Yowls, screeches, dramatic thumping sounds. It sounds like the England soccer team formulating tactics for their next Euro 2024 match. In fact, it is the unofficial soundtrack to the final British general election debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer , in advance of the vote on Thursday, July 4th (BBC One, 8.
15pm) Election debates are associated in the common imagination with the razzmatazz of the race for the White House – or, in the Irish context, the eternal silence that descended when Leo Varadkar was asked in 2020 if he’d ever smoked cannabis. This UK back-and-forth falls somewhere between American glamour and Irish waffle – and initially, there is a real possibility of it being derailed by pro-Palestine protesters chanting outside the venue at Nottingham Trent University. Chanting isn’t quite the word.
The sounds that reach the chamber are closer to a weird Lovecraftian parping. It’s impossible to determine what the demonstrators are on about, but the aggressive burbling is off putting and might give you a migraine – though mediator Mishal Husain correctly points out that the right to stage a protest is “part of democracy”. What is also part of democracy is two politicians droning on as if their lives depended on it (their careers certainly do).
Neither Sunak nor Starmer are electrifying speakers, and the face-off lacks the Hollywood punch of the US presidential debate – Donald Trump and Joe Biden square off once again on Thursday. One distracti.
