Snippy Rishi was no match for a furious Question Time audience

The clear winner of the evening was Fiona Bruce, writes Joe Murphy. But the prime minister made for an even clearer loser

At one point during the event, Sunak argued with a questioner who thought the Rwanda policy was ‘inhumane’ (PA)

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

Things got even angrier when Rwanda came up and Sunak argued with a questioner who thought the policy was “inhumane”. Then when he again threatened to leave the international courts (presumably, if he gets really angry with them), several audience members shouted “shame on you!” It was not an easy ride for the prime minister.

Downing Street must be feeling close for Sir Keir Starmer, because he had upgraded from rolled up shirtsleeves to a pin-sharp black suit and deep crimson silk tie.

Another change: he didn’t mention once that his dad was a toolmaker, probably sulking after the mocking laughter of the Sky audience last week. It was the first time in four weeks that Starmer Snr failed to make an appearance in the Labour leader’s act, and I rather missed the old boy.

One thing that stayed the same, however, was Starmer Jnr’s complete inability to answer the simple question about whether he meant it when he told voters in 2019 that Jeremy Corbyn “would make a great prime minister”. Fiona Bruce left him no wiggle room by specifically asking if he had his fingers crossed behind his back.

“I was campaigning for the Labour Party,” offered Starmer weakly, coming close to admitting out loud that he had said something in an election campaign he never actually believed.

Six times Bruce pressed him: "Yes or no, did you mean it?" Rattled, Starmer started saying “he would be a better prime minister …” presumably meaning to conclude the sentence “than Johnson or Truss” but he stopped himself in time.

Audience member Emma was not satisfied, saying her concerns about integrity and trust in public life had not been assuaged.

The Carrier of the People’s Ming Vase tip-toed through his 20 minutes, scattering more chaff rather than hard detail. Asked if he could say if patients would get a GP appointment within, say, a month, he ducked even that easy deadline, responding: “We will start the work on day one.”

He sidled round the minefield of trans issues by borrowing Tony Blair’s riff about “men having penises and women having vaginas”, ducking the trickier part of the Venn diagram about whether people with penises can be women. He hoped for a less toxic politics where people would look for “points of connection” between them rather than differences – a vain hope.

Disappointingly, Ed Davey walked on in a suit and tie instead of a bathing suit and life vest. Half the audience, however, seemed keen to see him fired out of a circus cannon, and not in a friendly way.

“Aren’t you going to bankrupt the country?” asked first questioner Alison, who seemed to have confused Comedy Ed with an actual candidate for the job of prime minister and first lord of the treasury.

A few seconds earlier, Fiona Bruce had recklessly assured Davey that he would not be interrupted as long as he answered the question fully, which he interpreted as an instruction to read out his entire manifesto in an exaggerated stage whisper, as if addressing a lip-reading convention while trying not to wake up a patient in the next room.

Davey is best appreciated with the sound switched off. His pleading eyes, wobbly grin and trembling big hands convey significantly less authenticity than his Centre Parcs summer tour would suggest.

The audience were not convinced. “You enabled Cameron and Osborne’s austerity,” spat a middle-aged man. Davey conceded: “I’m not proud of some of the votes we did.” A former student saddled with tuition fees debts demanded: “How can my generation trust you?”

“Are you proud of your conduct as Post Office minister?” asked another angry man. Davey wobbled his big hands and blamed civil servants for his infamous refusal to meet the hero of the scandal, Alan Bates. Three of his constituents were victims of the scandal, he added, omitting to mention that a former sub-postmaster is standing against him in the election as a Justice for Sub-Postmasters candidate.

Davey’s most authentic revelation was that he met his wife, Emily, “on a Liberal Democrat housing policy working group”. Bruce, highly amused, tinkled: “What a night out!”

But at least we – finally – had had a glimpse of the real Ed Davey: not a clown after all, but rather a deeply worthy policy wonk doing his best to get some attention.

The elephant in the room was the elephant missing from the room. Nigel Farage, as he noisily grumbled from Clacton, was not allowed into the studio despite coming a clear second to Labour in recent polls with over 20 per cent.

Instead, on walked John Swinney, leader of the SNP, a party that fewer than one in 10 Britons can vote for and that currently polls some 3 per cent nationally. Swinney is not even standing for parliament himself.

“It’s been a difficult time” for Scottish nationalists, admitted Swinney of his party’s collapse into police investigations, resignations and recriminations.

The clear winner of the night was Bruce, whose interventions were intelligent and deft.

But there was also one clear loser – and not even Sunak’s most eager fans, who were keeping their heads down if they still exist, would bet on him recovering during the next fortnight.