5.5m tuned in to watch Sunak v Starmer: The ITV Debate Leaders’ Debate from MediaCity’s dock10 and Julie Etchingham has spoken about moderating the show.
“The first few minutes are always fascinating. Those first few moments are really illustrative, because that’s the moment when the adrenaline is at its absolute max. For all of us. I’m feeling it, I’ve got quite a lot of sympathy for the candidates on that platform. Those few moments before you go on air, it’s really tense,” she said.
The major points are still headlines, not least the £2k tax claim by Rishi Sunak. Something which Labour has called a lie. The top Treasury Civil Servant said that the figure “should not be presented as having been produced by the civil service.” And BBC Verify added was “misleading”
“The brutal reality when you’re doing those debate is that you’re literally in the moment and you’re thinking where does this go next – he needs to respond to that, he’s just said this, where do we go with it, do we give this more time, do we work this later on in to the debate,” Etchingham told ITV News’ Talking Politics: The Election podcast.
“We developed a whole section in which we were going to address tax and spend quite specifically, and then suddenly you get a claim like the claim Rishi Sunak made and then you know you’ve got to reshape things.”
“You already know this is going to have a bit of life outside of the debate. But actually, when you’re in that moment you’re just thinking where we navigate it, you’re just constantly making recalibrations as it goes on.”
“There’s no two ways about it, the tension not just in the half an hour ahead of that debate but in the whole debate studio for the whole of the day before we went on air was palpable with both teams.”
Talking about the leaders themselves, Etchingham added:
“How people come out of the traps is quite fascinating. Not only that but how quickly they settle into themselves in the debate. What I find fascinating apart from the politics, is just being that close to the body language and seeing how people adapt to the space even. And I think it was pretty clear that both of them were pretty keyed up. It was quite noticeable with Keir Starmer, there was a moment when I looked over and thought I bet he stood like that at the bar – I mean as a barrister, his former life as a lawyer. There were some little moments where you got that little insight and reminder of his professional background before he came into politics.”
“Rishi Sunak had done more debates, and he was quite keen to stress that to us when we were chatting beforehand. He’d had more experience at them, so he was very sort of straight on, very focused on that camera, had decided how he was going to own that space if you like. It’s just fascinating to see how they act under pressure. It is the highest of high wire acts in politics these debates.”
Audience-wise, it was a good night for ITV, with the Debate, Love Island and the Lionesses beating France, giving it a 71% share of 16-34s across the 3 channels.
It was also the biggest Current Affairs audience on any channel since last year’s King’s Coronation, and the biggest on ITV since Oprah’s interview with Meghan and Harry in 2021.
