Party leaders are giving the performances of their political lives

Research suggests that the greatest impact a person makes on television is not what they say, but how they say it and how they look. We, the voting audience make a snap judgement in just seven seconds – that’s all it takes to form an impression from the speaker’s words, tone of voice and body language.

All the leaders will undoubtably have had media training but they’re not natural performers. The leaders’ debates are even more intense than a normal television debate because the audience is directly comparing one candidate with the next.   

Non-verbal communication can make or break a person in the public eye. The electorate says it wants to know what the parties’ policies are, but often the cast of a vote comes down to likeability.   Starmer may be ahead in the polls but why don’t audiences warm to him as much as Sunak?   

The leader of the Labour party has been called a “robot” and even when asked a basic question in the Grimsby Leaders’ debate, on where the money will come from if he doesn’t put taxes up, viewers commented that it looked like he’d swallowed a wasp. Not a way to ingratiate yourself to the millions of undecided voters.

Starmer needs more work too on perfecting his smile. He’s guilty of giving more of a grimace and his ‘beam’ is not convincing voters. It’s the eyes that give it away too; the muscles around the eyes need to contract when you smile. Watch Starmer in the next debate and form your own opinion.

Sunak’s facial expressions result in him subconsciously telling the audience what he's really thinking - often a mixture of exasperation and desperation and at times down right irritability. In the Battle for Number 10 debate on Sky News he looked like a rabbit in headlights, barely blinking (which can be a sign of nerves) and with his legs crossed he appeared defensive.   

Sunak appears to be on the back foot, giving voters the strong impression that the Conservatives are the party in opposition – asking Starmer for answers about how he would enact his policies when he’s not the current incumbent. His defensiveness also came across when he talked over the presenter.   

Starmer is confident with emphatic responses, claiming “what we will do in government”, as if this position is a given. This will resonate with viewers. Starmer is good too at ending a sentence emphatically and not trailing off at the end of a sentence – again good practice when summing up in a pithy soundbite. And he looks in the camera.   

Voters want substantiated claims, backed by facts. This is where Starmer again struggled with Sunak and the Conservative’s claim that a Labour government will raise taxes by £2,000 per household. Keir Starmer failed to effectively deny the Conservative attack line until the second half of the debate and only then emphatically called it a lie. Better practice is to get your key message in at the beginning of any interview or debate, as you may not get the chance later in the programme.  Also audiences can have short attention spans and are more likely to grasp a point made near the start of an answer than follow it through. 

Starmer slipped up again on the junior doctors’ strikes claiming “the doctors say they want 35% more pay”, only for a junior doctor to cut in and contradict him.

There’s a fine line between confidently putting your point of view across and butting in and talking over a rival. Much was made of the on air spat between Penny Mordant and Angela Rayner – the Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer summed up what many viewers were thinking with an ironic “That was terribly dignified, wasn’t it.”

Confidence is key - love him or hate him, Nigel Farage was the only one in the seven-party debate who gave his summing up without the aid of an autocue; for that reason he came across as a confident, consummate performer, arguably a better on screen performer than any of his rivals. During the debate though his one liners were given a frosty reception from the studio audience. Some audience members were seen shaking their heads when he said this should be an “immigration election”.

Being authentic is definitely key but overdo it and the audience senses when they’re being “played”.    You don’t have to be poor to be a country leader and Sunak was widely scorned for his childhood memory of his parents not having Sky TV in order to save money.  Starmer, meanwhile, was laughed at on the Sky debate when he mentioned for the umpteenth time that his father had been a toolmaker. 

The gloves are well and truly off and the debates have become increasingly spatty – and that makes for good TV. For example, Starmer brought up Liz Truss’ ill-fated 49-day premiership just seven minutes in, and made regular references to it as the debate continued, undermining the Conservatives at every opportunity.

But the leaders’ summing up in the latest showdown was probably the most personal and honest moment in the debate, particularly from the Labour leader who said: "I don't pretend there's a magic wand that will fix everything overnight." He concluded with a well-rehearsed passing shot: "Imagine how you would feel waking up on July 5th to five more years of the Conservatives, five more years of decline and division. The arsonists handed back the matches."

Sunak equally was on form, leaving the audience with the following points to consider: "Keir Starmer is asking you to hand him a blank cheque... in uncertain times we simply cannot afford an uncertain prime minister… With Keir Starmer you don't know what you are going to get, and neither does he."

Keren Haynes is a media trainer and the co-managing director of Shout! Communications. Before co-founding specialist broadcast PR agency Shout! Communications Keren was a broadcast journalist who worked for the BBC, ITN and Sky News.   

The final head-to-head debate between Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer will be broadcast on BBC One at 9pm on Wednesday 26 June.