The takeaway point from last night’s EU referendum showdown was the extent of the personal attacks on Boris. The former Mayor of London came under repeated fire during the debate – with his Tory colleague Amber Rudd leading the charge. But did she go too far? And is there a chance the intention of targeting Boris could end up backfiring? Here’s what the papers had to say:

Anyone reading The Sun‘s coverage of the debate will probably end up feeling sorry for Boris. The article tells how Boris ‘suffered relentless abuse’ over his apparent ambitions to be the next PM. It also goes on to say Rudd ‘reeled off Government lines of attack on the economy’. Dubbing Rudd, Nicola Sturgeon and Angela Eagle, ‘the Gang of three’, the coverage here paints Boris as having done his best to persuade Brits to ‘break free from EU shackles’. Boris will, undoubtedly, be delighted with this sort of write-up: it shows him to be principled as well as calm and collected when coming under fire. This is exactly the danger of going after Boris so personally. By making people feel sorry for him, there’s a chance those wavering could warm to one of the heavyweight Brexit figures.

The Times also gives Boris its backing by showing how well he dealt with the personal jibes thrown his way. The report says the former Mayor of London ‘largely resisted what he described as the effort to ‘reduce the debate to a lot of personal stuff”. The paper reports that others on the ITV panel ‘competed to bait Brexit’s most powerful advocate’. Once again, this depiction will do no harm to Boris: it gives the suggestion that those attacking Boris went too far. What’s more, Boris’ defence of his immigration policy also makes him come across well and shows that the Leave campaign is about more than just ‘Nigel Farage’s Little England’ as the Prime Minister tried to suggest earlier this week.

Boris also comes out well of the Guardian‘s round-up of the debate: the paper reports how Nicola Sturgeon ‘led a concerted onslaught’. Interestingly, the Blue on Blue attacks from Amber Rudd are relegated down in this report to more of a side note. The coverage here downplays her attacks on Boris but it does still show Boris as having dealt well with the scrutiny he came under. It says Boris ‘appeared unruffled’ by the jibes thrown at him. It also makes room to show how the audience sided with Boris by applauding him when he urged the debate not to descend into personal attacks. Again, there’s much here that does credit to Boris and suggests the strategy of going after him may have gone too far.

Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman review the ITV debate:

The Telegraph also has Boris’ side in the debate. Its coverage paints a contrast between his message that Britain will ‘prosper as never before’ and the way in which he was targeted throughout and branded a liar. This type of coverage plays into the depiction of the Remain camp as relying on a degree of fear to make their point. By showing Boris to be embattled, it also provokes a degree of sympathy and admiration for the way in which he handled the attacks. It’s hard, on the basis of this report, to see how Amber Rudd’s insults about Boris will have paid off; instead, it seems, they might have achieved the opposite.

That’s certainly the way the Daily Mail covers the TV showdown. The paper says the debate was the ‘nastiest’ so far and it describes Rudd’s attacks against her Tory colleague as ‘extraordinary’. What emerges clearly from the paper’s coverage is the idea that the reason Boris was so relentlessly targeted was because of the pressure being felt in the ‘Remain’ campaign. The Mail quotes an aide to the former Mayor as saying the ‘barrage’ of ‘abuse’ showed how the ‘In’ camp was ‘losing the argument’.

Whilst Boris might have been the focus of almost every attack last night, the papers seem to agree on one thing: coming under fire will have done no harm to his, and the ‘Leave’ camp’s, cause.