Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn face election debate fallout

Our live coverage has ended. We will be back with more on Thursday.

In the meantime, read the full story here.

Tim Sainsbury – a former long-time Conservative lawmaker who was a trade minister under Margaret Thatcher – has endorsed the Liberal Democrats in the upcoming elections.

Writing in The Times, Sainsbury said he would vote for the Lib Dems because “the prospect of a no deal or a hard Brexit risks turning an economic setback into an economic disaster.”

The opinion piece penned by Sainsbury – a member of the family that founded the eponymous UK supermarket giant – comes just two days after several British newspapers reported he had made a major donation to the Liberal Democrats.

British media, including the BBC, the PA news agency and the Guardian, have combed through the official candidate lists, and the data shows that a record number of women are standing as candidates in the upcoming UK general election.

But male candidates outnumber women 3:1, and a significant number of female MPs have quit politics ahead of the election.

50:50 Parliament, an organization that campaigns for Parliament equality, said there are still not enough women candidates and urged more women to stand in the future. It said:

These days, everyone is concerned about foreign actors spreading disinformation in the run-up to elections. Until now, in the United Kingdom at least, we’ve not had to worry about the governing party indulging in the same practice.

But that’s where we are.

The Twitter account of the Conservative Party's press office as it looked during the debate.

During Tuesday night’s debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn, the official Twitter account that represents the press department of Johnson’s Conservative Party changed its name from CCHQPress (CCHQ is for Conservative Campaign Headquarters) to “factcheckUK.” The account’s bio stated that it would be “Fact checking Labour from CCHQ.”

Read the full analysis here.

The election campaign is underway, which means it’s time for photo ops at schools.

Liberal Democrats leader Jo Swinson launched her party’s manifesto on Wednesday. But just before that, she made a quick stop in a school in Cambridge.

The leader of Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson visits a school in Cambridge.

The Lib Dems have made major education funding promises in this campaign. The fresh photos of smiling Swinson surrounded by kids in school uniforms will have been intended to drive that point home.

But Swinson is definitely not the only one heading back to school during this campaign. School visits are a long-established staple.

Here is Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pictured at the Scrap Creative Reuse Arts Project in Leeds earlier this month:

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn playing with children in Leeds.

And this is Boris Johnson visiting a primary school in Taunton last week:

Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson entertains children in West Monkton.

The Liberal Democrats are going big on green policies in their election manifesto, hoping to tap into younger voters for whom climate is one of the top priorities.

The party has formed a pro-Remain electoral coalition with the Green Party and Wales’ Plaid Cymru, meaning the three will not run against each other in a number of key constituencies. That makes the Lib Dems’ focus on climate even more important, because the party will need to appeal to voters who would otherwise vote for the Greens.

One idea the party floated on Wednesday is a new tax on flying. They didn’t go into much detail, but said the tax would not apply to people who only take one or two flights a year.

They promise to:

The party also said it would place a moratorium on the development of new runways in the UK and oppose any expansion of London’s three biggest airports. They also called for an overhaul of the rules that govern plane fuels, and suggested that airlines should be required to use lower-carbon blended fuels for domestic flights.

The Liberal Democrats are hoping to appeal to voters who are concerned about climate change.

The Liberal Democrats have made a bold claim on Wednesday, saying that staying in the European Union would save the UK £50 billion ($64.5 billion).

The party said it would invest this “Remain Bonus” in public services and programs aimed at tackling inequality.

How reasonable is this promise?

Most economists, including those at the highly respected Institute of Fiscal Studies, the Bank of England and the UK Treasury, agree that the UK economy would grow faster in the event of no Brexit compared to a situation where the country leaves the EU with a deal. A no-deal Brexit – in which Britain crashes out of the EU without an agreement on future relations – would likely push the economy into a recession.

However, putting a precise number on the extra growth is tricky – the economy is a complex beast shaped by a whole array of events, many of which are completely outside the government’s control.

The Lib Dems are basing their claim on the assumption that the economy would be 2% larger by 2025.

FullFact, a UK independent factchecking charity, said the claim was “a reasonable estimate but highly uncertain.” The charity said:

The Liberal Democrats officially launched their election manifesto today.

The party is hoping to flip seats from both the Conservative and Labour parties. They are focusing on two groups: Conservative voters who do not agree with Brexit, and Labour voters who think Jeremy Corbyn’s policies are too leftist.

While Lib Dems’ key message is about stopping Brexit, Wednesday is about showing voters they are not a single-issue party.

Here’s what they are promising:

The Liberal Democrats have launched their election manifesto on Wednesday.

The Conservative Party is facing a barrage of criticism after rebranding its verified Twitter account as “factcheckUK” during the debate last night.

The party has already been reprimanded by Twitter and the incident prompted the election regulator to call for campaign transparency.

Twitter users are also out in force, criticizing the Tories and poking fun at the stunt. #factcheckUK is trending on Twitter in the UK.

One user has asked the Conservative Party to fact check the debunked claim made repeatedly by Boris Johnson that the UK pays the EU £350 million a week.

Another hypothesized that the incident was a result of a typo.

Last night’s ITV debate left out the leaders of all but the two biggest political parties – a move that the smaller parties criticized and tried (but failed) to overturn in a court.

Jo Swinson, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, said “the voice of Remain was shut out” of the debate.” “You heard nothing new from two backwards-looking parties, both of whom want to deliver Brexit,” she added.

The SNP said that while the party was not included in the debate, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn “couldn’t stop talking about us.”

The party said the two leaders mentioned SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon 10 times, the SNP itself 7 times and the Scottish independence referendum 12 times.

Sian Berry, the co-leader of the Green Party, said the debate showed “how unhealthy it is to have just two parties.”

And Nigel Farage, who leads the Brexit Party, has criticized both Corbyn and Johnson.

“If the Union is so important to Boris, why did he put a border down the Irish Sea?” Farage tweeted in reference to Johnson’s Brexit deal. He later denounced Corbyn for not saying whether he would support Leave or Remain in a second Brexit referendum.

One of the biggest problems of Boris Johnson’s premiership so far has been his inability to get all of his own MPs on board.

He suffered a bruising defeat in Parliament after 21 Conservative Party rebels voted against the government in an attempt to block a no-deal Brexit.

Johnson has made his frustration with the rebels known, sacking them from the party. Others have resigned or defected to other parties.

On Wednesday, Johnson said there were no more Brexit rebels on the Conservative Party’s roster.

“All Conservative candidates standing at this election have pledged that, if elected, they will vote in Parliament to pass the Brexit deal,” Johnson tweeted.

Broadcaster ITV said its Tuesday election debate was watched on average by 6.7 million people throughout the program.

At its peak, 7.3 million people tuned in to watch the debate, the spokesperson added.

For comparison, 24.3 million people tuned in to watch England lose the soccer World Cup semi-final to Croatia in 2018, according to ITV’s data.

The UK’s most watched program of 2017 was Blue Planet II, with more than 14 million viewers.

It seems British TV audiences prefer soccer and the calming voice of David Attenborough to politics.

The debate proved less popular than football.

The UK Electoral Commission, the independent body which oversees elections and regulates political finance in the UK, has issued a statement in the wake of the Conservatives’ Twitter rebranding, calling for campaign “transparency.”

A spokesperson for the commission said:

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab defended the decision by Conservative Party Press Office to rebrand itself as “factcheckUK” during last night’s leaders’ debate, rejecting criticism that the move was designed to mislead voters.

“No one who looked at it for more than a split second would have been fooled,” Raab told the BBC on Wednesday morning. He said the Conservative Party “needs “to test some of the nonsense Labour” is saying.

“No one gives a toss about the social media cut and thrust, they care about the substance of the issues,” he added.

Wednesday’s editions of most British newspapers are leading with analysis of the leaders’ debate.

The agreement mostly ends there though. The verdict on who emerged as the winner from the battle appears simply dictated by each paper’s editorial stance.

The Daily Mirror, a left-leaning tabloid, says Boris Johnson was “a laughing stock” in the first televised debate, referring to the audience’s laughter after the Prime Minister said the truth matters. The paper comes down firmly on the side of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, giving him a 7/10 rating and Johnson only 4/10.

Conversely, the Daily Mail’s front page describes Corbyn’s performance as “laughable,” judging him to have “floundered” nine times on whether he wants the UK to remain in the European Union.

The Guardian leads with the positions the party leaders wanted to stake out: Johnson was all Brexit, while Corbyn largely focused on the National Health Service, the NHS.

The Financial Times believes Johnson “survived” the “high-stakes televised duel”, commenting that Corbyn did not get the “breakthrough” he wanted.

If last night’s ITV debate it was supposed to answer questions about where this unpredictable election campaign is going to end up, it didn’t.

For Boris Johnson, the aim was simple: drive home his campaign slogan of “Get Brexit Done” and show the nation that his Conservative Party will finally end three years of uncertainty.

For Corbyn, the job was more complicated. His Labour Party’s formal Brexit policy is to negotiate a new deal with the EU, and then put that to the public in a second referendum – Corbyn’s deal or Remain. Corbyn has said that he would be neutral in the campaign.

Read the full analysis here.

The Conservative Party is facing criticism for rebranding its press office’s Twitter account as “factcheckUK” for the duration of last night’s leaders’ debate.

Though the Twitter handle remained @CCHQPress, the name and images on the page were switched to a purple background with a checkmark symbol.

The account then issued “fact checks” of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s statements during the debate.

Full Fact, an actual factchecking organization, condemned the move as “inappropriate and misleading.”

A Twitter spokesperson warned that “any further attempts to mislead people by editing verified profile information – in a manner seen during the UK Election Debate – will result in decisive corrective action.”

The Conservative party has been accused of using misleading content before.

Earlier in November, it posted an edited clip of an interview from the television show Good Morning Britain, that appeared to show Labour’s Brexit spokesperson Keir Starmer faltering for words and unable to answer a question from the show’s host Piers Morgan.

In reality, Starmer answered the question immediately in the live interview. The Conservative Party did not respond to CNN’s request for an explanation.

It featured a handshake, but there wasn’t much cordiality in last night’s election debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.

The debate was tight, and saw Johnson repeatedly bring up his Brexit plan – a tactic that wore on the audience but highlighted the differences between his approach and that of the Labour Party, who want to focus on wider issues.

But Corbyn landed some strong soundbites too, attacking Johnson’s plans for the UK’s National Health Service and the Conservatives’ record of austerity.

Now, it’s time for the fallout. Both parties are, inevitably, claiming success – but the event marked just the first in a series of vital showdowns as Britain’s election campaign enters its final weeks.