we should just explain what the actual format was. so this was known as the seven way? yes. so this was a big important debate in the general election. it was the first one of its kind where notjust the tories and the labour party were represented. so the labour party and the conservatives sent along two of their prominent politicians, but not the leaders. the other parties then had either their westminster leader, like stephen flynn for the scottish national party or their deputy leader, daisy cooper, prominent. but then we had the leader of plaid cymru, we had nigel farage, who of course recently has now miraculously become the leader of reform after a very short and intensely democratic process — not. and then also we had carla denyer, who's the co—leader of the greens, and she's standing for a seat in bristol. and have i got to seven already oram i mis...

no, that was up to seven. i think that was seven. it might be my souvlaki talking, but yes. so it's a big debate with all of the parties who are fielding candidates in the election being represented. and as a result of that, what you have is of course, the sort of battle royale going on between labour and the tories, but you have an opportunity to hear from a much broader rainbow of political opinion. yeah, it means on the one hand it's less focused than when it was starmer versus sunak on tuesday, and it'sjust two people going head to head on a range of issues. it becomes a bit more sprawling, but equally it feels more like britain because you're hearing about wales and hearing about scotland. sure. and it's a reflection also of the fact that there are lots of different kinds of political races in lots of different kinds of constituencies. there are races that are between the snp and the tories in some parts of more rural scotland they tend to be. there are of course that are places that are races between the lib—dems and tories in lots of parts of the southwest and the affluent commuter belt around london. so it gives us that reminder that these important conversations are going on, that in a first past the post country, like it or not, of course the most intense competition is between labour and the tories

and there's good reason for that. but there is a myriad of other types of contests out there too. and because labour and the conservatives are the two parties there who are trying to appeal to the biggest group of people, their message perhaps seems the least distinctive because the other parties are speaking to particular groups of voters in parts of the country, so they can be a little bit more precise. and also, they've got an incentive to criticise the two big parties saying, oh, you're both kind of the same. yeah, and they all do. right? and what was one of the interesting things and i'm sure we'll get into this, one of the interesting things tonight is that all of the smaller parties are basically behaving as if a labour victory is inevitable, and particularly for the snp, that they are almost marketing themselves as vote for us because we will keep labour honest. the green party is also doing that now. of course the election result is not decided. voters are volatile, the polls are very

heavily pointing one way. but it's interesting to see the smaller parties all sort of say, hey, we're the brake on those guys. and the greens and the snp are sort of marketing themselves, almost like being labour's conscience, if you like. and the massive, immense news story that's been happening in the general election campaign outside this building is rishi sunak�*s decision turns out to be pretty, pretty bad decision for him to come back from d—day early to do a tv interview. and he's been criticised by pretty much everyone, although he did do a big apology, which is kind of a rare thing at this point in an election campaign. you could not make this up. so the tory election campaign so far has been trying to appeal to a particular group of voters, to try to appeal to their sense of patriotism. they got out of the gates at the beginning of the election campaign with their catchiest policy, which was promising compulsory national service or voluntary service for 18—year—olds. and yet rishi sunak, who had the opportunity of a couple of days of beautiful, choreographed, looking like a statesman on the world stage, managed somehow

to leave that early to miss these photo opportunities in order to come back to london and to get on with other business which included a tv interview. you could not make up how bad a political story this has been, how bad a political mistake it has been for rishi sunak. and i mean, we could do a whole episode on that, but i think we have to get on with the debate. but not surprisingly, it's such a big story. at the beginning of the debate, it wasn't very long before this came up. yeah. and so the first question, because the questions all came from the audience was a bigger, broader question about defense. but of course, everyone took that as their opportunity to have a go at rishi sunak, including, as you will hear, even the person who is representing the conservatives. penny mordaunt. but the first person to have a bite of the cherry on that was reform uk leader nigel farage. the veteran's points being made already respect our veterans, the veteran's points been made already respect our veterans, including those with the average age of 100 who were deserted by the prime minister in normandy yesterday, which i think was a complete and utter disgrace and shows us we actually

have a very unpatriotic prime minister. it was dreadful. and then we heard from penny mordaunt. so she's leader of the house of commons. that's her kind of cabinet dayjob and she was representing the tories today on the stage and this is what she said. what happened was completely wrong . and the prime minister has rightly. apologised for that, i apologise to veterans, but also to all of us - because he was representing all of us. i'm from portsmouth, i've also been defence secretary and my wish - at the end of this week. is that all of our veterans feel completely treasured. just before we go on to hear what the others have to say, i just want to spell out in giant big letters. that's what i was going to ask you to do. great minds or minds that agree. for a serving cabinet minister to be standing on the most public of stages, saying that the prime minister, who's her boss,

who's trying to win an election, is completely wrong is completely incredible, right? because there was a softer way she could have done that. of course, there are all sorts of ways, she could have done what david cameron did, say it's a tribute to his honesty that he's acknowledged it was a bit of a mishap or a bad judgment or something like that. or she could have listed 12 things the government's done to help veterans. she could have said, look, he's apologised and what i'd like to do is emphasise the record. and she didn'tjust say it once. i think she said it three and maybe four times. this is extraordinary for the tories to have got themselves into this situation where somebody prominent is being put forward by the party and has used that platform to criticise the prime minister so plainly. he apologised himself, which again in the context of an election campaign is something extremely unusual. i think he didn't have a choice because it was such an incredible misstep. i mean, somebody in the tory ranks

said to me today it is evidence that this is and i quote, "the worst political operation of modern times." i'm sure rishi sunak�*s team would have a few words to say about that. but today, aside from this debate today for the tories has been absolutely appalling. and of course that coloured the tone of the whole debate and they did get on to other subjects. but i think that most of the news bulletins and most of the papers and most of the news websites and stuff in the morning will still be leading on this d—day snafu and penny mordaunt comments. she's no big fan of rishi sunak, really, she's not... she tried to get thejob ahead of him. she still is understood to have leadership aspirations. and this in and of itself is something that is absolutely extraordinary that it happened. and i think the telegraph front page describes it as withering. and so when the telegraph, who are meant to be the tories, best friends in the media, say withering about a conservative, talking about the prime minister, you know, it's withering. then it was the turn of daisy cooper, as laura was saying, she's deputy leader of the liberal democrats. and she was talking about her grandfather who served

in the second world war. and she quoted from his diary. he recounted, in his words, men blown to pieces, hands, legs and heads. if he had been there yesterday i seen the prime minister walk away from him. i would have found that completely as i do now, find it completely and utterly unforgivable. now, that was interesting because the thing about the lib dems in this campaign is that in the olden days the lib dems would try to appeal to labour voters and tory voters equally. but this time round the liberal democrats are focused very much on the south of the country and trying to steal seats from the tories. now i'm not suggesting that any point in their history the lib dems would have been unpatriotic and would have criticised d—day vetera ns. that was never going to happen. i thought it was interesting daisy cooper just sort of was really embracing the armed forces there because there would be a wing of the liberal democrats

in the past that would have found that a little bit uncomfortable. not because they were unpatriotic, but just because they wouldn't want to be quite so kind of flag waving for the military, maybe. well, it's not always been a kind of easy fit, except that i think what you talk to as actually is a place that the lib dems used to be into, where they used to kind of face both ways, right? i mean, don't forget paddy ashdown, who was one of their most popular leaders ever. he was a military man, right? he was, ithink, a marine or something, you know. and so i think they've often tried to face face both ways. and so i think they've often tried to face both ways. you're absolutely right, at this time they are given where the opinion polls are, it's not surprising. they think that their opportunities are to take seats from the tories and they're not really trying to fight in all sorts of different areas in the way that they have done in the past. but i think actually what we heard there yesterday reminds us why this story is such a problem for the tories, because there will be thousands of families around the country who feel what happened very personally, who feel that this was completely unacceptable, who saw the pictures of those incredible old men and women yesterday and have the memories of their own family

and people who gave their own lives of their own sacrifices. and think, "what, you walked away from that? now, maybe there were logistical, important reasons for rishi sunak to make the decision in the way that he did. who knows why the original decision was taken? but i mean, this was a decision taken before there was even an election come back to do an interview for. correct. but it's been interesting today a couple of and this sort of whispers around you know somebody said to me, look, if the civil service warned him not to do it, somebody else said to me it was definitely his decision rather than other people's decision taken some time ago. we don't exactly know what the motivation was, but i think daisy cooper, as you say, you know, the lib dems, you wouldn't normally expect them to be sort of, you know, rah, rah, hooray, we're all about the military. but you could tell from how she was sort of capturing, i think, a genuine sort of sense of disbelief that, you know, probably lots of newscasters listening tonight might have felt. let's continue with our chewing over of the debate. another little indigestion reference. you're really having problems? i need to go and get you some rennet? no, it's fine.

it's fine afterwards. so the other kind of other big subplot of this, though, was the two women who are stood.... i always get this the wrong way around. were they staged, right? angela rayner. yes. so as you look at it, they were on the right. yes. yeah. and actually there was, there was several moments in the debate where actually it did feel like sunak versus starmer, it did feel like there was only two people on that stage. and one of those moments was this epic ding dong they had about tax. and here isjust a small sliver of it. why would you stand by your record? record levels of taxes on working people, 26 times in the last parliament, in the last parliament. ...about 12 new taxes. absolutely rubbish. we've absolutely guaranteed we will not raise taxes for working people. how are you going to close that gap? crosstalk and there was a real burn from carla denyer a bit later and she said, "oh, well, that was dignified, wasn't it?"

but i think actually for some people watching, they'll have felt that the penny v ange moments were actually when it kind of came alive. yes. and they are both good communicators. they're both good communicators. they're both incredibly polished. 0h, they both have a look. have a look. and i don't mean that in a superficial way. but yeah, they both are strong personalities and, you know, they both, you know, know how to try and go for an audience. and i think, you know, ithink there might have been some people watching going, well, actually the two women going at it was a bit more interesting than the two men going at it on tuesday night. and maybe for some, maybe that's a glimpse of a future contest perhaps. and it was one of the sort of digs actually the penny mordaunt was trying to make at angela rayner is saying, oh she might be prime minister one day. 0h which some people might have thought oh my god. and some people might have thought, oh hooray. we know that angela rayner and penny mordaunt are both that unusual thing. they are both people who are not political party leaders, but they cut through. people have heard of them, focus groups, people raise them

unprompted, people have heard of. unprompted, people have heard of angela rayner people have heard of penny mordaunt, which explains why the party's put them up tonight. but in their clashes there was real kind of energy and real fire. penny mordaunt getting quite shouty. keeping repeating the tories like slightly dodgy £2,000 tax line on labour. yeah. that's not gone away, has it? despite all the slaps on the wrist, the fact. of course it's not going to go away. you know, the point we talked about is in the day when political parties do these things, they do it because they want to create the conversation. they don't go, oh, well, we've had a slap on the wrist. we better not say it again. it doesn't work like that. and you know, i'm not surprised that she raised it again tonight. quite right that michelle hussein, who played a blinder, i think calmly controlling seven of them, is quite something pointed out, quite rightly, that official bodies and the top that official bodies in the top treasury civil servant have said you're using that gear inappropriately. you know, you're not being clear about it. but of course, the tories are going to keep on using it. of course they are. just to update you, a source close to this podcast who has knowledge of production says actually

they were stage left, because it's how they are. it's where they are on the facing. camera, right! yeah, we're in it. we're not theatre people. we're television people. broadcasters! telly people. talking about appearances, though, to very superficial questions for me about penny mordant. yeah. i'm not an expert on this. her hair. yeah. how do you get hair that voluminous? just an amazing blow dry. is thatjust a really big blow drying? okay. but it's flippant to talk about women's hair. but it's not going to talk about other people's look. no, because it was it's part of penny mordaunt shtick. yes, it is. and it's a bit thatcherite. well she'sjust got big fabulous, big fabulous hair in the way that also angela rayner has you know has incredible hair and they were both, i think they're both, oh they're very conscious as a lot of politicians are. i think that they are both conscious of their kind of look.

good politicians do think about how they look and how they come across. and that might make it shallow. but you know... no, but not nigel farage, his version of a blow dry as a pint like. an optics matter in politics. so, you know, newscasters, i hope nobody�*s offended for us talking about people's looks. but it is of course, it's important, you know, and the. keir starmer i'm going to take my jacket off and do this speech without a jacket and a tie or rishi sunak i'm going to do this clip in my little cashmere woollen half zip number over a work shirt, which i have now. can you explain that to me? i don't go for that. look, there's quite a lot of, you know, blokes do go for that and i don't get it. but i, i had i digress. no, but i went into it. i was in the city of london for lunch the other day there. no, not with like a city type.

itjust happened to be where lunch was and the number of people wearing glasses. i thought it was a myth that all the city boys wear like a white shirt energy like role wearing black shoelace. what i was going to say about about appearance? 0h, body language. yes. keir starmer at the pm debate on tuesday. i thought the bit where he seemed most like where he most seemed like the keir starmer you see in the old days when you could bump into him coming out of pratt was the bit where he you know remember it's like when before he was like he was the leader. yeah and you have like a person to person rather than like i put it to you. and it was the bit where he leaned over the lectern to talk about football and he just seems like that seem like you're your mates mate who knows loads of football. he does that lean on. he does a bit and he does that lean and then you know they all have their sort of tics and things and i really like watching for that because they also all have them during interviews. right. i'm not going to divulge those because i don't want to say any of the. yeah, the tells. but is it really handy when you're in casino royale? the other superficial thing about penny morgan, did you notice

how american she was? well, well, yeah. she sounded a bit she sounded like she i mean, it's just these are big events for politicians that they all practise for them. and it's perfectly possible that some of them will also have had some kind of, you know, speech training. i don't necessarily mean specifically for tonight, but they're there, isn't. it's hard, right? it's hard. let's go back to policy. yeah. i talk about as if you were the one talking about superficial stuff and i had to bring it back to the straight and narrow. you raised a blow dry. immigration. so one of the things about when you've got the the more progressive parties, the more left wing parties like the greens, the snp, plaid cymru, come right and they would unashamedly say they are. yeah, it means that when it comes to immigration, rather than the talk being about numbers being too high or which lever can we pull to get more control, or which category of visa do you crack down on? you actually get some quite passionate defences of why the country might need immigrants and we got that from redknapp. the country might need immigrants and we got that

from rhun ap iorwerth. yours, replied carla denyer for the greens and stephen flynn from the snp. we need to stop the vile and expensive rwanda flights. we need safe passage into this country and we need to realise that we need immigration for the interests of our. health system, our care system and our economy. whether they're coming here, fleeing violence and persecution as asylum . seekers, or whether they're coming here to work in many of our- understaffed sectors like health and social care, if you meet- a migrant in the nhs, _ they're more likely to be treating you as i was the last time i saw a gp than that, - than being ahead i of you in the queue. there's also a conspiracy of silence on one other issue, and that's brexit, because brexit has impacted the economy more than the covid pandemic. it has put your food bills up completely unnecessarily, it has been an unmitigated disaster for the economy, and... it's really interesting to hear them all together like that because we were talking about at the beginning, obviously the uk national debate is dominated by labour and the tories and they are both right now in this era in a position of saying

migration is too high. here are our various ways in which we want to get it down, although neither of them would give us give numbers on that at the moment. there was, of course, though, nigel farage on the end saying that the two main parties have completely fudged this, that migration is far too high, that things have got kind of completely out of control as he would have it. but it was really interesting to hear that dynamic from the smaller progressive parties, as they would call call themselves, even in response to a question from the audience, from a young guy called lorenzo, who said in his part of the world in essex, actually, he's like he said, the roads are to congested. there are real problems with everything. and his belief is that immigration is part of the problem, just in sheer scale of numbers. so it was a really interesting moment in the debate. also a reminder that in different parts of the country, there are different requirements in terms of the population. so if you spend a lot of time in the conurbation of the south east, you might feel a certain way about the population of the country. if you spend different time in, you know, in the north of scotland

or in rural wales or, you know, you might feel very differently. i think there also there's always a risk in characterising public sentiment in those other parts of the country as being completely represented by those parties that come from one side of the spectrum or another. you know, in the same way that you wouldn't say that the conservatives represent everybody in the south of england. that's clearly not true. you wouldn't also say that plaid cymru represents everybody�*s point of view in wales or the snp represents everybody�*s point of view on immigration in scotland. so but it was it was an interesting moment nonetheless and just a different texture, right? instead of two parties competing on quite narrow turf, actually a much broader spectrum. and talking about broader spectrum, it's interesting to see nigel farage talking about lots of different things. now, if you've watched nigel farage in detail that we have over the years, you've heard him talk about tax and you've heard him say the nhs is a terrible system and actually france does it much better with insurance. you've heard him talking about the public finances, but usually his big applause lines and these things that he gets

lots of attention for are brexit and immigration. actually, when you get nigel farage sort of slightly diluted a bit because he's having to talk about lots of things. i wonder if maybe he just seems less... don't quite know what the word i think for fire tonight. yeah. so there have been lots of occasions where actually he can sort of grab the conch in a big debate or on question time or something. right? we need more comch. we should have a constant newscast. we might bring one, actually. we should introduce a video for tomorrow morning live at 1030 barry radio for reference. yes, we have a conjecture. we could we could debate the conch and the literary history, of course. he can be and has been

on lots of occasions very good at grabbing the conch grabbing and then hogging the limelight in the make up where tonight's debate and where there are other very strong debaters. he didn't dominate. i think one of the things where he really stood out, though, was what he said about shoplifting. and i wonder if there'll be a lot of pick up on that. so he basically said to answer in the answer to the question about knife crime, that basically anyone can go shoplifting now unless you make more than 200 quid, you don't get nicked, you don't get lifted. and you could just that he sort of went into... nigel farage full on farage mode. he was trying to sort of appeal to the audience. and you didn't get the sense that in that room, which of course was selected by pollsters very carefully and all the rest, you didn't get the sense in that room that he was really, you know, racking up the support. but then people watching at home as well might have had a very different view. but he didn't seem to be on his kind of, it wasn't farage in full flight, i didn't think tonight. and we should say there's a lot more of these big set piece opportunities coming up. so i mentioned the sky debate,

which would be a one on one between the potential pms. that's next wednesday. then from monday, nick robinson's panorama in—depth half hour interviews get started with everyone, though i notice keir starmer hasn't signed up to do one yet. yes, and maybe they still should theoretically be having them on the sunday. so there is a lot of content to come. and also what happens through a campaign also is that the politicians tend to get sort of, better at it. but also there's a big risk that their lines sort have become more hackneyed. but don't remember, i knew newscasters are all, you know, assiduous consumers of current affairs. and if you knew, then welcome along. you will soon become an assiduous consumer of current affairs. but there's tonnes and tonnes and tons of people for whom the election, quite understandably, is still sort of background noise. you know, we've still got four weeks to go, folks, and things could change in lots of people still will only be hearing really the very, very broad, broad, broad soundtrack of this and won't necessarily have tuned into it very much.

i'm just thinking of other milestones that have happened today. labours clause five meeting reallyjargony. but it's an important bit because the labour party is their very process compared to other parties. and one of the big parts of the process is this meeting which is called clause five, because of the bit of the labour party constitution that says you've got to do this, which is where all the bigwigs from the unions, different interest groups of labor, come together to basically sign off the manifesto, which they did today. they did apart from unite the union, which gave them three million quid last time round. but they are unhappy about some of the particular commitments or lack of commitments that they see when it comes to fire and rehire, which is one of the things meant to get rid of the practice that companies like ba did were they sacked a lot of staff and then took them back on and less good terms and conditions and unite believes that the labor plan for that isn't watertight and they're unhappy about the policy about oil and gas. but yeah, broadly speaking, labor got it signed off today. they are sort of happy and i will see the manifestos tory�*s on tuesday, labour i think on thursday.

but i think it's really interesting because the tories now, you would imagine and it's been suggested to me, although i don't have 100% and who knows when we'll see it in black and white. but you have that sense where they are still trying to rack up policy, they're still trying to go, let's do this and let's do this, let's do this. i think tomorrow they're going to announce that they are going to scrap stamp duty for up to over £400,000. yes, i think. but labour, it's very tightly controlled. i think it's going to be quite a skinny document. it's going to say we're going to reform public services. it's not about having a bigger pie to spend loads more money. somebody in labour said to me today, it's not going to be about cutting up the pie like a traditional labour manifesto because the tories have eaten the pie and burned down the kitchen or something like that of all kinds. and we've all got indigestion. 0h, we've got... and you've still got indigestion. so the manifestos are another big milestone that is going to be next week. yeah. and another milestone for us, which i've already alluded to is newscast going live on radio

four on saturday morning at 1030. so tune in for our inaugural appearance on the wireless. we could have been on the wireless a few times. but in this form. 0h, isee. well, you used to do the radio as well anyway, and then it would be at 11am on saturday mornings for the rest of the campaign. my favourite thing about the debate tonight was sitting in this studio, which kind of looks like a living room watching tv for an hour and a half with you. you were on your laptop taking notes, and i'm now going to picture you. like every time you sit and watch a film, you've got your laptop out. you're like, oh, great line from meryl streep there. just write that down. is that how you watch films? always, always, always. i mean, don't you? isn't that normal behaviour? well, it's sort of barry norman of 202a. yes. amazing entrance camera. love the way that meryl came in from stage left, right. you can tell it's getting very late. we've watched far too much television. laura, good to catch up with you. lots of other election coverage

coming your way, notjust newscast on radio four, but newscast every day. and you can watch us on bbc iplayer at various points as well.

live from washington. this is bbc news. the united nations adds israel's military to a list of entities committing violations against children — a day after a deadly strike on a school in a refugee camp. president biden publicly apologises to president zelensky, for a months—long delay in military aid to ukraine. and as the us economy adds more jobs than expected, fresh questions about when interest rates will be cut — and what it could mean in an election year.

hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. israel says its military has been added to a un list of entities committing violations against children. the country's un envoy said he'd been officially notified of the decision, describing it as shameful. the list is included in a report due to be submitted to the security council next week. it's also reported to include hamas and palestinian islamichhad. the israeli prime minister, benjamin netanyahu called the decision "delusional." violations listed include attacks on schools and hospitals as well as the denial of aid. in gaza, the nuseirat refugee camp has again been attacked by israeli forces, after a strike on a un school there in which a number of children were reportedly killed. hugo bachega has more, from jerusalem. this list covers the killing of children in conflict and doubt there is the accessing of aids in targeting of schools and

hospitals. it is still