How do leaders prepare for TV election debates?

Former Labour adviser Ayesha Hazarika joins Beth Rigby and Ruth Davidson as the regular Tuesday sub for Jess Philips during the election period.  
  
On this episode, they talk about how leaders will be preparing for TV debates – Beth’s hosted one, Ayesha has worked with politicians doing them, and Ruth has stood behind a lectern several times herself. 
  
They discuss what Rishi Sunak might try to land as he tries to close the gap in the opinion polls.  
Plus, has there been a “purge” of the left in Labour as Starmer thinks about what his benches will look like if he becomes prime minister.   
  
Email Beth, Ruth, and Ayesha at electoraldysfunction@sky.uk (https://sky.uk) , post on X to @BethRigby, or send a WhatsApp voice note on 07934 200 444.   

all right I’ve got my clipboard should we start and then we can talk about the bus in a [Music] bit hello and welcome to a Tuesday episode of electral dysfunction we’ve a lot to tell you on this episode lots of you were emailing whatsapping and tweeting to say you fancied some more electoral dysfunction during this campaign as did I so throughout June we are here on Tuesdays and Fridays Ruth will be here hello Ruth where are you I am in Sunny Scotland she’s got a suit jacket on so she means business today on Friday Jess will be choosing people for her Subs bench and on Tuesday hello Aisha haera well hello [Music] ladies oh I’m so excited about this I went to the sky bosses and I said I’ve got a list of people that we want that was going to have the same Vibe that’s going to be funny but also knows what it is and can see behind the curtain and be passionate and would be fun down the pub which is the vibe we try and go for and my list ran to one name and it was Aisha haara and I’m so glad you said yes I have to say separately I also had a list and my list was also of one well honestly I cannot tell you how absolutely chuff to bits I am to be here because I love this podcast look a I’m going to come back to you and do a proper introduction a second but let’s just tell you what’s coming up how much of a dysfunction with the first big starm mistep of the election that’s the row about candidate selection which started with Diane Abbott and the election TV debate start Tuesday how the leaders prepare and how important will that hour of live TV be for Rishi sunak if he wants to narrow the Gap in the poll but look please keep whatsapping us on 07934 20000 trip P four so this podcast now has a second baroness which basically means that I am surrounded by greatness and poshness I’ve got two baronesses is what’s the plural they’re Collective known as like a coven a coven so the only way I’m going to get any longevity in this podcast is I am going to have to obviously be a nobl which you know I’m there for it exactly well listen Beth I think it’s just a matter of time it’s just a matter of time also you’re both Scottish so I’m really outnumbered here aren’t I yeah although to be fair iisha is from the west and I’m from the East so I mean the Divide is is almost bigger than like London to glasow you know now Aisha’s a former labor adviser I’ve known her for many years haven’t I Aisha because you used to advise Harriet Harmon and has done a bit of electioneering herself during her time so Aisha tell us a bit about what you did for labor in 2010 and 2015 well so I was working for the labor party for a long long time I became a special adviser to Harriet Harmon back in 2007 and we worked on a lot of women in equality issues in fact we talk about it all the time in fact it is back in in the news now and I did a lot of Media stuff but my focus is really women and equality issues and then I went to work for Gordon Brown as well and then I went to work for Ed millerand and I helped him do many things including preparing for prime minister’s questions a lot of his media andc speechwriting and preparing for those big televised leaders debates so you’re very very specific there what I what you said I got but what I heard was don’t blame me for the edstone well to to be fair Ruth I can’t be uh Blan for the edstone because I was too busy with the disastrous pink bus okay right okay we’ll talk about the boss let’s talk about the boss can we just explain this the pink bus because last week Andie raino I did an interview with her which you actually Should Have Heard on this pod we doubled up we put it on the daily uh Sky News podcast and I stuck it in the electrial dysfunction feed as well because I’m greedy basically anyway so Angie was talking about the labor bus but back in 2015 Harriet Harmon launched the pink bus and I went on that pink bus and Ed B made us cupcakes and it’s one of my Juran memories but why was I quite like the pink bus what was wrong with the pink bus Aisha it was born out of a real sense of frustration with a lot of women in the labor party that like women were kind of not really a feature of that 2015 general election campaign it was just lots of kind of boys and lots of men and so Harriet being the deputy leader she was like I demand a bus and then they were like okay fine you can have a bus and then we were like okay we’ve got a bus it’s a women’s bus right and we so there was another Red Bus we like can’t have a red bus can’t have a blue bus obviously can’t have a green bus couldn’t even have a purple bus cuz that was like kind of ukip and we were like oh why don’t we have a pink bus and we were like oh that’ll be quite fun and everyone hated the pink bus and I remember we launched it and it was really glamorous it was like the Leisure Center at stevenage M car park and it was like it was like it really was like a scene out of westwing and it was so funny because we had like a female driver driving the bus we didn’t want to have a man and the poor woman driver like couldn’t reverse Park and every was like love just back back up you need a man to come in it was just like a disaster from s to finish and then we get out of the launch I think it was me Harry and Gloria deer and all these journalists start firing questions at Gloria deer who’s quite uncomfortable about the pink bus and they’re like Gloria is this bus pink and she’s like um I think it’s more magenta like more magenta than and people are like answer the question is this bus and she’s like um I think it’s more s like maybe more did you when you because this always fascinates me in elections you know like when someone goes we’re have an edstone or we’ll have a pink bus or we’ll send the Prime Minister out in the driveing rain to announce election when you had the idea ocean then when you launched the magenta s pink we’re not quite clear on the color bus did you stand there and go I am in the thick of it I didn’t realize this would happen and it unfolds before your very eyes so you can to have an out of body experience of like how comedic it obviously becomes yeah totally and I think the thing was like when we came up with the idea and Harriet was very very very keen on this idea and to be fair to her like a lot of people did try and like talk her out of it but she and she was on something she was like I want to do something that’s going to make a splash and the other thing that was really hilarious about it was cuz we got no support from the party it wasn’t really even a bus it was like a it was like a people carrier let’s be honest it was a it was like a it was a pink camper B but you’re so right though Beth cuz when you’re in those moments it’s going so badly you almost have to sort of go mentally into the place at your safe space like the cup under the stairs you’re just like I am this is I am now in Amando IUI in fact Amando II could not even begin to imagine the horror of this but the Saving Grace for me is because I’m also stand up comedian I just kept notes and everything and it provided me with an hour of belting standup I actually my first ever standup show after I left politics was called Tales from the pink bus there you go every cloud Silver Lining from a Tory point of view thank you for the bus [Music] Aisha well as ever we’ve completely diverged but I enjoyed it let’s go back to the last few days we did it last we we’re going to do a bit more today because the last few days have gone in a direction that starma didn’t plan labor have been having a dysfunction I think it’s fair to say over C selection particularly the accusation that candidates from Minority backgrounds are being overlooked we now know that Diane Abott is going to stand again as labor candidate in Hanney North and sto Newton starma eventually said on Friday she was free to stand as a candidate again after reports the ruling body would barard so this story all started on Tuesday night by Wednesday night I was of the view they’re going to have to let Diane Abbott stand that this is now spiraling into a really negative story for starma they held the line Wednesday no decision taken they held the line Thursday no decision taken then on Friday morning a message came through that starma having said no decision had been taken was going to make another statement and I’d already written the Tweet saying K starm is going to let Dian Abbott stand it was so obvious before he said it it was so obvious that they were going to have to uturn on it I it’s not just been about Diane though has it’s it’s morphed into other candidates such as fisa Shaheen and chingford and others how much discontent do you think there is around selection at the moment in the party so the party is kind of quite shocked about how all of this has has blown up I think where there is a kind of agreement across the party across all different wings of the party is that this has been very very badly handled and it has brought trouble to the door of what was looking like a pretty slick campaign and you know a pretty good operation where there is division is over the kind of substance of this I think Diane Abbott is seen in a slightly different light from some of these other candidates and I have been in contact with people from all different factions of the labor party including people more on the right of the labor party who are unhappy with all of this because of the historic role that Dian Abbott has has played although there is some anger about Dian Abbott but I think on the whole people are kind of angry with how this has been handled it shouldn’t have been left to the to the last minute I think with the other candidates it’s a slightly more mixed picture so there I think are people who are upset with the way that FAA Shaheen has been treated and I thought her you know her newsight interview was was really quite it was very difficult to to watch in terms of how she said she’d been communicated with right at the the last minute I think though there’s lots of other people though who almost wondered why she had been a candidate because she was not very much going along with the sort of politics of Kia starma and what the party has done whether you agree with it or not is be really clear about the kind of candidates that they want to to pick but I think what it has thrown up is that something has gone wrong in the process and handling and the system of all of this and some people are saying that where was that person in the leader’s office that that should have had that 360 view that should they like this ding Abbot thing should have been on a risk register a political risk register and the other candidates not so much because they’re not that well known so a couple of things on this the first thing is that it seemed to me quite quickly on Wednesday I thought politically they’re making a misstep and the reason I did was that Diane Abott represents far more than Hackney North and sto Newton to a lot of people yeah so she’s bigger than the seat once they had given the whip back to her to try and then bar her from standing is illogical and it’s going to B fire when I spoke to some people around this inside labor there was a couple of things going on which is this is not polling in focus groups beyond the Westminster bubble you are all obsessed about it but out there people don’t they’re not noticing and I was like no no this if this dominates the headlines people will notice and she’s a national figure and then the second thing was you know she’s like tweets about Corbin the point being uh that people within the top echelons of Labor saying you know for any other candidate if they behave like that we probably would deselect them there is question isn’t there which is what’s the bloody decision making process that it takes two three four days to bow to the inevitable someone did concede to me over the weekend that they they think they should have acted sooner and is it because there’s too many people in the decision-making process or is it just you know it’s a up and they happen I think there’s a couple of things here I mean I think there are comp competing tasks that have to happen so we’ve been bounced into an early election we all thought it was going to be October November um we’re polling so far ahead we’re going to get lots of people elected that we maybe haven’t done vetting on to the point um you know that we would otherwise do let’s try and sanitize and let’s do a a health check on our candidates list to save us paying further down the track understand that that would actually be quite a responsible thing to do I think you then have to look at process and choreography if you’re going to start deselecting people and being brutal about it you don’t make your first person Diane abbit who’s this mass as you say this massive figure that’s been around since since the 80s first black woman MP she’s held in real affection within the party nobody’s looking at the hole nobody’s seeing the wood for the trees and saying look so wait a minute the first thing we’re going to do is deselect a black woman an Asian woman and a gay man and we’re just going to parachute in straight white spads and wonks that have worked in kier’s office and that’s going to look fine of course it doesn’t look fine it looks Dreadful Ruth La last week when we did this pod like J Jess was the first out of the traps actually of senior labor people to publicly say just let her stand just this is not a fight worth having uh I took the view that I thought in the end that they would have to either let her stand or they do an elegant kind of peage or something and Ruth you thought they’d stick to their guns well I kind of thought if you’re going to let it by this point it sort of dragged on for we’re into our third day if you’re you’re going to do it like that then you might as well stick to your guns because if you’ve got a big majority by the time you get to sort of day two after you’re elected and you start in your 100 first dat people will have forgotten about her and Aisha I guess that what Ruth was saying about starma parachuting in uh spads and wonks people that he wants in the party that how much of a calculation if you’re sitting there advising a perhaps future pm and he’s looking at it thinking if I get a majority under 30 I’m going to have this big labor left rump and they’re just going to absolutely screw me every which way is that part of the calculation like he wants but more control over the party uh he doesn’t want a big rump of rebellious MPS and also he wants to put people in that he thinks will be competent in government right there’s a couple of things to to sort of unpack here if you go right back to I suppose Kia starmer’s Mission with the the labor party he always had a couple of phases and the first phase was to try and sort out the the party when when he came in and it was in an absolute mess and there was all the terrible stain of anti-Semitism The Next Step was to professionalize the party which was to get really good people on the pitch bringing back people like Rachel Reeves and Evette Cooper bringing in people like West streeting and the third part of it was to go out pivot to the country away from the party and win the next general election right so that has always been his kind of flow chart of what his missions are and taking control of the party has been done kind of quite quietly in the background I mean there was a conference about three years ago where there was some quite boring nerdy rule changes but they were really really important because they stopped moderate MPS being deselected by kind of hardle activists but I suppose finishing that fight has now happened now with with these election so some of that kind of getting control of the party bats being under the radar this is where it has kind of really been in honed into view and there’s there’s two schools of thought right now in the labor party I’m speaking to people all the time about this there are some people who are like absolutely go k starma and go somebody called Morgan mcweeny who’s a really important part of the K starmer project can you explain who he is so Morgan mcweeny is kind of like K starmer if Sue gry is the kind of Chief advisor on future of government and and getting labor and shape for government Morgan mcweeney is the the person who helped Karma get elected in the first place he knows the party inside out he knows every nook and cranny of it um and he is Karma’s Chief adviser on all things to do with the party and he has been the Chief Architect in terms of wrestling back control from the hard left to Kia starmer’s power and he is this a really really important president so I think he’s been a really big kind of driving force with the elections and I think he and K starma will be having a very ruthless eye saying right we don’t want people who a are going to cause trouble if we get elected but B we want people who are going to be competent and be good and and kind of you know are in our mold so that is one view of looking at it there is though on the other hand quite a few murmurs of discontent just saying hang on a minute even under Tony Blair our most successful labor leader ever John McDonald was in the Labour party Diane Abbott was in the labor party there was this rump of socialists in the party and actually to deal with these people you have to be really really good and you have to win that’s how you defeat them you don’t just defeat them by completely killing them but the other side will come back and say hang on a minute we tried that with Jeremy Corbin we let these people in and they absolutely took root of the party and we can’t let that happen again on Morgan Sween and some of his they call them the boys in the lotto which is the leader of the opposition’s office there is discontent in the party one figure in the party was saying to me the other day why can’t they just be gracious in Victory and what this person meant was they’ve pretty much got reared and killed off the left in the party why are they going for Diane Abbott like they do not need to do this and it just actually looks spiteful and it looks nasty and iisha one thing was it just a misstep or was it also they were bounced by it because Angie Raina I wasn’t necessarily expecting her to do that there was a line that the shadow cabinet were taking which was starmer’s line she did a round of interviews on Thursday morning clearly said to me Diane should be allowed to stand that I understand was unideal to quote one person in the runup to Angela making that very big and game-changing intervention the number of women particularly women from across the party and across factions within the party the whatsapps were popping off everybody was having the same conversation behind the scenes candidates of course don’t want to be disloyal so they’re not going to say anything publicly everybody was messaging everybody within the party going this doesn’t feel right this feels really really badly wrong for all the reasons that you have gone through and I think that a lot of women in the party were going to Angela and she’s probably thinking herself right I’m the elected Deputy leader of this party I am a feminist all these women are coming to me I’ve got to say something about this this is this is actually I’ve got a duty on me which I which I get but you also do that behind closed doors and say look I’m telling you K I’m having all of these women within the party like this is one where you’ve got to think again and I think you know in terms of the rocky relationship that she’s had with Kier before if not her and Kier as people their offices and the trust or distrust between them I I think that’s quite instructive and I think if the Tory party could in any way get it together they should she should start to focus on that they did try to focus on it didn’t they because then the attack lines the next day became Angela raina’s leading the party Kier starm is week but nobody noticed because nobody was listening like it didn’t come through I don’t think is it just me that listens to it all yeah yeah that’s my job you know that’s but look going back to Angela Raina she kept saying to me it’s not Kia that’s being factional I don’t think Kia is factional I don’t think Kia wants to purge the left from the party so as she was sort of smacking him in the face metaphorically she was it was like a tickle and punch is that what you describe it is that a thing a tickle and a punch that sounds a bit specialist in Niche doesn’t it yeah I think I think there’s you can look up for that involving a m i mean there’s a phrase for it it’s not Artic punch do you know what I mean so I think in terms of she’s trying to cover her backside by not being overtly loyal to the leader while absolutely destroying the decisions that are being made by the leader’s office in his name whether he’s the person taking them or not but I I do think coming back to the fact that this is the first wobble that their campaign has had and it’s been a slick campaign it was a slick launch they’ve been very tight in the way in which they’ve they’ve done things they they’ve they’ve been pretty impressive actually with how tight they’ve kept they’ve come out of this week which is undoubtedly a wobble they would not have sought or wished to have if you kind of look at the poll of poll they’ve actually increased their lead by sort of 1 to 2% which with is within the margin of error but if if if this is your wobble I mean I think you’d probably take it I mean I’ve been speaking to people very close to K starm very senior in K starmer’s team and listen nobody is happy about this nobody is pleased about and everybody concedes it’s been a mess and they want to get it fixed they want to get this fixed is it right that she was thinking about standing down at the next election and that this has almost made it impossible for her now to do so I don’t know where she had got to but I think the way that this has all unfolded particularly with that incredibly unhelpful story saying that she had been barred from standing that was incredibly hurtful for her and I think that was you know whoever’s briefed that out and nobody knows who’s briefed that out you know there’s lots of you know suggestions flying around but she wanted to be able to make her own decision with agency you know she’s been in Parliament for a long time she wanted to have it be her decision now I understand she has now said that she does want to stand and I can understand why she does want to do that because if you have been tried to be pushed out by people some faceless people that’s going to make you think screw you I am not getting pushed I fought damn hard as the first black woman to get into Parliament and if you think I’m being pushed out like this F you you can see why she’s thinking that oh totally I mean some of these kids have been in his office for five minutes they’ve been in the labor party for five minutes she’s been doing this for 40 years as an elected representative and as a kind of person who was visibly different and there you know and there’s people that have lots of differences across Parliament and they come from lots of different backgrounds but being visibly different makes you a Target [Music] by the way Ruth we have had dozens and dozens of emails and whatsapps after the last episode uh Ruth do you think that’s because people were feeling sad about just leaving us for a few weeks oh I think they’re bere well we had a few of those but no do you think that we had loads of feedback on our amazing analysis of the Tory PR machine no not particularly no these are leading questions our inbox is actually full of pets named after politicians of a whole new genre uh this started because Jess met a dog named after Ted Heath and Ruth’s dogs very definitely not named after Harold Wilson and my cat’s called Scooby which I haven’t got Scooby why anyway we’ve had so many I need to get my clipboard for this we’ve had Maggie the sausage dog pretty the hen a goat named after Gordon Brown and this is a RW called Boris and I’ve got it on my phone so just stand by everyone I love that there’s more the co I love it love it I’ve got more a Boston Terrier called Winston a basset hound named Gladstone cats called Neil and glennis oh this is my favorite salamander called Nelson Salam Mandela do you see what they did there I like that I like it I love it and a guinea pig named Merkel out there uh now Fred lives on a farm in gler Shore and sent us a WhatsApp in the interest of balance he’s got Ducks named Boris Nadine and Liz also on his Farm Angela and Rachel the pigs and the biggest news is apparently Angela’s having piglets and they’re planning to Co on Jess oh I mean you could call one Beth as well if you’d like I guess I’m not politic haveu do you want to see the pigs though okay they’re actually really nice aren they are they like spotted clusters or something something with a cute name CU they’ve got like a little black ear falling over their eyes who knew that the politicians named after pets uh would become a movement or pets named after politicians but we could name politi the other way around did I say politician been a long campaign bet now we’ve put a few of your pictures on the Sky News Instagram so please go and look at all the pets I mean if you want to keep sending them in I’m I’m happy to take them my Instagram feed is actually full of cat videos because obviously I watched a few and now I have cat videos and rescue dog videos and I actually find it very nourishing after a hard day of politics right let’s P let’s pause there we’re back in a minute [Music] [Music] now the TV election debate start on Tuesday night with Julie etam on ITV now everyone here can offer a different perspective I’ve hosted one Ruth has being a participant in one and Aisha has prep leaders uh for them so how do you get on top of a live TV debate Ruth well i’ I’ve done Hunter because in Scotland you no shyness in terms of just having cheap Telly and and leaders debates is very cheap television for the broadcasters to make just get you all in the room let you fight but yeah you’ve got to know the format and you’ve got to decide what it is that you’re going to do do you try and and do something that will play well in the room and the broadcasters work hard to make sure it’s a mixed audience so you’re you will have it at least a proportion of people that already support you there or do you speak over their heads and do you make sure that you go down the camera lens and you’re speaking to as many people at home as you can what did you do on that because the whole thing about 2010 was CLE looked down the lens and spoke to the viewer at home what do you what how do you handle that Ruth yeah so the particular part of the cycle that we were in we were trying to expand especially when I was doing the 2015 general election and the 2016 Scottish election and there was this big clash between people that were Pro UK and pro-independence and there was all of these Pro UK votes that were kind of up for grabs with nowhere really to go particularly so I was very much in the broad Church speak to as many people as possible land the lines that you don’t have to be a Tor to vote Tor at this election you just have to care about X or Y or Zed I actually don’t think that’s what Rich’s going to do here I think that they’re going for a far greater core vote strategy and as we talked about in a previous podcast to try and peel lost votes back from rain because that’s an easier job than it is to try and take votes that have already migrated to labor or the lib dams so so he’s going to have a different way of doing it to me but the other thing that you’ve got to prep for is structure is it a town hall debate are you going to be cross-examined by other political leaders or is it just you know audience members or is it just the journalist because the way you speak to people in an audience is different to the way you speak to a moderator and is different again to the way you speak to an opponent so you got to prep for all of that and you’ve got to you’ve got to have people that are good on what are your weak points and you know as as we’ve talked about my Army background in the past you know I am I’m a full full full believer of train hard fight easy so I would get like a bunch of people in the room that would kick the utter crap out of me that would ask me unfair questions that would ask me questions that were personal that were stuff that that wasn’t even public that people wouldn’t even know that would absolutely rip me to shreds and we would do a process where they ripped me down and built me back up and you got to be brave enough to do that and you’ve got to give the time to it and it’s hard when you’re running a campaign and you’re on the go every day but you have to give yourself the time to to Really prep the out of it Aisha you did it with Ed millerand in 2015 where do you start with it on these debates well you have to put in so much time Ruth is absolutely correct the amount of prep is phenomenal if you’re taking this stuff seriously you start doing your prep months and months months and months before we used to call them debate camps because we would go away for the weekend we’d have our teams and we would go away to various places across the the country people would lend us nice big country houses and we’d go and Camp there for for weekends um it it’s quite a big team we actually had loads of Americans fly in as well we had David Axel rod and a team of you know highlevel Democrats strategists and DC and David Axel Rod had prepped Clinton he’d prepped Obama and the one thing I would say is I think sometimes we in British politics always look to Americans for these TV debates because they do them more regularly we are actually quite new 2010 was the first time we really had these but our debates are quite different from American debates and I think sometimes you can actually make a mistake just trying to make it too American like we had this one guy prepping us who kept saying to Ed happy warrior like your face should be happy warrior and we were like what the does this mean that got written down he had it written on a card and and and they saw over his shoulder and he had the absolute piss ripped out of him for that yeah he let he also stumbled off the stage oh I remember that’s all I remember from it well I was in the room next to him with watching it with with loads of Labor people and we had said to him in the rehearsal there was a lip at the edge of the stage be very very careful he was like not an idiot I’m not going to I’m not going to trip over it cut to tripping over the lip and then we walk did that impression again honestly I’m not going to trip over honestly I’m actually doing very good Ed Miller Band impression you do spent too much time with man anyway we were there was a slight delay when we were watching it in this room so we watched him trip he came into the room and we were just watched it we were like and then he walked in and we all went yeah kind of thing and he was like hly how B how bad was it was it and everyone’s like it was fine it was fine and then Rachel Reeves said the funniest things Rachel do you know when Madonna fell off the stage at the Brits it was a bit like that Ed it’ll be a real talking point and everybody was like don’t say that don’t say that but what I think is also interesting about these debates is that because the main one that people will really sort of think about is the head-to-head with sunak and starma and because they have had a lot of time doing pm cues their teams have quite got the measure of of the other ones you know they will have been studying them and I just think what’s going to be interesting with this is how risky will they want to be so you can see a situation where Rishi at because he is feeling like the underdog at the moment he does want to be a bit more in the moment but if you’re Karma you’re going to want to play it quite safe it’s really interesting isn’t o because you know we were talking about it through the years from 2010 to the first debate to 2024 now what we now have is two head-to-heads with just two leaders so there’s been different uh manifestations of these and now both the potential two guys that really are the only ones with a shot of being a PM uh they are not going to allow themselves to go on stage with other leaders I mean if you look back to 2010 when Brown agreed to do it with CLE and Cameron Cameron didn’t anticipate did he that CLE would be the guy that everyone go oh Nick CLE was good and what’s interesting and this is when you are really far behind you want more and more debates because you just want opportunities to try and uh do stabilize undermine get one over on your opponent and it’s been very interesting the negotiations for this because star’s team have said all along we will do two head-to-heads Rishi sunak team have been trying to get them to do six they just will not and I guess for sunak and you’re talking about the risk the thing is is that all starma has to do his draw he doesn’t have to win I guess the question is is there more pressure on sunak because he has to try and make this big televised moment a game changer or is it the is it really awful for starma because he’s got his mingas and this DV debate is a polished floor upon which he worries about slipping who’s it harder for is just a nightmare for everyone involved well I think it’s a bit like pmqs it is a nightmare for everybody involved I mean this stuff is is really really difficult I think for starmer his team have made strategically the right decision because why should he put himself up there with every other party leader when everybody will will gang up on him right that’s when you’re going to have your kind of uncontrolled moment so if you’re his team that’s where the Ming vas strategy really comes into play you’re going to take a Total Safety First Ry sunak has got two jobs to do and he’s he has a hard time he’s got to try and really land a blue on starma and given that he hasn’t really done that at pmqs that is quite a high bar for him his second job he’s got to appear to those older Tory voters who are flirting with reform and he’s got to send them a message come back home to the conservative party so he’s got two messages he’s not trying to win this election at at this point that’s the only two things he’s trying to do his strategy is I’ve got to take this from being a loss of 200 to maybe a loss of sort of a 100 to 150 K starmer’s one job that he’s got to do is he has got to come out and he’s got to look like a prime minister you’re not going to trip over the stage or anything like that you are going to look like somebody who could feasibly I could see at Downing Street that’s his only job there’s also a thing Beth where you practice all the lines you practice all the questions but the more important thing is not actually the individual words that you say in the order in which you say them it’s what you convey so is it’s it’s your presence it’s how you speak it’s who you appeal to H it’s the kind of wood for the trees thing so um there’s also a question about who’s got the biggest target as well so in a head-to-head I mean Rishi sunak has got to defend a much bigger Target because he’s you know he’s one of five a series of five Tory Prime Ministers who all believe different things and have done different things he’s got to defend all of them and could be asked about any of it the target for Kure starmer is much smaller to aim at and to hit because you know basically you know what is it that you’re going to do well I’m going to do better than you because you’ve been rubbish blah blah blah so it’s much much easier I mean the way that starman’s team put it to me over the weekend because we were we were chat I was asking them about how their approaching the debate was uh that starma is going to be uh to quote someone the chief prosecutor so he’s going to prosecute 14-year record of Rishi sunak who he’s gonna kind of place in the dock uh defending it what do we think of that as an idea do we want lawyer starma up there well I think lawyer starma is who Kier starma is you know people are often like you know who is this guy well he was an absolute legal Hot Shot he was the sort of top prosecutor of the country and actually some of his most effective Prime Ministers questions which is a very good kind of prepping ground for these leaders debates have been when he has been very you know he he’s prosecuted a line of argument he’s been very forensic remember for for many people in the election who are not Geeks like us they might tune into five minutes of one of these debates he’s got to send them a message at home a positive message about why they should positively vote for him what is he going to do to fix Britain that is the other really important message that he’s got to transmit in these debates it’s not just punch rishy sunak around because that’s quite an easy job right now that is not a difficult thing to do to be absolutely fair you know you could be weak as a kitten and kind of bash richy sunak around right now he has got to send a very positive strong reassuring hopeful message to the viewers at home I think the problem is that I’m not entirely sure that the public thinks that competency or strength really is is Kure starmer’s issue I think there is an issue about appeal I think there’s an issue about likability and actually the words like ruthless and prosecutorial or or chief prosecutor they’re not really likable they’re not warm what he wants to show is you know to do the Hy changy thing and he wants to show that that a better way is possible you know that like that that’s what his job should be as he goes into this and I think given that lot a lots of people are really cynical about politics right now and they don’t kind of believe that anybody can really fix the mess that this country is in he’s also got to send a message to people that he can give them Something to Believe In because a lot of people really feel absolutely kind of hopeless at the moment about about the country and they don’t think anybody can fix it so I think these debates I think they are important I know everyone like moans and says well they’re not really that important and do they move the pools that much probably not um everybody thinks it’s going to be like a Nick C mov that happened once and we’re probably not going to have a moment like that but what they do do is they punctuate this election campaign because for a lot of people they give the election campaign some structure yes and and Ruth just to finish off on this you know I’ve been you know feeding in some of the conservatives out there that are campaigning now I was checking out with one person I said how it’s going in your your seat they said it’s it’s going okay but my sense this is a senior conservative my sense is the polls are right it looks like a very bad result indeed nationally and this person said that they didn’t have any confidence in the national campaign and this is all about to quote them squeez in reform voters now that was one of your your colleagues Ruth how how important is it for rishie to close the polls I think we want to see a bit of movement for the reason that it will put more pressure on starmer and you get to see how he performs Under Pressure because he’s not really being put under the same scrutiny and pressure that the government has and and that’s kind of fair enough because there hasn’t been up until this week any really big missteps because he’s not the Prime Minister for lots of reasons but there is a resignation about a lot of colleagues well look I should say as well that we are not having a head-to-head at news but we are planning our own leaders event in Grimsby and CLE thoughts where we’ve been regularly reporting on issues facing local residents now sir K has agreed to attend while negotiations are going on with Mr sunx team and can we also have finally a shout out to julietam who would have spent her entire weekend with two people pretending to be K stama and Rishi sua with a load of uh Stooges in the audience pretending uh to people question she’ll be timing their answers she’ll be working on the interventions uh she’s an absolute Legend the true winner of this debate I predict will be Julie e can we all agree on that absolutely 100% 100% we’re with you Julie oh [Music] 100% well ladies that was an absolute pleasure we’re going to be back on Friday uh with the first of Jess’s sub I have to say she’s got a superb black book that lady Shameless that women hobnobs uh with uh both political royalty and entertainment royalty and and basically just anybody who’s famous that’s come out of Birmingham ever what’s everyone doing for the rest of the week Aisha what are you doing well I’ve ended up being in Greece actually this week because I’m I’m um speaking at a at a big conference that’s makes me feel a bit wistful although I’m going to Greece in the summer subject to politics always having an asteris whenever I say I’m doing anything subject to job Ruth what are you doing for the rest of the week you’ll see me on Friday again equally like Aisha I’m I’ve got a very exotic uh Excursion planned in that I’m going to to Freer cdale and tweet Dale uh so yeah that’s where I’m off to this week lucky me well I don’t know what I’m doing this week it’s subject to election [Music] Ruth and I going to be back on Friday for our first Subs bench Edition we’ll see who Jess has lined up from that delicious Black Book of hers email us at electral dysfunction sky. WhatsApp me on the burner phone 07934 20004 Aisha it was great to have you for our inaugural election electoral dysfunction extra all right then bye every everyone we’ll see you next week bye bye