Good grief

Tonight's Question Time special on BBC One began with Jeremy Corbyn, and there were loud whoops and cheers and plenty of applause from what looked like a large minority of the audience.  

Though there were tough questions from members of the audience, he went down a storm. 

My first thoughts were to think that this partisan whooping might, somewhow, be balanced later. 

And, curiously, there was balance from a strangely large contingent of SNP supporters asking Jeremy pro-SNP questions - so much so that even Fiona Bruce raised an eyebrow. 

But then came Nicola Sturgeon herself, and she was listened to respectfully. But she didn't get the whoops and cheers that Jeremy got and was only applauded loudly after denouncing the Tories. 

Next up was poor, hapless Jo Swinson. Here my surprise really kicked in. There seemed to be about five supporters of her in the entire audience. And even they only applauded once. Otherwise it was nothing but tumbleweed. And derision. And Momentum-style questions, including a heavily-applauded attack on her for being mean to the wonderful, anti-racism-in-all-its-forms Jeremy Corbyn over antisemitism. 

And, finally, came Boris. And the trajectory from the zenith of audience enthusiasm - from wild enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn, through polite respect towards Nicola Sturgeon, to derision alternating with silence towards Jo Swinson - reached its nadir. 

Yep. Boris, greeted by some cheers, was outnumbered by jeers and heckles. And jeers and heckles comtinued with very little applause. And Fiona Bruce went into interruption and mockery overdrive. (I wish I'd done an interruption count because it was so massively more.)

I've defended Question Time many times in the past over accusations of audience bias, but this was seriously bad. Absurdly bad. BBC executive heads should roll - or at least use their mouths to properly apologise - over this. 

I think Iain Dale summed it up perfectly:

So as well as there being no Liberal Democrats, or Leavers in this Question Time audience, there appear to be bugger all Tories there either. 

I imagine Daniel Blake may make an appearance soon. 

Kudos to whichever Momentum branch that managed to pack the audience!

It certainly was one heck on an audience. Something went seriously wrong tonight, impartiality-wise. 

The 'Daniel Blake' reference there arose when the Sun's Tom Newton Dunn spotted that one of Jo Swinson's strongest critics (invited to challenge her twice) was Kate Rutter, an actress in far-left Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake. 

We expect that though. It's Question Time after all. And I bet Kate was far from being the only activist there tonight. In fact. I'm wondering who wasn't an activist.

Who was in this audience? And who selected this audience, and how did they select it? And why did the BBC allow it to happen?