Behind the scenes at the Sunak v Starmer TV debate - spin, groans and taxes

Metres away stood some of the monuments of the North West, including Old Trafford, Manchester United’s iconic football ground. On the floor below was the Rovers Return Inn, the much-loved pub from Coronation Street.

Less than a mile away, at a different ITV studio, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer gathered ahead of their first major bout of the campaign. The pair were finally about to face each other for the first time.

Starmer spent his time before the debate on his own, mentally preparing himself as he does before Prime Minister’s Questions. While Sunak fielded practice questions in a special camp. 

In the spin room, Labour’s attack dog Jonathan Ashworth circled journalists handing out an apparent dossier on alleged unfunded Tory tax cuts. It totted up every time a senior Conservative has mentioned cutting taxes, some of which were certainly not party policy.

Ashworth said he had his calculator ready in case Sunak announced any unfunded promises. Whereas in actual fact another dodgy dossier on tax would come to define the debate.

Shortly after the clock struck 9pm, ITV presenter Julie Etchingham and the two candidates for the UK’s next Prime Minister appeared on the big screen. I tore open my packet of popcorn ready for the show. Starmer had his arms awkwardly crossed, while Sunak’s were iron-straight at his side.

“What’s he doing with his arms?” a colleague shouted at the Prime Minister. Both looked nervous at the start, however Sunak settled into it quickly and mounted some attacks with his own tax dossier.

He claimed Labour will put up taxes on working people by £2,000 per year. The Prime Minister said these sums were carried out by independent civil servants in the Treasury. In actual fact, the numbers were from Tory special advisers who are political appointees.

Today (5 June), the permanent secretary to the Treasury, James Bowler, said that civil servants were “not involved in the production or presentation”. But that doesn’t appear to have mattered to Sunak, and he went on the attack repeating this more than a dozen times throughout the debate.

Surprisingly, it took Starmer about 26 minutes to deny this, eventually describing it as “garbage”. But by that point the damage had been done, with right-wing papers immediately pouncing on the PM’s claims. 

In the spin room there were groans from journalists as Starmer referenced his parents’ jobs - his dad was a toolmaker and mum a nurse, don’t you know? Similar utterances were voiced as Sunak reeled off his father’s profession as a GP and mother’s work as a pharmacist. 

As hacks, we’ve heard these references over and over, but particularly Starmer’s went down well with the studio audience. I was still guzzling popcorn, glued to the screen even as the debate descended into almost a farce. 

The candidates were given just 45 seconds to answer huge weighty subjects, such as peace between Israel and Palestine. Meanwhile Sunak in particular kept interrupting Starmer, who spent much of the debate groaning and grimacing. I found this quite infuriating and it hugely backfired for Sunak when he spoke over Liz Truss during the Tory leadership debates, although some have suggested it made him look strong. 

Aides and frontbenchers descended on the spin room afterwards to try and push either Sunak or Starmer. Labour’s Pat McFadden and Jonathan Ashworth were repeatedly asked why Starmer took so long to deny the Prime Minister’s £2,000 tax claim.

Ashworth, a punchy bulldog of a politician, said that his boss had described it as “garbage”, and said it showed Sunak was “desperate”. Meanwhile Michael Gove was out representing the Tories, even though he is standing down at the election. 

He rather got his sporting metaphors mixed up, saying Sunak had left Starmer “flat on the canvas” before describing the victory as “six-nil”. In the end, all you’ll get from these politicians is spin. The real result will come on 4 July - polling day.

Ralph Blackburn is NationalWorld’s politics editor based in Westminster, where he gets special access to Parliament, MPs and government briefings. If you liked this article you can follow Ralph on X (Twitter) here and sign up to his free weekly newsletter Politics Uncovered, which brings you the latest analysis and gossip from Westminster every Sunday morning.