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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, fighting to narrow a substantial polling gap, adopted an aggressive approach against his Labour Party opponent, Keir Starmer.
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Sunak and Starmer Debate Key Issues Ahead of Election
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain and Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, clashed over taxes, health care policy and immigration during a televised debate.
This election is about the future. And I’m clear that I’m going to keep cutting people’s taxes as we now are. Mark my words, Labour will raise your taxes. It’s in their DNA. Your work, your car, your pension, you name it. Labour will tax it. We will raise specific taxes, and we’ve been really clear what they are. We’ve already dealt with the tax break on private schools. We want to end the non-dom status completely. I think that the super rich should be paying their tax. I want to get rid of the equity loopholes that are there again for the super rich. And I think the oil and gas companies should be paying their fair share towards our energy. So we will raise those, but we won’t raise the others. As Janet knows and everyone knows, the N.H.S. is still recovering from Covid. We went through the best part of two years where the N.H.S. couldn’t conduct all the treatments it normally would and it is going to take time to recover from that. But we are now making progress. The waiting lists are coming down. But what Keir Starmer didn’t mention to you, which you did, Julie — 7.2 million. There are now 7.5 million. He says they’re coming down and this is the guy who says he’s good at maths. Yeah, they are. They are now coming down. They are now coming down. 7.2 — When you said you’d get them down 7.2 million, they’re now 7.5 million. I’d like you to explain how they’re coming down. Because they were coming down from where they were when they were higher, now on their way down. Stephen, immigration is too high and we will need to take bold action to bring it down. Whether that’s legal migration, where we’re going to introduce a new legal cap to guarantee that it will come down every year, or the boats, which you mentioned, where we got the numbers down last year by a third and now we have a deterrent ready to go. Eighteen months ago, the prime minister made a promise. He said, just like the N.H.S. promise, personally accountable for it, that he would stop the boats. This year alone, 10,000 people have crossed on boats. That’s a record number.
By Stephen Castle
Reporting from London
The two contenders to become Britain’s next prime minister clashed angrily over tax, immigration and health policy on Tuesday in a televised debate that at times descended into ill-tempered exchanges as the political rivals talked over each other.
The confrontation came exactly a month before a pivotal general election that will determine whether the opposition Labour Party can capitalize on its strong lead in opinion polls and end 14 turbulent years of Conservative-led government during which the party has had five different prime ministers.
Almost as soon as the debate started, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak claimed that his opponent, the Labour leader Keir Starmer, would raise taxes on British households by 2,000 pounds, about $2,550, a year if he won the election, repeating the claim numerous times. “Absolute garbage,” Mr. Starmer eventually responded.
The Labour Party said that the figure was based on faulty assumptions, and Jonathan Ashworth, a senior party lawmaker, told Sky News after the debate that Mr. Sunak was lying. But Mr. Starmer’s failure to clearly reject the claim early in the broadcast set the tone for what followed: a solid but defensive performance by the opposition leader against an energized and at times ruthless opponent.
One snap opinion poll of viewers on Tuesday night declared Mr. Sunak a narrow victor, and his performance may have steadied some nerves inside his anxious party. But two polls released on Wednesday suggested that Mr. Starmer had won, with those surveyed saying the Labour leader was more honest and more calm. Most analysts suggested the debate, which was watched by an average of 4.8 million people according to BARB, a TV audience research company, was unlikely to swing significant numbers of votes.
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