How Jeremy Corbyn Survived Jeremy Paxman’s ‘Over The Top’ Interview

In the spin battle following the televised interviews, Mr Farron said: “Theresa May has had a vehicle crash interview”.

The second most popular, with just over a thousand retweets, was a viewer quoting Jeremy Paxman, who said European Union negotiators might think Theresa May was a “blow-hard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire”.

“We need to face up to the fact that there are going to be extra costs and we think this is the best way to handle it and I think the audience responded well to that honesty”.

In a sign of her ambition, she chose Labour-held Halifax to launch the Conservative manifesto on May 18.

Answering questions on the interview at a campaign event in Watford, Mr Corbyn said: “I didn’t have the exact figure in front of me, so I was unable to answer that question, for which obviously I apologise”.

He used humor well throughout – a useful weapon in British politics.

Paxman challenged Corbyn’s refusal to denounce the Irish Republican Army and his having met with Hamas officials and suggested the Labour leader would seek to abolish the monarchy if his party triumphed.

It produced a round of applause, before he added he had a “very nice conversation” with the Queen, and getting rid of her is not on Labour’s agenda because the party is more interested in “social justice”.

In a Q&A with the studio audience, a small business owner attacked Mr Corbyn’s “ruthless short-sighted policies” such as increasing corporation tax and putting VAT on private school fees.

She said the government had to ensure Britain was “living within our means” given “the economic situation we had inherited”.

Corbyn, meanwhile, emphasised that Labour’s manifesto was anti-austerity, promising more funding for the NHS.

And in one of his better moments during the programme, he pointed to his ear at first and then his mouth and said: “Leadership is as much about using this as using this”. Because I am clear about the instruction I have been given, clear about what needs to be done, and ready to get on with the job on day one – while Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t have the belief, the will or the plan to deliver Brexit.

He would not commit to authorizing a nuclear strike – or even a drone strike – on a known terrorist.

Mr Corbyn replied: ‘The commemoration I think you are referring to was a period of silence for everyone who died in Northern Ireland’.

UK Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday (1 May) insisted that negative reports about her talks with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker are just “Brussels gossip”, after a German newspaper released a damning appraisal of their meeting. It wasn’t disastrous, but it wasn’t the performance of a first-rate politician. He got the audience laughing with him. After six years in power, David Cameron and George Osborne took most of the low-hanging fruit – predominantly welfare cuts.

Pulling no punches, and determined to take no prisoners, Paxman fired hard questions at the two main figures in British politics.

That doesn’t excuse the mistakes she has made.

There are several possible reasons for this: Labour’s popular manifesto policies and Theresa May’s controversial social care plans and subsequent U-turn nearly certainly contributed strongly to a shift in public perceptions.