The verdict from the Twitter commentariat panel is finished. It’s at 9.41am, but you may need to refresh the page to get the whole thing to appear because I’ve been updating it.
Generally, the view seems to be that Jeremy Corbyn came over as warmer and more relaxed, apart from when he was challenged over whether or not he would be willing to press the nuclear button, when his implied unilateralism (he came closer than he has done recently to saying no, without being explicit) and his evasiveness, clearly infuriated a section of the audience. Theresa May was generally robust, and marginally more animated than when she appeared on the Sky/Channel 4 programme on Monday, but she faced a barrage of hostile and pertinent questions, and with many of them her answers were uninspiring, or even sometime unsympathetic. (For example, by now she should have developed a better answer on why nurses haven’t had a proper pay rise and sometimes need to use food banks.)
Journalists are always on the look-out for the “killer blow†at events like this, but they are as rare as a unicorn and there certainly wasn’t one tonight. For my money, Corbyn had the better night (assuming people care more about public services than the nuclear deterrent), and if the programme attracted people who have not noticed how much he has improved in recent weeks, they will have been impressed. May was solid, and it is customary for PMs on programmes like this to face hostile questions about public services. May put up with this with good grace, but said little to enthuse wavering voters.