Sunak the underdog became a scrappy terrier – but will it change anything?

Luckily for him, the prime minister was not trying to please the hostile studio audience. Could his performance turn him into a real contender, asks Joe Murphy

Julie Etchingham chairs the debate on Tuesday night (PA)

“Gentlemen, please!” begged Julie Etchingham like an exasperated school ma’am at a rowdy PTA quiz night. “We will lower our voices.”

Unexpectedly, the disrupter in the room, who kept talking over both his opponent and the chair was the usually well-mannered prime minister, proving that nobody tears up the Queensberry rules quicker than a posh boy with his back to the wall.

Edifying it was not. But the first leader’s debate of the 2024 election was undeniably livelier than the dreary arguments between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.