London: British Prime Minister Theresa May and opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn were confronted with their own and their campaigns' weaknesses in Monday night's election 'debate'.
The Sky News TV event was staged as consecutive interviews after Mrs May said she wouldn't go head-to-head with her opponent.
She was in damage control mode, with Labour surging in the polls in recent weeks. She has lost almost three-quarters of the 20-point lead the Conservatives enjoyed when she called the snap poll.
Her core campaign message has been that she promises more "strong and stable leadership" than the left-wing Mr Corbyn.
But that line was barely mentioned in her interview, with Mrs May instead concentrating on the Conservatives as the best choice to get a good Brexit deal for the country.
"Better no deal than a bad deal," a line she has used successfully in the past, won loud applause from the studio audience at Sky.
Mr Corbyn, on the other hand, insisted that there must be a deal.
Mrs May was tested on a series of recent U-turns: grilled by interviewer Jeremy Paxman and members of the audience on her wavering position on national insurance reform, a manifesto plan to cut social care for the elderly that was dubbed the "dementia tax" and her broken pledge not to call a general election before 2020.
Mrs May, who supported the Remain campaign in last year's Brexit referendum, was asked how she could push for Brexit when she did not believe in it.
Paxman said Brexit negotiators would see her as a "blowhard who collapses at the first sign of gunfire".
Mrs May replied: "I take the view that we can make a success of Brexit."
And she promised to listen to charities and voters and put a cap on social care costs to the elderly, though she said the level of the cap would be decided only after the election.
After the dementia tax stumble, Mrs May's strategists - including Australian Sir Lynton Crosby - have determined she should reset her campaign to focus on Brexit.
In her last full week of campaigning she will push the message that she is the best prime minister to face down "aggressive" Brexit demands from the rest of the European Union.
She will cite her record as justice and home affairs minister as proof of her ability to extract a good result from Brussels negotiations.
She will also present the Conservatives as the best party to defend Britain's sovereignty during the negotiations, and to push down immigration numbers - the two key concerns for most pro-Brexit voters, including those in traditional Labour areas.
In the 'debate', Mr Corbyn faced several questions on his past as a radical leftist politician - and was tested on whether as a pacifist prime minister he would be up to defending the nation.
He refused to say whether he would launch a drone strike on overseas terrorists plotting to bomb Britain, saying it was a "hypothetical question without the evidence" and he would want to know the circumstances.
He was also confronted with historical comments that the Falklands War was a "Tory plot" and the death of Osama bin Laden "a tragedy", saying of the former he had been pressing for the war's end, and of the latter that he had wanted the arrest and trial of the al-Qaeda leader.
A small business owner in the studio audience called Labour's plan to increase corporation tax and tax private school fees "ruthless and short-sighted".
Mr Corbyn replied the country was "badly divided between the richest and the poorest", and more needed to be done so children didn't go to school hungry and learn in "super-sized" classrooms.
Mr Corbyn also refused to set a migration target, an issue that has dogged the party throughout the election. He said Labour wanted to prevent the undercutting of wages.
