Mordaunt sends a message to Sunak with a sword swipe

Savour for a moment the dilemma confronting Penny Mordaunt. She's got a prime TV slot to promote the Conservatives on the very day that her boss, Rishi Sunak, is deep in the mire for dodging D-Day. Will she whip out that famous jewelled coronation sword to fend off his attackers?

- JOE MURPHY

But, hang on a moment: our Penny is also keen to promote her deep ambition to be the next Tory leader. She’s popular with the military, daughter of a paratrooper, named after a warship and now MP for a naval city. Where’s the advantage to her in defending Sunak?

So when the first question in the seven-way BBC election debate came from Francis, the son of a Normandy veteran, there was a genuine tension in the air.

Mordaunt, the commons leader, stood motionless as Nigel Farage put the first boot into the PM’s “dreadful desertion” of the veterans. Eyes sternly ahead, hair lacquered into a rigid roman helmet. Finally, the sword came out.

“What happened was very wrong,” she said in an executioner voice, her blade taking Sunak’s head clear off his shoulders. No alibis. No sympathy. No pity.

It was a memorable start to a debate that, for all the flaws of a format that attempts to get seven party representatives to discuss the key issues, actually managed to tell us a lot about the election and the political struggles that will inevitably follow it.

By chance (because the places on stage are determined by drawing lots) Nigel Farage was on the fringe of the platform. He had some good lines, branding Keir Starmer as “Blair without the flair” and mocking “slippery Sunak” and teasing Angie Rayner as “the real Labour leader – at least she has some personality”. He did his usual turn, calling on people to “join the revolt” and trotting out embarrassing numbers on immigration, tax and the decline of the military.