QUESTION Time is the BBC’s long-running political debate show where members of the public get the chance to grill politicians and leading figures.
The show has been running since September 1979 and is currently hosted by Fiona Bruce. Here’s who is on the panel tonight, October 24, which comes from South Shields.
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Who is on the show tonight?
Norman Lamont
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The Conservative peer held the position of Chancellor in John Major’s administration and had various Treasury positions under Margaret Thatcher.
Being the chairman of the Leave Means Leave group he’s a hardline Brexiteer.
Having resigned from Major’s government he famously said the government “gives the impression of being in office but not in power”.
He courted controversy by labelling Chilean dictator General Pinochet as a “good and brave and honourable soldier” when the South American leader came to Britain to obtain medical treatment.
He was made a life peer in July 1998.
Richard Leonard
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Leonard is currently the Leader of the Scottish Labour Party and a member of the Scottish Parliament.
He was though born in Westow, North Yorkshire in 1962 but moved to Stirlingshire in the 1980s.
He is a firm Remainer, saying the Labour Party should have a clear policy to stay in the EU although he initially backed the party’s position of wanting a “soft Brexit” but has become more firmly committed to staying within the bloc over the years.
From the left-wing of the party, he is a firm supporter of its leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Caroline Voaden
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The Liberal Democrat MEP for South West England was previously a journalist with Reuters and its bureau chief in Zagreb.
She has also served in the team that set up the online charitable social platform JustGiving.
Voaden found herself in hot water after she said “b******s” on Good Morning Britain while being interviewed by Piers Morgan.
She has been quoted as saying: “The Liberal Democrats are always accused of being the reasonable party, we don’t get asked onto Question Time because we don’t say anything controversial enough, we are nice and polite.”
Ken Loach
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Famed film director of hard-hitting and iconic films such as Cathy Come Home, Kes and more recently I, Daniel Blake.
A hardline left-winger who before joining Labour in 2015, backed the likes of Left Unity and Respect.
He has now thrown his support fully behind Jeremy Corbyn and has said he thought the leadership of the party had “compromised too much with the Labour right”.
Although against leaving the EU he has stated there are more important issues to be concerned with: “the issue of health, and our schools, poverty, inequality and climate change — the big existing problems have all arisen while within the European Union, they transcend Brexit and are more important”
Kate Andrews
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Dear Starmer
Labour shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer pockets £125,000 from law firm derailing Britain’s EU exit
With a CV that includes being a staffer on Mitt Romney’s unsuccessful presidential campaign and head of communications at the Adam Smith Institute, as well as her current position as associated director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, it’s fair to say she is a hardline right-winger.
The American is pro-Brexit seeing it as offering up opportunities for the country, but while not rejecting a hard, no-deal Brexit, appears to be cautious of it.
In the past she has said: “I don’t think that a bare-bones Brexit would be the end of the world.”
