Question time

Wednesday

Steerpike

Heard it on the Gove-Vine

Times journalist Sarah Vine has written the diary in the forthcoming edition of the Spectator. For those wondering why that caught Mr Steerpike’s eye, Vine is the wife of Education Secretary Michael Gove. Here is what Question Time looks to a participant’s spouse: ‘I was too chicken to watch. I can watch him do almost anything — select committees, speeches at conference, Leveson, the Gay Gordons — but for some reason Question Time gives me the willies. My friend Tania, who normally watches for me and emails as the action unfolds, was not answering her phone, so had to rely on Twitter for updates. Soon, Gove was trending — but it

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Reagan, Keynes, Question Time and tax cuts

I was on the panel of BBC Question Time this evening, in Leicester. Ed Balls’ tricksy 10p tax proposal was raised, and I raised my reservation: it does very little for the low-paid. Balls says £2 a week, but Policy Exchange showed earlier how benefit withdrawal makes this a derisory 67p a week. And  this is the best the Labour Party could do to help the low paid? There should, I suggested, be a significant tax cut for the low-paid. That is to say: the equivalent of one extra month’s salary a year. So how, David Dimbleby asked, would this be funded? Any which way, I replied: it could be by

Friday

Rod Liddle

I hear Owen Jones was on Question Time last night, was he awful?

My friend woke me up this morning. I am in a tiny apartment in Italy, finishing a book. I mean writing one, not reading one. Anyway, he rang as I was dozing — dreaming, bizarrely, that I had just been shortlisted for the Turner Prize – and delivered this torrent of violence down the phone. His animus, which was fabulous, immense, was directed towards a person called Owen Jones whom he had watched on Question Time yesterday evening. I cannot quote his diatribe in full because of the prohibition in these parts about the excessive use of foul language. But it was something like ‘F****** third form arrogant public school

Friday

David Blackburn

Ministers behaving oddly

It’s a rum deal being a Global Networker. This morning’s Times reports (£) that Adam Werritty has received nearly £200,000 in donations from clients who appear to have employed Werritty to lobby Liam Fox on ideological issues such as Israel, the Special Relationship and Euroscepticism; although why anyone thought it necessary to lobby Fox, who is a resolute neo-Conservative and Atlanticist, on these matters is something of a mystery. Meanwhile, the Telegraph reveals that Fox and Werritty enjoyed a $500-a-head dinner with American military figures in Washington, which the Ministry of Defence has not disclosed (perhaps because no British official attended the dinner). This suggests that Werritty and Fox may

Friday

Peter Hoskin

Was last night’s Question Time a preview of how the coalition will deal with the media?

All kinds of hoohah about last night’s Question Time, for which Downing St refused to put up a panellist because of Alastair Campbell’s involvement.  If he was replaced with a shadow minister, they said, they would happily get involved.  But, as the excutive editor of Question Time explains here, the Beeb wasn’t prepared to go along with that.  So Campbell got to lord it up in front of the cameras. For the reasons outlined by Guido and Iain Dale, it was probably a slight mis-step by the coalition – but not one, in itself, that will have any important rammifications for them or the public.  For while it’s not the