BBC election debate: Five key things

BBC ARTICLE -

"Senior politicians from seven parties - although not the prime minister - took part in the BBC election debate on Wednesday.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd went head-to-head with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Lib Dem leader Tim Farron, UKIP's Paul Nuttall, SNP deputy leader Angus Robertson, Green co-leader Caroline Lucas and Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood.

Defending her absence, Mrs May said she preferred "taking questions and meeting people" on the campaign trail rather than "squabbling" with other politicians.

Here are five key themes from the showdown."

READ THE REST HERE:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2017-40113827

and then comment below.


CAB thoughts -

The BBC's five key themes were
1. Where's Theresa?
2. Magic money trees
3.Clash over immigration
4. The coalition of chaos
5. Farron packed in punchlines

Interestingly, the BBC do not seem to mention in the list the accusations of bias mentioned by some commentators and other online publishers, including ITV's Robert Peston -

You may guess my views on immigration but odd that this "balanced" BBC audience is clearly much keener on immigration than much of UK
    — Robert Peston (@Peston) May 31, 2017

The accusations seem to be a big talking point for everyone else so strange they are not in the list of five themes.

The formal response from the BBC was thus:

“The BBC commissioned polling company ComRes to recruit an audience that is representative of the country demographically and politically.

“They have lots of experience doing this.

 “This covered age; gender; ethnicity; socio-economic; party politics; how they voted in EU referendum; and some undecided.”