging by the response to last night’s television appearances, her majority may be a lot smaller than she once hoped.