General election 2017: Corbyn and May survive TV grilling, but who won?
The papers say leaders' debate was more banter than battle
Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn faced questions from Jeremy Paxman and a studio audience last night, but neither made a "suicidal gaffe or knockout punch", writes Quartz.
The party leaders appeared in the same programme, taking questions live on Sky News and Channel 4.
Unsurprisingly, says The Guardian, both Labour and the Conservatives claimed victory. So who do the pundits think performed best?
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This was a "bravura" performance by Corbyn, says Stephen Bush in the left-leaning New Statesman.
The risk was that Corbyn would allow his "temper" to get the better of him, says Bush, but by the end of the debate, "the studio audience, at least, was firmly on Corbyn's side".
Writing in the traditionally Tory-supporting Daily Telegraph, Janet Daley says May was "remarkably credible and consistent". She admits that Corbyn did "passably well with the audience", however.
"Mrs May looked tense and was heckled when she refused to give detail on how many pensioners would lose their winter fuel allowance or what the cap on social care payments would be," the Financial Times reports. "But she rallied when able to talk up her tough negotiating stance on Brexit."
The Daily Mail's Quentin Letts derides Corbyn's "weak banter", saying he painted himself as a "jocular father Christmas", while May came across as calmly prime ministerial.
But there was another Jeremy who definitely failed to win last night, according to The Guardian. Paxman "isn't what he was", says the newspaper, and only managed a "decent job of a Jeremy Paxman impression".
On Twitter, the New Statesman's Jason Cowley saw the veteran broadcaster as a "kind of celebrity pantomime act", while The Economist's Adrian Wooldridge begged: "Please put Paxman out to pasture, for his sake as well as ours."
If Paxman wasn't on form, it benefitted Corbyn, says John Rentoul in The Independent.
He writes: "Paxman's clever-clever decision to try to attack Corbyn from the left, for failing to get all the things he really believes in into the Labour manifesto, was a failure.
"It allowed Corbyn to pose as a consensual pragmatist who listened to his colleagues and worked with them, when in fact 172 of them said they had no confidence in him less than a year ago."
May and Corbyn will appear on BBC Question Time on Thursday evening.
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