After a weekend of rancorous briefings, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak went head-to-head in an hour-long televised debate live from Stoke-on-Trent.
Here are five key points, on a night where Sunak looked as confident as ever, but Truss did nothing to significantly damage his chances.
In fact, one of the few cheers from the audience came when she simply said she wasn’t the most stylish performer.
The gloves were left out
Former Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis had denounced the televised debate format as too aggressive, and former Tory chairman Francis Maude warned both candidates not to tarnish the brand, but there was no love lost.
Truss and Sunak were constantly at loggerheads over tax, clashing over who had backed ‘Project Fear’, and it was hard to believe that just three weeks ago they were ministerial colleagues in the same government under Boris Johnson.
In the end, they both said they could work together in government again, but no one believed them.
Sunak is trying to make tax and spending a moral issue
The former chancellor spoke of Truss wanting to put the Covid debt on hold, and asked if it was “moral” to leave the debt to pay for the children and grandchildren, bringing up the idea that the country has a credit card and he said the policy was not conservative.
Truss responded by saying again that Covid was a once-in-a-century event and that no other major economy was trying to raise taxes to pay down debt so quickly.
Polls suggest he has the lead with the conservative membership, and it’s quite possible that his “feel” about how to pay down the debt will win them over to Sunak’s tougher fiscal approach.
Backstory is a big deal
The BBC’s studio audience was made up of people who voted Conservative in a so-called red wall seat in 2019, and the audience wanted to know what standing up meant to them locally.
The candidates reiterated their commitment to the project, but also spent a lot of time detailing their education, revealing their eagerness to strengthen their “salt of the earth” credentials. Sunak helping out in his mother’s business and Truss and his comprehensive school education were inevitably mentioned.
China is an ongoing battleground
Truss voiced his tough stance on China and said we should not make the same mistake we made with Russia. Sunak noted that Truss once said we were entering a “golden age” with China.
The open question from the BBC’s economic editor was: Are you really committed to cracking down on our single largest import partner? Neither candidate really had the answer to this difficult question.
Ukraine also appeared. Both were proud of their record in government supporting Ukraine. Both ruled out the Royal Navy being actively involved in the Black Sea.
Finally, the environment got a mention
Both candidates were asked what they thought were the three most important things people could do for the environment.
Sunak said his children were the experts and cited energy efficiency, recycling and faith in British innovation to solve problems.
Truss, who often tries to gloss over her Liberal Democrat past, said she was “a teenage environmentalist before it was fashionable”.