Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are head to head in their final leaders debate. They’re struggling to deliver their points to the audience over the noise of protesters that are currently outside the venue of Nottingham Trent University. They appear to be pro-Palestine protesters. It’s been distracting from the debate since it began, and it doesn’t appear that it will die down anytime soon…
It’s the final leaders debate tonight, hosted by the BBC in Nottingham. Mishal Husain is running affairs. The BBC says the audience members have been chosen by Savanta and they include equal numbers of Conservative and Labour voters, as well as undecided voters. No Reform voters then?
The debate can be consumed on BBC One, on radio, online and on iPlayer. CCHQ’s Twitter account has rebranded as “Tax Check UK” in a hark back to 2019’s shenanigans. YouGov will provide a snap poll afterwards. Guido brings you live text-based updates below as usual…
UPDATE: That’s proceedings over. No more Sunak vs Starmer…
UPDATE II: YouGov snap poll: 50/50 draw.
The crusade launched by BBC’s “Disinformation Correspondent” Marianna Spring to accuse Reform supporters on social media of being bots has ended up in farce. Spring got a two-minute segment on BBC News at Ten last night to talk about her week-long research project, which appears to be based on her observation that more people post messages in favour of Reform than other parties on social media. The party has just polled above the Tories…
Spring listed numerous accounts “with no profile image and numerical usernames – common hallmarks of fake accounts“. Guido had a look at the chief culprit of Spring’s incisive report – a Twitter account called “GenZbloomer”. Apart from suggesting that the account was a foreign agent, Spring failed to mention in her article that it had only 164 followers. Whether or not it is a real person, their tweets will be seen by about 14 people…
So tawdry is Spring’s evidence of a mass bot campaign in favour of Reform that she spends most of the second half of the article going through all the accounts that turned out to be real people, including those who graciously agreed to speak to her on the phone to prove their authenticity. Reform says it’s “delighted at the organic growth of online support“. Is this the best the BBC has got?
Former leader of the SNP in Westminster Ian Blackford told Times Radio why he believes Nicola Sturgeon’s claim that she spent no time in the kitchen and therefore didn’t see any of her husband’s purchases:
“She doesn’t have a passion for cooking.”