General Election: Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer to be grilled in Sky News leaders TV special

Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer will take part in a Sky News leaders special next week, the broadcaster has announced.

A three-hour special, called The Battle for Number 10, will take place in Grimsby on June 12, with the Prime Minister and Labour leader taking part in in-depth interviews before answering questions from the show’s audience.

The broadcast will follow the same format that was used by Sky News for leadership contests and elections in 2015, 2016 and 2017 as well as during the Conservative leadership race between Liz Truss and Mr Sunak in 2022.

It will be the second televised event featuring the two main party leaders and falls halfway through the election campaign, three weeks before polls open.

Mr Sunak and Sir Keir clashed on Tuesday night in their first debate on the General Election campaign.

The two leaders argued over issues including tax, the NHS, immigration and the cost of living in a debate that at times seemed bad-tempered, as the two men were repeatedly told to stop talking over each other.

The Battle for Number 10 will take place in the newly formed Grimsby and Cleethorpes constituency, a key battleground for both Labour and the Tories.

Grimsby turned Conservative for the first time since the end of the Second World War in 2019, with many people feeling a cultural rift with the Labour Party.

The Tories have also held Cleethorpes since 2010 but support has been fading.

The show’s audience will be made up of representatives drawn from the local area and nationally by Sky News.