It was probably Sir Keir Starmer’s toughest interview yet. Sky’s Beth Rigby properly gutted his tax plans, and pushed him on his support for Jeremy Corbyn.

Why did he say his predecessor would make a brilliant prime minister ahead of the last Westminster vote? Did he really believe it?

“I was certain that we would lose the 2019 election,” he said, which didn’t really answer the question.

He was also quizzed on the 10 pledges made during the 2020 Labour leadership.

“Most of them are still in place,” Starmer said.

The audience of restless and absolutely brutally forensic Grimbarians was having none of it.

They laughed when he said his dad was a toolmaker. We may have reached peak toolmaker.

They then pushed him on the cost of living crisis, what he’s going to do about junior doctor strikes and his “robot” like personality.

It was tough. Really tough.

And if he was up against anyone but Rishi Sunak he might have been in trouble. But he’s not. He’s up against a Tory leader whose cabinet has already pretty much admitted defeat.

Now, according to Defence Secretary Grant Shapps, the Tories aren’t fighting for government but to prevent Labour winning a “supermajority.”

Earlier this week, Sunak even had to deny that he was thinking of doing a Douglas Ross and quitting in the middle of the campaign.

It was his first time in front of a TV audience since news of D-Day ditching emerged.

In the week since his polling has plummeted, his party tis furious with him, and his campaign is in turmoil.

His aides will have hoped that Wednesday's debate could have turned the tide on his disastrous campaign. 

Rigby pointed out that since the last election we've had three prime ministers, five chancellors, five home secretaries, and six health secretaries.

“How do we know that if you won the general election you'd still be prime minister in a year's time?” she asked.

The audience laughed.

Sunak looked broken.

“I can appreciate people's frustrations,” he said, which is his go to line whenever he faces a difficult question.

Asked if he felt "really awful" over D-Day, Sunak said he was “incredibly sad” and sorry that he had left people “hurt and upset.”

“That was actually the last thing that I wanted to do. And as I said, I hope people can find it in their hearts to forgive me.”

They might forgive him, but will they vote for him?

The scale of Sunak’s problem was probably best exemplified by audience member Amy, a “true blue” former Tory party chair who’s now undecided.

Trust was broken, she said during Covid, when No 10 partied while the Queen sat alone at the funeral of her husband.

“We have long memories in this country as a public” she said. “But you have to realise that there is a long way to go to really rebuild that trust.”

A snap YouGov poll conducted by the broadcaster named Starmer the winner. Not just a little bit, but by two to one, 64% to 36%.

The next 22 days might be the longest of Sunak's life.