The big question: who won and lost on debate night?

The leaders’ debate was notable for looking backward not forward.

Boris Johnson was forced to defend the Conservatives’s performance on health, and his catalogue of articles against charges of racism and homophobia. Jeremy Corbyn spoke about fighting anti-semitism in the Labour Party and his relationship with the former president of Bolivia. Jo Swinson was forced to defend her record in the coalition, voting for welfare cuts. Nicola Sturgeon faced questions about the rising toll of drug deaths in Scotland.

Underlying all this was a continuation of the question that most resonated from the debate on Tuesday – can we trust any of the politicians who aspire to lead us? Not just trust them to deliver their policies, as competent government chief executives, but our ability to trust them as people of integrity.

Boris Johnson was asked why people had lost faith in politicians. His answer was simple. It was the failure of politicians to get Brexit done. It was his answer to other questions too. The groans from some of the audience suggested that people may be tiring of this constant refrain.

But the debate did offer us more clarity on party positions on Brexit.

Most notable was Jeremy Corbyn’s decision to stay neutral in his planned referendum in order to be able to stay on and implement whatever the people choose. It suggests that for Corbyn, Brexit is an irritant that needs to be dealt with to let Labour get on with its radical transformation agenda.

But he may need the SNP to support him to have that chance. Corbyn made clear an “early” independence referendum is not a priority. Instead Labour will invest big time in Scotland. Nicola Sturgeon thinks that when the keys to Downing Street are within his grasp, he will be more amenable. She was not asked if she would ask for an independence referendum if the UK chose to Remain.

Jo Swinson must be ruing her decision to make the LibDems the party of Revoke. A self-declared Remainer in the audience made clear that had cost the LibDems her vote. The LibDems may have been more successful positioned as the Remain party in a referendum.

The debate showed Brexit still dominates the future policy discussion. There was little space for much else. But it also showed the toll the last years has taken on our faith in politicians.

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Paul Kavanagh, National columnist (aka the Wee Ginger Dug)

The BBC tried a different format from the ITV leaders’ debate on Monday. This time all four of the leaders of the largest parties in the Commons were represented and instead of going head to head, they individually took questions from the audience. The biggest difference was in the outcome. Whereas it was difficult to judge who had done best on ITV’s head to head between Corbyn and Johnson, the BBC’s Question Time special produced clear winners and losers.

Jeremy Corbyn was up first, and immediately was subjected to some very aggressive questioning from the audience. It set the tone for the evening. He struggled under a barrage of hostile questioning, but retained his composure and attempted to give full answers. However, then came a few more sympathetic questioners, and the Labour leader seemed to find his groove. We discovered that he planned to be neutral if there was another EU referendum. One audience member praised him for having the only grown-up solution to the Brexit issue.

However, he struggled again when he was asked why he thought he had a right to prevent Scotland from having another independence referendum. His answer was evasive, boiling down essentially to “I’ll bribe Scotland into submission.” Labour will borrow money, spend it on our behalf, and then tell us that we’re too poor for independence. We’ve heard that one before. All of a sudden the audience seemed to be full of Scottish independence supporters. There were more of them in Sheffield than when Question Time went to Dundee.

Nicola Sturgeon came next. She was confident and assured from the beginning. It’s easy to be confident when all the difficult questions you get are the same questions indy supporters have been getting for years. Spanish veto. Deficit. Sturgeon dealt with them easily.

Following the class act came a classroom act. Jo Swinson had a dreadful evening, coming across like a patronising nursery school teacher. The audience put to rest any fond beliefs that the LibDems might have had that the public has forgiven them for getting into bed with the Tories. She made her rehearsed points, and the audience received them in silence. It wasn’t so much a car crash as a car crashing into an oil tanker that exploded against a nuclear power plant causing a meltdown which triggered an earthquake.

Last, and most definitely least, we had the fnaugh-fnaugher in chief Boris Johnson. He performed even worse than Jo Swinson. At least she made some effort to engage with the questions. Boris Johnson used every question as an excuse to indulge himself in some free-form ramblings punctuated with hesitations, repetitions, and character assassination. He accused one audience member who asked why he hadn’t released the report into Russian meddling as indulging in “Bermuda triangle” stuff. When you accuse members of the public of being conspiracy theorists for asking a reasonable question about an official report, you’ve pretty much confirmed that there is a conspiracy.

Sturgeon was the clear winner of the evening. Corbyn was second. Swinson narrowly edged it over Johnson for third. Johnson was the worst of all, vague, self-absorbed, lying, and only interested in personal attacks. The tragedy is that he’ll probably be PM after December 12, propped up by the LibDems.

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Dr Christopher Hand, lecturer in psychology, Glasgow Caledonian University

The format of the debate was interesting as to try and maintain any kind of rhetoric for almost half an hour is incredibly difficult. It is almost impossible to not let things slip and speak more honestly. There certainly were points where all the leaders demonstrated a lot of individuality in their performances.

I thought there was a great deal of composure shown by Jeremy Corbyn and the First Minister. They spoke passionately and they were engaging. Corbyn seemed to come across as very relaxed, without getting too animated, he spoke in a very even tone and made a lot of eye contact.

He didn’t wince or grimace which I think the leader of Liberal Democrats and the Prime Minister were both quite guilty of – you could see visible discomfort with some of the lines of questioning.

The First Minister did an excellent job – she was quite mobile while never turning her back to the audience and she used gesture but not on a grand scale. That felt more like a person who is in control and a person who is keen to engage.

The Prime Minister and Swinson were less assured and less statesperson-like in the way they got drawn off on tangents, with their body language and gestures suggesting they were losing control. There was a lot of gesticulating and arm-waving, particularly from the Prime Minister, which you didn’t tend to see so much with the other three leaders.

If you were to look at a transcript of the speeches, Corbyn and the First Minister were particularly fluent – there wasn’t a lot of hesitation, there wasn’t a lot of filled pauses. If you looked at a transcript of what Swinson and the Prime Minister said, some of it just wouldn’t read as it was jumbled and failed to get to the point. Even if they had been coached, clearly the pressure perhaps got to them a bit.

It was really interesting to see how passionately the members of the audience were speaking and fascinating to see the range of topics covered: the rise of the far-right propaganda, foreign interference, education, poverty, inequalities and social justice. It wasn’t just political rhetoric, it wasn’t just hectoring and badgering – these were very passionate people speaking about issues very close to them.

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Lorna Slater, co-leader, Scottish Greens

There were audible groans from the audience in this programme, and the noise perfectly articulated my response. This was no debate, but a parade of politicians repeating the same old lines about Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn insists he’s neutral, Jo Swinson cringingly pretends she’ll be Prime Minister and Boris Johnson’s “get Brexit done” mantra is fast becoming his “strong and stable”. Nicola Sturgeon was asked about what a confidence and supply deal with Labour would look like but, again, it was all through the prism of Brexit.

The media appear to be a willing partner in Johnson’s narrative that this is “the Brexit election”. It is as if we are only electing MPs that will sit until the end of January. Given recent political turbulence, perhaps we are. But it is irresponsible for the media to portray this election in the way that the Tory leader wants. After all, the MPs elected will probably sit for half of the time scientists tell us we have left to tackle the climate emergency.

At the current rate of global warming, we are talking about apocalyptic effects on our planet rendering it uninhabitable. In that context, the lack of questions on what our political leaders are going to do to stop it was extraordinary. If the broadcasters were to recognise this, then surely the decision to exclude the Scottish Greens from the debates becomes untenable. As the most influential opposition party at Holyrood, we are the only ones with credible ideas on how to decarbonise our economy fast.

Nicola Sturgeon was asked if she was prepared to “let go” of North Sea oil resources when building an independent Scotland. She replied that “the transition is under way.” That is simply not true. North Sea oil and gas companies continue to be subsidised to extract as much as possible, and the SNP like all the other parties show no signs of setting an end date. If a transition was really under way, there would be significant investment in alternative jobs and the renewables supply chain. Instead, whole communities are tied to a dwindling resource, the extraction of which is killing our planet. Their future, like all of us, is uncertain. What a shame the broadcasters won’t allow us to bring that clear and urgent point to the debate in this General Election.

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Judith Duffy, Sunday National politics reporter

From the opening minutes of the debate, it was clear the audience was in no mood to give the leaders an easy time. Challenging Jeremy Corbyn on misogyny in the Labour Party, one questioner told him he didn’t buy “the whole nice old grandpa” act. If the politicians had expected to be able to trot out a few reassuring words on Brexit and the NHS, they were wrong.

Corbyn crammed in as much as possible about Labour’s policies on issues such as business, climate change and broadband, but it was only in the last moments that he spoke with any real passion. When he was challenged on why he would delay a second independence referendum, he stuck to the usual line about not permitting it “in the early years”. It didn’t look like he was particularly comfortable revealing the specifics.

It was a point Nicola Sturgeon seized upon saying: “Do you think he is going to walk away from the chance to end austerity, to protect the NHS, to stop Universal Credit, simply because he wants for a couple of years to prevent Scotland having the right to self-determination?” She answered questions on Brexit and independence with confidence – she has likely heard them many times before.

In contrast Jo Swinson was often met by a stony silence in gaps where applause might have been. She seemed wrong-footed from the start, with an audience member asking if she agreed it was “ridiculous” she had started her campaign by saying she could be Prime Minister. Swinson did her best to laugh along. The questions from the audience also exposed a fatal flaw in the LibDem election stance to revoke Brexit – that it fails to appeal to not just Leave voters, but also those who voted to Remain and do not want to see it “unilaterally” cancelled.

An attempt by Boris Johnson to shoehorn Brexit onto the agenda in response to a question about the importance of politicians “telling the truth” was met with jeers from an audience jaded by his soundbites. He was on confident ground when harking back to his days as London mayor, but his trademark bluster crumbled when quizzed on other issues of the past. When asked to apologise for “personally contributing” to a rise in racist rhetoric by using offensive language, his defence did little to appease an angry audience.