Tired party leaders were no match for furious audience

No tittering at the back, but Rishi Sunak is angry. Not just cross, but “incredibly angry”.

- JOE MURPHY

He has finally discovered why half his team kept nipping out of meetings clutching their phones every time he changed his mind about the election date – which happened an awful lot.

Turns out they were putting bets on at William Hill, which is probably an exceedingly expensive hobby under a leader as prone to U-turns as Sunak.

“Like you,” Rishi assured the BBC’s Question Time audience, “I’m incredibly angry. Incredibly angry! To learn of these allegations.”

Except that Incredibly Angry Rishi looked and sounded exactly the same as Snippy Rishi, who seems to pop up every time there’s an awkward question at a leader’s debate. Maybe a tad irritable, somewhat peevish perhaps.

But if you wanted proper anger, the studio audience was full of it. The betting scandal was the “epitome of the ethics of the Conservative Party”, bellowed a properly furious questioner called Graham.

Nobody seemed very impressed with Rishi’s purported show of rage. After blustering about why he had not suspended any of the candidates accused of wrongdoing, he unleashed what must have been his killer soundbite: “If anyone is found to have broken the rules … I will make sure that they are booted out of the Conservative Party.” Silence followed. Not a single person clapped.

It was like that for most of Sunak’s half hour. “We are something of an international laughing stock,” observed Kevin, recalling the records of five Tory prime ministers. Judge me on my 18 months in office, pleaded Sunak.

How would he rebuild trust with young people, asked a woman? Sunak waffled about his grandparents coming to the UK with nothing, and how it was his dearest wish to make the same difference for others that they had made for him. The camera pointed back at the woman, who was laughing.