An audience member asked 'How can we mend our broken trading relationship with Europe?'
The Labour leader was applauded by the audience after saying that the UK could get a better deal with the EU after the leaders were questioned on improving trade relations.
In the biggest moment left in this campaign, there was a feeling that Rishi Sunak has nothing to lose, while Keir Starmer has everything to lose as the leaders battled it out in the BBC debate.
Member of the audience Julie Walters, a jazz vinyl record business owner, said she had lost 90% of her business with Europe post-Brexit.
She asked the leaders: “How can we mend our broken trading relationship with Europe?”
Sunak said he was sorry for the difficulties Julie had faced since the UK left the EU, but that the focus should be on making the best of the situation. His focus was on cutting taxes on business rates and abolishing national insurance.
However Keir Starmer said he wouldn’t accept that the UK can’t get a better deal than the current one and made a quip at Boris Johnson who he said had “botched it”.
Starmer said: “I’m not going to say to you Julie that there’s nothing we can do or help with or to other people in the same position, I’m going to say I know we can get a better deal than the botched deal we’ve got and I’m going to go out and fight for it.”
He added: “We’re not going to have freedom of movement back, we’re not going to go back into the EU but I’m going to fight for a better deal so you can trade more easily across Europe, so you can succeed and our economy can succeed.”
He received a loud applause from the audience for his answer.
Sunak claimed that the “price” of what Starmer was asking for is more migration. But Starmer said he had set out the lines he wouldn’t cross and said he was “not a defeatist like the Prime Minister”.
He received further applause when he went on to say that “part of the problem with this Prime Minister is his lived world is a million miles away”
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