Question Time review: buffoonery and the demeaning of tragedy

One can only hope that last night’s Question Time did not reflect the extent of debating skills in this country. IF it did, and it wasn’t just a classic lefty hijacking (as all episodes lately seem to be), God help our politics.


There simply are not words to describe the madness last night. I thought last week took the biscuit, when a near-universally pro-gay marriage audience that had lots of suspiciously English Fabian Society student-type accents in it, rocked up in the highly religious Northern Ireland. There was some comedian on it because some-one a few years back decided that celebrity luvvies and comics who haven’t made it on the crème de la crème of satirical shows should get a spot on Question Time. When asked about the European referendum, this woman replied: “Well, I like Europe.” Ah, such depth!
But no, despite fascinating insights like that, this week, the farce was even more unbelievable.

Who was worse: audience or panel? Perhaps I should have ran a Twitter poll (ah the possibilities with this new feature!) Let’s start with the audience: it was dominated by lefties, of course, so much so that Dumbleby half-heartedly asked for anyone not in favour of the ‘let’s take in everyone under the sun’ mantra to raise their hands, if they dare. Big shout out to the brave bloke who did so and got a few words out before Yasmin Alibhai-Brown interrupted again (such interruptions having occurred throughout the show). Then there was a lot of whining about Google’s tax affairs, all of which was aimed at the Tories, of course. As an aside, why does Dumbleby not show us sufficient respect to refer to our party by the proper name? Because the ex-Bullingdon boy has so completely swallowed the BBC line that he hates us too? But my favourite was the man who decided to attack former mining trade unionist Patrick Mcloughlin for forgetting his working-class roots, based, it seemed, on a belief that the Conservatives (see it ain’t so hard is it Dumbleby?) invented income tax and were the only ones who have ever taken it. I assume Gordon Brown’s scrapping of the 10p basic rate was lost on this towering intellect.

Still, we’re used to shouty lefties in the audience. At least we have a panel to give us some good common sense, don’t we? Let’s see: Yasmin Alibhai-Brown – a moderate, sensible voice if ever there was one. Yasmin, who I don’t usually find to be all that bad, did make reasonable contributions most of the time. Unfortunately, all this was made irrelevant when she disgraced herself by conflating the holocaust with contemporary persecution: the kind that sees free housing provided even if the door isn’t your favourite shade of red, and free food handed out if you can show a wrist band. The similarities with the state denying citizenship overtly on the grounds of race, smashing up businesses, forcing people in to squalid ghettos and sending them off in their millions to gas chambers are clearly evident. Yasmin isn’t the only person to make comparisons between the way Nazis treated Jews and the way in which immigrants and refugees are treated today. Of course there are issues, but to make such a comparison is at best deluded, and at worst vile and insulting. Even more vile and insulting is the fact that no panellist or audience member was sufficiently angered by the reference to vocally protest. There were enough shouty people to kick up a stink if they wished.
One nutty columnist aside, did the politicians do any better? Not really. Patrick Mcloughlin decided to answer a question about the comparatively expensive option of rail travel when compared to flights by delivering an awkward attempt at poking fun at travel bloggers, which fell spectacularly flat and proved only that he knows little to nothing of the subject. Trying to regain credibility, he waffled enthusiastically about how charming the train station is at Birmingham now. Yes mate, but it’s still pricey to get there (£170, says Labour’s Jess Phillips).
Phillips made her own unique contribution to the programme. When she wasn’t whinging about how stressful it is being a mum, she was depicting Birmingham as a ghastly place where women get assaulted routinely of a night. Cologne’s ladies don’t know they’ve been born, if only now they’re being picked on by sex mobs. Try being a Brummie bird fräuleins! Aside from the fact that I’ve never heard of mass sexual assaults in Birmingham, I never did find out how Phillips thinks that bringing in more people willing to assault women is made inconsequential by the fact that some unpleasant people already live here. But there you go: it’s all in a day’s work. Dismiss any concerns about mass migration of angry, single young men with cultural misunderstandings aplenty, keep Corbyn the boss man happy and go home to your oh-so-stressful life whining about Twitter trolls and being a mum who thinks wearing pyjamas to take your kids to school is justified.
What about Angus Robertson? Oh I don’t know: he’s Scottish, so I tend to switch off. And he’s a bit boring too.

So there you go: another winning debate. The lighter points were marked by displays of outright buffoonery, whilst the most depressing involved terrible human suffering ranging from rape to the attempted extermination of a race from the face of the earth, demeaned and dismissed in the name of cheap political point-scoring. In the only respectful moment of the whole thing, Dumbleby movingly dedicated the episode to the memory of a former editor who died. “He would have enjoyed it,” he asserted. Perhaps he might: I don’t know who he was or what his politics was, but given the depths that last night’s episode plumbed, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.