THERESA May’s efforts to defend her government’s record were laughed at by the audience squeezed into Sky News’s London HQ for a TV debate last night.

Probed on Tory cuts to real-terms per pupil funding in England and Wales, a teacher asked the Prime Minister to confirm money available for schools was about to be reduced.

“Nobody can guarantee a realterms per pupil increase,” May said. “In the Labour Party’s manifesto, we know the figures do not add up.”

The audience sneered, with one heckler pointing out that the Tory manifesto is completely uncosted.

Last night’s debate was the closest we’ll get to a straight head-to-head between Jeremy Corbyn and May this campaign.

The format of the TV show saw the leaders first grilled by an audience before retired Newsnight host Jeremy Paxman got to have his time with them.

The joint Sky News-Channel 4 programme was billed by the broadcasters with much fanfare as “The Battle For Number 10 – May vs Corbyn”.

It was Corbyn who defied expectations, performing better than expected. For the Labour leader the difficult questions came quickly. He was asked why, given that Daesh has made clear it is Western culture it wants to destroy, the UK should reconsider its foreign policy in light of the Manchester attack.

“My point was that we have to have a foreign policy around the world that doesn’t leave large areas without any effective government, like Libya at the current time, which could become a breeding ground,” he said.

An Irish audience member named Callum asked: “How can we trust you given your record with the IRA? You openly supported the IRA in the past. You attended a commemoration to honour IRA men.”

“The contribution I made to that meeting was to call for a peace and dialogue process in Northern Ireland,” Corbyn replied, adding that he was commemorating everyone who was killed.

A furious man who claimed to be a traditional Labour voter and a small-business owner attacked Corbyn for wanting to abolish zerohours contracts, raise the national minimum wage to £10, and put VAT on school fees. That will not have done Corbyn any harm.

Neither, really, did Paxman’s interview. If anything it was Paxman that came off worst, the hectoring, loud interruptions feeling like a remnant of the past.

It was only towards the end that Corbyn faltered, when again pushed on national security. He was asked how he would act in a hypothetical situation where he had 20 minutes to choose whether or not to launch a drone strike.

Corbyn dithered. That’s what his opponents will focus on over the next week and a half.

May had a harder time, forced to defend policies she had overseen in government. She was asked to explain cuts to police funding, her disastrous social care plans, and why Ruth Davidson is allowed to keep all winter fuel payments in Scotland while everyone else will have theirs means-tested.

Another questioner asked what happened to that promised £350 million a week for the NHS.

However, it was when the topic turned to Brexit that she seemed to finally get into her stride and win the audience over. Certainly the most enthusiastic rounds of applause of the night came when she said she was willing to take no deal rather than a bad deal.

It was a Corbyn win, but May won’t have been unhappy with her performance. It’s just a shame the two never went head to head.