Guilty politicians should kneel before Parliament: Boris Johnson

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said guilty politicians should kneel before the Parliament as punishment for lying during an election.

He made the remark while answering a question from an audience during the second debate withj Jeremy Corbyn on Dec 6, just a few days ahead of the polls, reports The Guardian.

After the debate, associate editor and columnist of The Guardian Martin Kettle said that the second TV debate did not change anything in the election dynamics in the final week.

"The tragedy of this second debate is that it so often revealed the tawdriness of Johnson's policies and his slapdash mind without Corbyn ever being quite able to nail him. Johnson's lines are as tediously familiar now as Theresa May's were in 2017", he wrote.

Deputy Political Editor Katy Balls was disappointed in the overall debate and went on to compare Boris Johnson to a "broken record".

"The prime minister even managed to move questions on Islamophobia and antisemitism back to Brexit".

While Boris Johnson proposed guilty politicians should kneel before the Parliament for lying, the Labour leader, however, struck a more sombre tone, emphasising the need to hold government to account, Balls pointed out.

Guardian columnist Owen Jones said the greatest problem facing Labour in the final lap of this election campaign is disillusionment among leave voters. The claim that Labour's necessary pivot to a second referendum would be a cost-free exercise has collided with reality. That's why Jeremy Corbyn went in hard on the threat posed to the NHS by a deal with the US, and challenged the "get Brexit done" lie with the reality of years of protracted trade negotiations.

A question on whether socialism or capitalism is superior for lifting the living standards of the poor was home ground for Corbyn. Polls show Britons have a more favourable attitude towards socialism than capitalism, and Corbyn spoke passionately about a wealthy society unable to meet the needs of its citizens, he added.

Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff remarked that this debate was Jeremy Corbyn's last chance to turn things around with one last heroic attempt.

"For Corbyn, these last few days will be all about values: dignity, justice, hope. There was genuine anger when he talked about patients forced to wait for NHS treatment. But given his best hope of avoiding a second defeat now is to squeeze the Liberal Democrat vote as shamelessly as Johnson has done Brexit party supporters, it was alarmingly unclear how he means to achieve it," she said.

Hinsliff said these voters aren't just worried about Brexit or the credibility of Labour's spending plans but about Corbyn's own personal fitness for office, which is why Johnson's strongest moment came when he accused the Labour leader of failing to take a lead on tackling antisemitism just as he had failed to take a lead over Brexit.