Cut and thrust

I confess to having caught the last five minutes of the leaders’ ‘debate’ on ITV last night. It was quite sufficient to give me a flavour, and it seemed Corbyn did well. Johnson was himself, which is to say full of bluff, etc. Of some interest to me was how Laura Kuenssberg would tell us what had happened on the BBC Ten O’clock News. As ever  she  framed her answer to Huw Edward’s simple question ’who won’ in the circumlocutions of her usual uninformative babble which passes for intelligible commentary,  and of course didn’t answer the question. That would suggest it was an even result, and such a view does no harm to the incumbent when the pressure is on the challenger. I looked on the news feeds on the Microsoft News page and lo and behold a miracle! The immediate judgement of the people, as revealed on ‘Wales Online’ had  53% of people thinking Corbyn was the winner and 38% thinking Johnson won. That’s quite a margin. And only the other day we were being told that the Tories were riding high in Wales. Well, well. Back to you Laura.
 
Update: according to Skwawkbox, ITV ran a poll garnering 30,000 responses immediately after the show and that suggested 78% thought Corbyn had won. Of course, these people must all have been Labour Party members, so it won’t be reported anywhere else, unlike a YouGov poll which apparently showed Johnson marginally ahead, but it seems was timed before the debate had even started. Weird innit? Some mainstream pundits seem to think Johnson looked more prime ministerial, but have gone along with the line that the debate was a draw. In my book that makes Corbyn look just as prime ministerial as Johnson—but such an obvious conclusion seems to have evaded the likes of e.g. Jonathan Freedland in this morning’s Guardian.