Sometimes in TV debates there are clear winners. It often happens in the first debate of a series, when viewers do not know what to expect, and it happened last week, when Rishi Sunak and Tom Tugendhat clearly made a better impression than the others. That was the consensus commentariat view, but also the finding of a snap poll too.
But mostly debates just confirm impressions that are already fairly well lodged in the minds of people who already have a view on the candidates.
They don’t “move the dial” much, although they do show how a candidate’s pitch might be evolving. Sunday night’s fell more into that category.
Liz Truss and Penny Mordaunt would be said to have done best – but only in the sense that they were most improved from last Friday, when they were both surprisingly unimpressive (Truss because she was wooden, Mordaunt because she was shallow).
Truss admitted as much on Sunday night, when she accepted she might not be the most polished of performers, but stressed her experience. She was much stronger against Sunak than she was on Friday.
Mordaunt sounded more confident, but she is struggling to define herself clearly, or quash doubts about her inexperience. Tory polling suggests that, while she may have been very popular with members as the ‘None of the above’ candidate, once she is just the Penny Mordaunt candidate, it is less appealing.
But Sunak probably did best on a more conventional assessment. He sounded the most polished and authoritative, and he has got through two debates now as the frontrunner in the parliamentary contest without being tripped up. For the second time in a row, he probably came off best in the economics debate with Truss by deploying a pithy soundbite (“‘something for nothing economics”). His one-on-one question to Truss later was also the closest the debate came to real zinger: “You have been a Liberal Democrat and a remainer. Which one do you regret the most?”
And Kemi Badenoch also did well because, of the three effective insurgent candidates (people who did not serve in Boris Johnson’s cabinet), she is the most articulate, the least predictable, and the one with the most momentum. Notice how she was starting to adopt Sunak’s pitch on the economy, stressing that – like him – she considers tackling inflation the real challenge.
On Friday, Tugendhat was the candidate who sounded like he most represented a clean start and a breath of fresh air. But second time round that pitch did not have quite the same appeal, and he sounded like someone who expects to be out of the contest by this time tomorrow night.
