SCOTLAND wasn't mentioned once by either Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer during their first televised debate.
The leaders of the Conservatives and the Labour Party went head-to-head on ITV on Tuesday night for the first of their televised electoral face-offs.
However, while they clashed over issues including tax, the NHS, immigration and the cost of living in a debate that at times seemed bad-tempered, neither leader seemed to deem voters in Scotland worthy of a mention.
Speaking on ITV after the debate, the SNP's leader at Westminster Stephen Flynn was asked whether Scottish voters fed up with Conservative rule should vote for the Labour Party.
He said: “As all the opinion polls would indicate, Keir Starmer is going to be the next prime minister.
“Polls put the Labour majority well into the three figures, the people of Scotland have a choice to make, who do they think is going to best stand up for Scotland’s interests in Westminster?”
Asked if the SNP would “do a deal” with Labour in the case of a hung parliament, he said: “I think it’s pretty obvious what Scottish nationalists would demand.”
However, during a series of quickfire questions at the end of the interview Flynn was asked by presenter Anushka Asthana who he thought won the debate.
"I don't think the people of Scotland won because I don't think Scotland was mentioned once," he said.
Both Sunak and Starmer were reprimanded by debate host Julie Etchingham during the debate for talking over each other following opening skirmishes over the state of the public finances.
Starmer rejected as “absolute garbage” the claim that he would hike taxes by £2000 if he became prime minister while later in the debate Sunak made clear that he would be willing to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) if the Government’s stalled Rwanda deportation plan remains blocked by the courts.
He said: “If I am forced to choose between securing our borders and our country’s security, or a foreign court, I’m going to choose our country’s security every single time.”
Starmer said the UK risked becoming a “pariah” state if it left international conventions.
