Rishi Sunak’s team made a plan. It went like this: no more Mr Nice Guy! No more smooth and slick, everyone hates that. Bare your fucking teeth and go totally pit-bull out there! He was pulling at his lead before Sophie Raworth said ‘good evening’.

Liz Truss opted for a calmer, more measured, more ‘zen’ kind of approach, pop a couple of Valium before it goes live and lose the wooden attitude. Limber up. And limber she was. Or did. Whatever.

Both debaters received instructions from the Conservative party beforehand. Advising them to ‘repair’ recent damage to the party. Don’t descend into slagging each other off, don’t pick, don’t fight, don’t shout, don’t swear, no knives or knuckle-dusters. Present Conservatives as good, decent people. Always a difficult ask.

Which in fact proved impossible as the debate started. Rishi interrupted, intervened, over-shouted, blabbered on, attacked every word, left Liz no time to speak and basically bullied his way through. Because someone told him beforehand that he’s too smooth and needs to appear more ‘forceful’ or ‘dominant’, to try and overcome the overall impression of weedy, geeky, nerdy, rather creepy little man. So he became the class bully. He was, in fact, I thought, rather rude. You can disagree with an opponent’s view, but let her finish the sentence, FFS.

So there was Rishi, red in face and foam on his lips, emitting spittle with every shout, scream and cry, and there was Liz, cool as ya like, replying calmly and evenly, with a half-smile, holding an umbrella for the spray.

There were policies spoken about too, apparently. Tax and stuff. But quite frankly I was more concerned with their manner, their attitudes, their deportment.

Did either of them epitomise ‘prime minister’? I’m not sure. All I know is, after last night, I like her much more than I did previously and I don’t like him, much more than I didn’t like him previously.

And round 2 is tonight. I think I’ll take a walk/clean the car/water the garden/do a jigsaw puzzle.

Happy Tuesday

A xxxx