Ukip leader Nigel Farage is widely considered to have beaten Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg in the first of two debates between the pair on the future of the UK in the EU.
A YouGov poll commissioned by The Sun found that 57% of respondents believed Farage won the debate, with only 36% saying they thought Clegg had the lead. However, few people are thought to have changed their minds after the debate hosted by LBC Radio in London.
Farage was the more amiable of the duo, making a joke about European influence improving British food, but otherwise stayed to his script of the pub-going “everyman” that wants Britain to regain its international influence of yesteryear and businesses can continue without interference from Brussels.
Clegg argued that continued membership of the EU is good for the UK, as it brings jobs and gives the UK greater bargaining power as part of the world’s largest economic block, and picked up on a number of Farage’s unfounded statistical claims about immigration and the cost of the EU to UK taxpayers.
