This time it was May who missed the open goals

The sole way in what is left of the Lobby continues to operate is that political journalists agree on “the line”. A process which seems at times to work through osmosis but is nowadays helped by social media. Which is undoubtedly how the general view of last night’s non-debate between May and Corbyn came to be widely described as “a score draw”. This is utter nonsense. Even though they weren’t in a face-to-face scrap, Corbyn clearly did well and the prime minister did not, as any neutral person would have appreciated. And not just neutrals – people like me who abhor Corbyn were won over. Even Douglas Carswell and Nigel Farage thought he was impressive. By contrast, Theresa May was exposed as the posturing cliché-ridden zombie some of us had already realised she is. Her performance on the Channel 4/Sky News programme couldn’t have been a score draw as she patently failed to score. Even her parroting of “Brexit means Brexit” only got applause because the people who applauded her would have cheered whatever she said about getting out of the EU. The Tory campaign will now spend the next nine days simply saying “Brexit Brexit Brexit Brexit” and “Jeremy Corbyn is a terrorist lover”. The former will continue to reverberate with a large number of the voters who were duped into backing Leave and don’t yet realise how it is going to hurt them. The Corbyn slogan won’t resonate, though, as it says more about the Tories than it does about him. It is Lynton Crosby at his worst. He is one immigrant I would be happy to see put on the next slow boat back to where he came from It’s a pity that the Australian Points System so beloved of Ukip doesn’t mean one Australian in particular could be kept out of British life.