Last Night’s Question Time (15.07.10)
In uncharacteristic fashion, last night’s Question Time from Bexhill-on-Sea proved a rather undignified affair to behold. It certainly made for particularly irritable viewing at times as David Dimbleby struggled to maintain control of proceedings while shadow health secretary Andy Burnham and Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude squabbled like spoilt children from his left and right flanks respectively.The stars of the show though were perhaps two female pensioners in the front row who appeared to have recaptured the revolutionary spirit of their lost youth, raucously deriding each of the panelists at every available opportunity, much to the displeasure of the chair, whose powers this evening were tested almost to their limits. “You all want to be heard so wait your turn”, he vigorously asserted, drawing some order at last to the discussion.
Irritable though it may have been however, to its credit the programme also played host to excellent bouts of serious, spirited and frank discussion surrounding the future of the NHS, the like of which Question Time and the British public deserves from its politicians on a weekly basis. The remarkable aspect of this night’s controversy was perhaps the weight and honesty that the words of each speaker carried. Burnham who is running for the Labour leadership spoke with passion and genuine grievance at the thought of privatisation within the NHS, a sentiment that clearly resonated with many audience members and panelists that evening. Backing him up were Sally Bercow the endlessly twittering wife of Speaker of the House John Bercow and former Respect MP George Galloway, who was on fine form. Maude was certainly presented with a challenge to defend the coalition’s plans, a challenge he rose to arguably with a substantial degree of success. Under pressure he deflected serious accusations from George Galloway who claimed that the conservatives were making these reforms simply to favour backers of the Tory party, the kind of private consultants and companies like Tribal, who were “rubbing their hands” in expectation for these proposals. One audience member rightly pointed out that such plans had never appeared in either coalition party’s manifesto, highlighting the contentious issue of broken promises and public mistrust in British politics right now. “The mask is slipping”, Galloway chimed, much to the agreement of a disgruntled audience. As ever, Maude attributed the deep cuts and accompanying reforms as unavoidable, a result entirely of the Labour party’s failings during its thirteen-year stay in office. It was not pretty, nor was it particularly appeasing to a determined audience, but it was undeniably an important factor in the decision to instigate these reforms nonetheless, not to be ignored.
Bercow was clearly invited for her social network expertise with relation to the other big story of the night, the Raoul Moat Facebook fan page which received over ten thousand followers and thirty thousand comments since its creation and subsequent deletion. Though she confessed to holding no interest in Facebook, the page was clearly worrying but should hold no ramifications for internet censorship, she argued, stating only that “I believe in the freedom of speech.” The panel appeared unanimous in proposing tighter self-regulation across the web, but the most interesting comment of the night emerged from George Galloway who asserted that the page’s popularity highlighted the “swelling rage” of the white working class, a substantial proportion of society disillusioned with authority and government “who feel that nobody speaks for them” and offered support to Moat as an anti-state figure. “These people who gained nothing from the good years are destined for oblivion in the bad years under the Con-Dem coalition,” he claimed.
Having two talk show hosts in Galloway and Nick Ferrari brought an interesting dynamic to the programme overall. Speaking as they do largely from largely common-sense perspectives with a dose of devil’s advocacy, they contrasted well with Bercow’s web politics and the two career politicians. Burnham may have in fact successfully escaped this mould by bringing a distinctly northern working-class feel to Labour’s rubbishing of Con-Dem policy – an angle he has attempted to exploit since he launched his bid for the leadership – leaving Maude looking a little out of step. His performance last night should resonate well with core Labour voters, though it remains to be seen whether he can muster more of the same to disrupt David Miliband’s campaign.
