One star! Wince at Joyce McMillan's scathing review of the Sunak vs Starmer show

As The Scotsman’s theatre critic, I review staged events all the time; but rarely, if ever, have I seen a performance so poor, so pointless, and so utterly unfit for purpose as Wednesday night’s final television debate between the UK’s two prime ministerial contenders, staged by the BBC at Nottingham University.

I would rate it at one star, rather than zero, because of two redeeming factors; the loud student demonstration about the situation in Gaza which could be heard outside the hall – which at least suggested that basic civic liberties are still in operation in the UK, despite recent ministerial efforts to the contrary – and the fact that Keir Starmer, running at 20 points ahead in the polls, did succeed from time to time in coming across as a slightly nicer chap, and a more dignified character, than his frantically noisy opponent.

That though, was it. Otherwise, it was Hamlet without the prince, a comedy of errors, and much ado about nothing, in terms of credible policy; and above all, it was three characters in search of a script worth performing.

Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer delivered a shockingly bad piece of political theatre (Picture: Jeff Overs/BBC via Getty Images)

Pompous or shouty?

The three characters are well known to us all, of course. There’s the wealthy 44-year-old Prime Minister who sounds like a naive and shouty public-school teenager, the pompous 60-something public servant who keeps banging on about the fact that his Dad was a tool-maker, and the woman presenter – in this case Mishal Husain – who is supposed to keep them in order and make them respond properly to questions, but seems too frozen in the headlights of the occasion to do any such thing, or even to display her usual sharp instinct for the question that needs to be asked.

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If the characters were unpromising, though – and the spiky gameshow-style set borderline ridiculous – it was when it came to the script that the event really fell apart. It was an improvised show, of course, with no text finalised beforehand; but that was little excuse for the absolute failure to attempt any structure, or even to ensure that there was some discussion of all the major factors determining the future of the nation. The 75-minute format relied heavily on audience participation, in terms of questions from the couple of hundred members of the public assembled in the hall; but even when pointed questions were asked, it was clear from the outset that neither politician had any interest in giving respectful and substantial answers.

Benign waffle

Rishi Sunak was there to shout at microphone-bursting pitch about how Labour would put taxes up and allow unlimited immigration; Starmer was there to stand about looking like an exasperated schoolteacher while Sunak ranted, and – when he spoke – apparently to avoid committing himself to anything specific at all.

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So when a woman from the music industry asked about the European business she had lost since Brexit, and what could be done to help, Starmer waffled benignly but vaguely about how Labour would try to improve the UK’s trading deal with the EU, and Sunak almost immediately turned the question back to his favourite subject of immigration, and the apparently hideous threat of “freedom of movement” between the UK and the continent; no word from either about the vital role of music and the arts in the UK’s society and economy.

A man asked directly about immigration and control of UK borders, and triggered a five-minute episode that was frankly a disgrace to British politics, as both candidates indulged in the reactionary nonsense of demonising small-boats migrants as the major threat facing the nation.

And when a woman questioner asked directly about whether these two male leaders could be trusted to defend women’s interests in office, she received two answers that would barely have been out of the place in the 1950s. Starmer talked in suffocatingly patronising terms about the women in his Cabinet; Sunak talked about his daughters. No word from either about the serious social policy – on pensions, child benefits, nursery provision, addressing child poverty – that actually, historically, improves women’s lives; and then the final insult of having the question derailed, by an online questioner, into the shameful, culture-war red herring that equates supporting women with beating up on a tiny, vulnerable minority of trans people.

Where was climate change?

That manoeuvre finally provoked Starmer into his best moment of the evening, appealing to the basic tolerance and compassion of the British people towards all citizens, including the LGBTQ community. There was nothing, though, on wider international affairs – not a mention of Ukraine, or Gaza. And there was not a single reference to climate change even as London sweltered in Mediterranean heat; only a brief exchange between Husain and Starmer about the cost of the transition to a low-carbon economy, and whether it might mean tax rises.

To call this debate inadequate and uninformative is therefore to understate the case. It was a wretchedly moderated competition between dreadful policy and – to judge by Starmer’s performance – almost no policy, with Sunak constantly shouting over Starmer, and all three characters frequently talking at once. It’s become a common observation in this election campaign that the smaller parties seem to talk far more sense, and with a far more coherent link between principle and policy, than either of the two main contenders; and that, of course, is no accident. They are free to talk relatively good sense because they are nowhere near the main levers of Westminster power, and the huge corporate and plutocratic pressures that now bear down on any party aspiring to that power.

And while, south of the Border, I would probably vote for Starmer’s Labour party as the more decent of two poor choices for control over those levers, in Scotland, I will exercise my freedom to place my vote elsewhere, with a party of government more troubled, but also more coherently social-democratic; and be glad, although hardly overjoyed, that I have the option to do so.