Planting the seeds of suspicion

On an earlier post about the BBC's Question Time I wrote:

Another reason why many (usually right-wing) people believe there to be a problem here is that they've...read (as I used to read) blog-posts (on right-wing blogs) pointing out a particular Labour Party activist in the audience asking one of the main questions. Someone had recognised them.

I once read such a post and decided to see if I could use Google to check out an audience member in Cardiff - one who had asked a sharply-political main question sarcastically attacking UKIP. He had the air of a political type to me, yet here he was appearing as an ordinary member of the Cardiff public being rude about Mr. Farage. (The edition featured Nigel Farage). As he had a very unusual name up popped an identical name to his on Google. That identically-named man was a (failed) Labour local election candidate - not in Cardiff but in Coventry. A co-incidence of names? Possibly. Well, Google Images also showed a photo of the very same man from the Cardiff edition of Question Time at a social gathering, in Coventry. Aha! I didn't progress it beyond that after my e-mails to the local Conservative association (enquiring if they knew whether the Coventry Labour activist was on that particular Question Time edition) got absolutely no response. It almost certainly was him. Anyhow, that was enough to convince me of the "urban myth", being only too ready to make the extra leap of faith into believing that his presence in Cardiff - at Labour's  request? - was somehow also with the BBC's connivance. Looking back, that was a leap too far but it was a suggestive 'discovery' nonetheless. I was highly suggestive at the time.

Well, it's happened again - and once more it's thanks to the world of blogs that we know about it.

As this Thursday's Question Time from Dover ended the eagle-eyed denizens of the social media began tweeting and blogging about the girl in the audience who had so passionately challenged Diane James - the UKIP candidate in the Eastleigh by-election and a panellist on that evening's programme. The audience member in question was Amy Rutland, who tweets as Rutters101. Rather naively, she seems to have failed to anticipate that 'spotting the Labour plant' is pretty easy in the Age of Twitter - especially when you choose to tweet about your own appearance on the programme "rip[ping] into the disgusting UKIP woman".

For, lo and behold, it turns out that she is no ordinary member of the public after all. She's a Labour Party activist; in fact she's the Regional Policy Co-ordinator for the Labour Party in Kent no less. It used to say so on her Twitter and Linkedin profiles. She panicked after the news of her involvement with the Labour Party broke, however, and deleted all those Labour references from both profiles. Unfortunately for her, bloggers screen-grabbed her original Twitter profile before she changed it (and before she protected her tweets), and the cached version of her Linkedin account still shows her affiliations. Oh Amy!!

It also turns out that she had spent that very afternoon with Labour's shadow education secretary Stephen Twigg, who was also on the Question Time panel with Diane James, and with Clair Hawkins, the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate in Dover. She'd tweeted about that too.

It certainly isn't entering into conspiratorial thinking to suggest that the fact that both Amy Rutland and Stephen Twigg were going to be at the same Question Time recording that night was bound to have come up at some stage during their afternoon chat, as it would have been a very peculiar conversation in the circumstances if their shared plans for the evening weren't discussed!

Similarly, it is hardly unreasonable to suspect that when a Labour shadow minister, a prominent local Labour activist and the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate in Dover get together they are bound to have discussed the hot topic of UKIP and its growing threat to their party.

Does that prove that Amy Rutland was indeed 'a Labour plant'?

This exchange ensued on Twitter the following day:

GrumpyCockney ‏@GrumpyCockney@ClairHawkins We see you got your Labour plant/crony on Question Time to give the UKIP rep a hard time. How low will you/Labour sink to?
Mar 8  Clair Hawkins ‏@ClairHawkins@GrumpyCockney I didn't get anyone to do anything on QT. Knew many members of Dover audience. Some Labour, some not, all there in own right!
Mar 8  GrumpyCockney ‏@GrumpyCockney@ClairHawkins You may want to read @rutters101 tweets from yesterday and revise that statement.

Clair hasn't got back to Grumpy Cockney on that one yet.

Amy Rutland may well have been there, alongside the other members of the audience ("some Labour, some not"), in her own right and may indeed have chosen to attack UKIP entirely off her own bat. It's impossible for us to know what she discussed with Stephen Twigg and Clair Hawkins. We can only guess and assume. I choose to guess and assume that they did discuss the possibility of her challenging Diane James. You don't need to be a cynic or a fan of The Thick Of It to suspect that possibility!

You will notice, if you watch the programme, that Stephen Twigg takes up her attack on UKIP "scaremongering" and that the camera focuses on Amy as she vigorously nods her agreement with him. You will also notice Stephen Twigg, without batting an eyelid, saying "But I just, going back to my original point,  hope that they [UKIP] will not engage in some of the tactics that we heard about from the questioner in the audience." ("The questioner in the audience" indeed! As if he didn't know her!! Damned dodgy politicians!!! How can you ever trust 'em?!?)

It would be interesting to know what proportion of an average Question Time audience are party activists. Clair Hawkins recognised other Labour people from this edition's audience. Was the girl in blue on the front row who backed up Amy and Stephen Twigg's "scaremongering" charge against UKIP another Labour Party activist? What about the teacher sitting two seats away from Amy defending immigration and attacking the government's education policy (while the camera focussed on Stephen Twigg vigorously nodding his head as she spoke)? Another Labour activist? How many Conservative, UKIP, Lib Dem (etc) activists were there in that audience? Is there a disproportionate number of Labour activists? If there is, is that because Labour is a party of dirty tricks and gerrymandering, or simply because ordinary Labour Party members are more politically active - and more physically active (in the sense of being bothered to get off their backside, go to a BBC recording and raise their hands to make a point) - than their counterparts in other parties? .

None of my statistic efforts can answer that. Only the Question Time researchers can supply the answer to that.

Please check out their online application form. It asks about which party applicants to join the audience support and whether they are a member of a political party. It asks a lot more besides. If the makers of Question Time wanted to rig an audience they could easily do so by exploiting those questions. They say they don't, of course - and James Delingpole, for one, believes them, if you remember. I don't disbelieve them myself either.

According to the BBC, the programme aims to ensure that the audience reflects the general political make-up of the voting public. An element of potential bias arises because the selection process is carried out by a BBC team and must, inevitably, depend to a certain extent on the subjective judgements of a collection of individual BBC employees. If, as is often assumed about BBC employees, they tend towards the Left side of politics far more than they do to the Right, their choices may unconsciously reflect their beliefs quite often. The rigging could be quite unintended but nonetheless very real. (I suppose the answer there is for the Question Time team to select itself on the same basis - ensuring a balance of Right and Left!!)

Moreover, party activists can very easily circumvent those questions by filling them in dishonestly, however - if they so choose. A Labour Party activist could pretend to be unaligned, or a UKIP supporter, or whatever - if they so choose. An unscrupulous political party could gerrymander Question Time audiences on a regular basis - if they so choose. And there's very little the BBC could do about it if they did so choose (except cancel the programme altogether!) Is Labour gerrymandering Question Time, or are these cases just isolated examples that mean nothing much?

There remain more questions than answers here. Plenty of smoke, only a small amount of fire. Still, this is precisely the sort of thing that makes a lot of people suspicious about the Labour Party....

....and about Question Time and the BBC.

Suspicions about Question Time and the BBC sometime imply or boldly state a very serious charge - active collusion between the Labour Party and the BBC. I don't believe that the makers of Question Time bus in Labour Party activists or that they deliberately intend their audiences to consists of an excess of Labour Party activists, however much it may seem like they do. As I've discussed this at length before I won't go over the same ground again.

Back to Amy Rutland. Her tweet "Don't miss out on Question Time tonight, you'll see me rip into the disgusting UKIP woman! -- Amy Rutland (@rutters101)" was made immediately after the programme was recorded. Question Time is recorded 'as live' and then broadcast to the nation shortly after. This has misled some commenters into assuming that she tweeted before going on the show, thus 'proving' that she knew she was going to be called by David Dimbleby and, thus, 'proving' BBC collusion in the attempted ambush of Diane James. They were mistaken on that point.

However, there's conscious collusion and unconscious collusion. Even if we accept (as I accept) that the makers of Question Time didn't have a chat with Amy and her Labour Party colleagues beforehand and arrange with them (and David Dimbleby) her ambush of UKIP's Diane James, there are questions about how her intervention was handled:

Was she given a lot more time than usual to make her attack?
Why was she allowed to re-ask the same question and make so many other points?
Was it not highly unusual for David Dimbleby to sit back and allow her to enter into a personal debate with Diane?
Did David Dimbleby side with Amy by continually trying to put Diane off and by re-making Amy's points for her? ("Exactly. Thank you David", she said after one particular helpful intervention!)
Why did it seem like a two-pronged attack on UKIP (by the Labour Party and the BBC)?
Did the camera keep lingering on her, again and again, too often, as others spoke? (She was shown nodding her head vigorously as Stephen Twigg denounced UKIP's scaremongering).

(Except for the last question, as the clip is too short...) please judge for yourselves:

Diane James handled the two-pronged attack well enough. Plus Melanie Phillips then launched a vigorous defence of the UKIP point of view that blew Amy's over-emotional, increasingly off-the-rails 'critique' of the party out of the water. Neither could have known at that stage that she was a leading Labour activist in the area, so neither could have thrown that point at her.

The interesting thing, as so often, is the audience response. My theory (as announced before) is that the Left's tendency to be more extrovert and public than the Right in their expression of their politics (all those demos, marches, etc) often results in lots of whooping, cheering, ostentatious clapping and booing - and lots more points - from their side in a typical Question Time audience while the Right usually sits quietly, listening. The impression is given, therefore,  that the audience consists almost entirely of left-wingers.

If you listen to the whole programme, however, you will notice the reaction to Melanie Phillips's response to Amy Rutland. The audience applause is strong, showing that there must be quite a sizeable chunk of shy Righties in that audience, daring to clap - and clap loudly! It was stronger than the applause Amy got.

OK. So what does this all add up to? We've got more evidence of Labour activists posing as members of the public on Question Time. We've got evidence of a Labour politician failing to disclose that he knows the questioner he's agreeing with, whilst shamelessly pretending not to know her. We know the Labour questioner and the Labour panellist got together with each other that afternoon. We know they reinforced each other's points that night on Question Time. Amy Rutland is not just an ordinary party member. I think, therefore, that the 'Labour plant' accusation is a reasonable one.

Beyond that, we've only got suspicions and questions about the BBC's part in this. A girl puts up her hand  and looks eager to speak. David Dimbleby calls her to speak. She attacks UKIP. He interrupts the UKIP speaker twice as she tries to reply to force her to deal with the questioner's insulting point about her party being "disgusting" and allows the questioner to make additional point after additional point, again reinforcing them. He allows it to go on for nearly three minutes. He elsewhere drolly refers to the UKIP question as "Ukipery". Bias?

You'll have to watch the programme yourself to decide. There's no rush. It will be available for a year. If you spot any more Labour activists, don't forget to tweet or blog it to the world. If there are shenanigans going on around Question Time, the social media will probably be the place that breaks the story.

Questions, Questions

OK. I didn't want to but I suppose I had to watch last night's Question Time. I endured it purely in the interests of using it as a test case (and, my, what fun it was!)

The programme came from the fairly safe Labour seat of Stirling, and featured Lib Dem Michael Moore MP; the SNP's Humza Yousaf MSP; Labour's Lord Falconer; Conservative MP Mary Macleod; and SNP donor Sir Brian Souter, Chief Executive of Stagecoach Group.

Let's concentrate on the questions though.

The first question selected by the Question Time team concerned the appalling standards of care found at an NHS hospital by a newly-published report. This was investigating the high mortality levels found at the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust between 2005 and 2009 - the report into which can be read in full here. The report chronicles staff failings and substandard levels of care on an extraordinary scale. As well as revealing a lack of basic professionalism and compassion shown by doctors and nurse at the hospitals, its managers have also been blamed for cutting corners and covering up mistakes in an attempt to meet Labour's targets and win "foundation status" for the trust. So there's a lot of blame to spread around it seems. Commentators (not all on the right) have been making an obvious point, juxtaposing the shocking examples of neglect, incompetence and cover-up at Stafford Hospital (which caused some 1,200 people patients to die needlessly) with the sanitised and sanctified view of the NHS presented by Danny Boyle during the Olympic opening ceremony. "We ♥ the NHS."  

This scandal, as the politically-informed among you will realise, took place during the "boom years" of the last Labour government, when public money was pouring into the NHS. Cost-cutting may have been in the mind of managers at the hospital, but money from central government was still coming at them at record levels. What sort of questions might you have expected then on last night's programme, given that surely not even the most left-wing Question Time audience could try to blame the present Conservative/Lib Dem coalition government (and/or its austerity measures) for a scandal within the NHS from 2005-2009? 

How about these questions?: "Should the scandal at Stafford Hospital shake us out of our complacency about standards in the NHS?" or "Who's to blame for the appalling standards found in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust -  NHS managers, the last Labour government or NHS doctors and nurses?" Or how about something more neutral?: "What does the scandal at the Stafford Hospital tell us about standards of in the the NHS as a whole?" or "Who does the panel think is to blame for the appalling standards found at Stafford Hospital?" 

This, however (believe it or not), was the actual question chosen by the Question Time team to be asked:

"Are the appalling standards found at Stafford Hospital a sign of things to come from our NHS due to austerity?" 

Yes, the question and questioner selected did try to make it about the present government (elected in 2010) and did try to tie the scandal to "the cuts"! The point here is that it was the Question Time team's decision to pick that particularly-worded question to put to the panel (as they do with all questions). They made a choice. What on earth entered their heads when they chose it above all others (and presumably there were many questions to choose from on this subject)? It's certainly an odd question to choose in the circumstances, isn't it? Is it also a shocking instance of BBC bias? 

The question was so wide-of-the-mark that the panellists either almost entirely ignored or dismissed it - despite another audience member also giving it a try and despite David Dimbleby trying to get Michael Moore to discuss it. Yes, even the Labour and SNP representatives refused to go down the path the questioner clearly wanted them to go down. Was that the path which the Question Time team also wanted them to go down? If it was, why?

Regular readers of right-wing anti-BBC blogs will know that Chris Huhne - the pro-Green, climate change campaigner,Tory-bashing Lib Dem from the left-wing of his party - has always been a firm BBC favourite. I've read that accusation against the BBC so many times over recent years. What would such a reader expect from the unavoidable question about Chris Huhne which came up on Question Time last night in the wake of his guilty plea over the charge of perverting the course of justice and his subsequent resignation as an MP? That reader would surely expect the BBC to bias the question in Chris Huhne's favour. How? Maybe by picking a question from someone asking a facetious question which implies that Chris Huhne isn't a bad chap and it's all become a bit overblown - something along the lines, perhaps, of "Is Chris Huhne such a public menace that he deserves to be sent to prison?". The idea of Chris Huhne as "a public menace" or "a danger to society" is so hyperbolic as to sound ridiculous and phrasing a question like that would be quite helpful to him in the circumstances.  So that's the sort of thing someone expecting bias from the BBC might expect. And what question was chosen by the Question Time team?:

"Is Chris Huhne such a danger to society that he deserves to go to jail?"

Unsurprisingly, the panel said he most certainly isn't "a danger to society" and were full of sympathy for him and his family and the view seemed to be (except for the Conservative MP) that his wasn't a major offence (not compared to the actions of the bankers, of course. Clap, clap, clap, clap). Was this a biased choice of question? Given some of the audience comments there must have been some far less sympathetic ones to pick from.

Next came the obligatory Scottish independence question. Here bias-watchers need to be aware of two rival claims: One is that the BBC is pro-SNP and pro-independence; the other is that the BBC is anti-SNP and pro-unionist (in the Scottish sense of 'unionist'). Many at Biased BBC contend that it's pro-SNP. My one attempt to systematically follow a major Scottish current affairs programme (The Politics Show: Scotland) from late 2009 to mid 2010 found that its presenter seemed to be anti-SNP. SNP supporters, pretty much en masse, agree that the BBC is biased against them. Bearing all that in mind, what question was chosen by Question Time last night?:

"What do you make of recent polling that suggests that support for Scottish independence is at its lowest level since the creation of  the Holyrood parliament in 1999?"

Well, that's a question which most assuredly isn't biased in favour of the SNP! Does it also confirm bias on the part of the Question Time team though?

The most common complaint here, of course, is that the BBC is anti-Tory. The first question could easily be construed as being anti-Tory, and the final one was most definitely anti-Tory: 

"How can the Conservative Party claim to want a fair, more equal society when almost have their MPs opposed the Same Sex Couples Marriage Bill?"

So, despite the fact that it was a Conservative Party prime minister who brought the bill in, the Question Time team chooses an explicitly anti-Tory question about the passage of this potentially landmark piece of legislation. There were doubtless many others for them to choose from, but they chose that particular one. Is that also evidence of bias? 

Of course, if you expect the programme to push the anti-cuts agenda even in the unlikeliest of questions whilst covering Labour's tracks, or if you expect the programme to cover Chris Huhne's tracks for him, or if you expect the programme to be anti-SNP, or if you expect the programme to push an anti-Tory slant on a major piece of social legislation, then you will be highly likely to judge the programme makers' choice of questions last night to be "biased". My old self of three years ago, when I last seriously watched the programme, would certainly have expected all these things to happen in advance. That they did all happen last night when I was not really expecting them to happen is intriguing. Does it trouble you too?

I'm going to have to stop you there. We're running out of time.

Continuing with the subject of bias and the BBC's Question Time, a post called Is there Bias on BBC Question Time? caused quite a flurry of interest late last year. It was written by Labour activist Phil Burton-Cartledge on his A Very Public Sociologist blog and was subsequently taken up and given a wide readership by the New Statesman. 

It began: 

Is the BBC in thrall to the liberal establishment? Do right-wingers take to the telly in disproportionate numbers? Does it really deserve its Tory epithet, "Buggers Broadcasting Communism"? Or is the BBC getting it about right in striking an impartial balance? Whichever way you look at it, these are not a set of questions likely to be settled by a single blog post.

But one place you might want to look for evidence of  BBC bias is its flagship politics programme, Question Time. More specifically, if there is a leaning to the left or the right, this could be clarified by the political affiliations and loyalties of its guests.

Now, the weighting of the panel on Question Time towards either the right or the left has been a concern of the BBC's critics for a long time. When I was a Biased BBC addict I would always read the comments leading up to its weekly Question Time liveblog (now defunct) where the composition of the panel would usually be brought up and the overwhelming biasing of the panel in favour of the left and against the right would be pointed out/alleged by someone or other. Now, I must admit that as time went on I got more and more sceptical about some of the ratios which commenters were coming up with - usually 5:1 or 4:1 in favour of the left. Just as an example, I remember one comment on an edition featuring Conservative MP Francis Maude and one-time prospective Conservative London mayoral candidate Nick Ferrari, both appearing on the same panel. The comment ran, "Where was the balance on tonights QT. 5 against 1. How does the BBC get away with it. We have a total left wing media." This sort of comment would keep on coming. On occasions some Conservative politician or journalist would be re-defined as a CINO (Conservative In Name Only) for not being sufficiently right-wing and moved straight into the 'leftie' camp, and David Dimbleby himself would frequently be automatically counted into the same ratio as a leftie. Unsurprisingly, overwhelming bias towards the left was regularly 'proved' by this doubtless very sincerely-meant species of gerrymandering week in and week out. No wonder the BBC hasn't taken this sort of thing seriously.

What I didn't realise, not frequenting Twitter, is that left-wingers are also regularly tweeting complaints about Question Time panels being weighted against the left and towards the right (and/or the establishment). It's a little parallel universe I didn't know existed. Just as on the right-wing blogs, where David Dimbleby was seen as being obviously pro-Labour (and a leftie), so these left-wing tweeters would regularly castigate "Mr. Impartiality" (as the Radio Times once called him) for being a not-so-closet Tory (and a rightie) and being blatantly biased against their side of the argument. Amazing! 

Now, complaints from both sides usually allow the BBC to reach for one of its favourite sayings, "On balance, we think we must be getting it about right." However, despite the Twitterati, it remains pretty much unarguable that it's right-wingers who are disproportionately angered by what they see as Question Time's pro-Left bias and that the left-wing complainants are far few in number. (Surely?) Plus there are far more left-wingers out there ready to defend the BBC against charges of bias than there are right-wingers. (Surely?)

Cue Phil. 

He studied every edition since 4 December 2008 using the information provided by....Wikipedia. Yes, it was easy-to-access, publicly-available info! It gave him some four years worth of data and a list of 362 individuals occupying 704 panel slots. What he then did (in the course of an evening, from his descriptions elsewhere - so it barely took any time to work out) was to ascribe a party or right-wing/left-wing tag to them, wherever possible. Simple but clever. (I wish I'd thought of it!)

His first set of findings concerns the party politicians: 

47 Conservative politicians occupying 137 slots 

51 Labour with 148 slots 

31 LibDems with 109 slots

18 Others taking 57 slots 

Phil's "socialist spin" on this (as his blog puts it) runs as follows:

A slight advantage for Labour perhaps, but hardly indicative of a systematic political bias - and even less so if you strip out the Question Time dedicated to the Labour leadership election in 2010.

OK, so he's proved an advantage for Labour but, he says it's a "slight" one that's "hardly indicative of a systematic bias". I agree with that. I'd say though that he is "spinning" with regards to that point about the Labour leadership election special, as that occasion saw five Labour Party politicians being given the opportunity to promote their leadership qualities and to bash the Tories at the same time - without the inconvenience of a single Tory to respond. That shouldn't be discounted, Phil. It should earn Labour double points instead! Well, that's my anti-socialist spin on it!! - and it's doubtless just as feeble as Phil's socialist spin. The figures are exactly right as they are, showing that slight Labour advantage that's hardly indicative of a systematic bias. 

Phil then moves on:

Matters are skewed when you introduce other categories of guests. 

His initial breakdown is:

:

trade unionists (7 occupying 9 slots)

business people (23 and 32 slots)

journalists (61 occupying 127 slots (21 women and 42 slots)

celebrities (31 and 46 slots)

campaigners and wonks (4 taking 11 slots)

'other' (authors, scientists, clergy, retired military, etc. - 23 taking 29 slots)

His left-right breakdown of the journalists is:

Balance-wise the right outweigh the left here, but that could be a freak of the figures, right? No. Of the 61 journalists, 40 could be described as explicitly political writers. 27 are of the right, and 13 are liberal/left. Rightwing journalists took 64 slots, and the liberal/left 31. For whatever reason, not only are hacks overrepresented on the Question Time panel, but Tory-leaning journalists outnumber their liberal and Labour-leaning contributors by over two to one.

I've re-done his survey and, yes, he's right. The right-wing journalists do outnumber the left-wing ones by an almost exact 2:1 ratio. Shall I spin this? Hmm. Question Time has to draw its journalists from across the spectrum of the UK press as well as the political spectrum. There are more right-wing components of the UK press than there are left-wing ones, so - taking the newspapers - you have a 2:1 ratio of right-leaning papers (Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express, Sun and Star) to left-leaning papers (Guardian, Independent and Mirror). Chuck in the small daily circulations of the two left-leaning broadsheets, & you have your reason why Question Time has the balance of journalists it has. QED. Well, probably not. Probably not.

Ah, but Phil's celebs push us back towards the left again:

The balance is not addressed by the other category of guests. Of the 31 celebs, 18 have definite views that align one way or the other. Six are on the right, and 12 of the liberal/left. The former had 13 slots, and the latter 16.

Next we get a little more "socialist spin": 

There are other questions that need to be asked. The predominance of business people over trade union voices came as no surprise at all. But come on, leading trade unionists combined have been on less than Nigel Farage! In case anyone needs reminding, trade unions are the largest voluntary organisations in civil society with a combined membership of some six million. Farage is the leader of a party whose supporters can fit into my living room. And if that wasn't bad enough, his odious minion Paul Nuttall has been on twice too. So why are UKIP way overrepresented on the panel and a mass movement of millions virtually ignored?

The first element of the "spin" is to imply a sigh at "the predominance of business people over trades union voices". As business leaders can be seen to speak for the 22 million people in the UK employed in the private sector, they should be on a lot more than trades union leaders who speak for only 6 million people.  (So Question Times ratio of business leaders to trade unionists would be "about right"!) Also, note how Phil drops his left-right/Labour-Conservative analysis here. As most of the "trades union voices" are key players in the internal affairs of the Labour Party, they can (with rare exceptions) be classed as pro-Labour and (with no exceptions) left-wing. No such direct link can be made from many of the business leaders to the Conservative Party (Simon Wolfson is an obvious exception) and some could be pro-Labour (Max Mosley, a Labour donor - two appearances - for example) Given that all three main parties consider themselves to be pro-business and business leaders tend to keep out of party politics, this is a grey area in Phil's survey. He might presume they are all right-wing, being (by definition) pro-business, but they aren't necessarily so. 

The second element of spin relates to his attacks on UKIP. Presumably Phil's point is that UKIP has no UK parliamentary seats (though they did get 3.1% in the 2010 general election) so UKIP's "over-representation" on the programme (13 appearances) is plain for all to see (he thinks). Well, if you look at it that way perhaps. However, UKIP is, of course, way up in the opinion polls at the moment, has a large contingent at the European parliament and might just, polls say, come first in the next European elections in 2014. So, over-represented? Actually, if you work out the percentages, UKIP only gets 2.9% of the party political spots (13 out of 451) compared to 32.3% for Labour, 30.4% for the Conservatives and (a surprisingly high) 24.2% for the Liberal Democrats. Hardly over-representation I think. Plus given that Question Time is primarily a party political programme, the fact that the number of party politicians from smaller parties (UKIP, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, Respect, etc) seems disproportionate the number of (largely Labour Party-affiliated) trade union leaders isn't particularly surprising. 

So what's the verdict on Phil's study? It pretty much proves that there isn't a problem with bias as regards left-right imbalance on Question Time, guest selection-wise. One area of left-leaning imbalance is pretty much evened out by another area of right-leaning imbalance. However much you (or I) might want to shuffle guests into one camp or the other to suit our tastes and to get the ratio we want, the panels on Question Time are balanced (over time). If you still choose not to believe that then you are ignoring the facts and blundering on with a self-placed blindfold over your eyes. That's what the stats show and the stats are right, even if some of the interpretations put on them (by both Phil and myself) remain open to question - and to vigorous disagreement. Such is politics, and rightly so. Statistics can only take us so far.

I would add that it would have been far better if Phil had posted the full results on his blog - along with his right'/'left' labels. (I used to post the full results of my surveys on my old blog. They were very full and took up acres of blog space, but given how much blog space there is that's hardly an issue). That way others can check the soundness of the stats for themselves. It looks a bit suspicious if you don't. 

****************

After all that number-crunching, let's see how others reacted to Phil's findings. 

Let's start with Phil himself. He admits on his blog why he really did his survey - and it wasn't to prove pro-right bias at Question Time. Here's an exchange:

Loz said...
Anyway, great piece and should be spread far and wide every Thursday the minute a right-winger opens their cake hole to bleat about the Marxists controlling the BBC.

Phil said...
Re: your final comment, I wrote it specifically for those annoying Question Time moments ;) 

Biased BBC (the very sort of people he intended to annoy) responded. The post, Not Many People Know That, didn't dispute his findings, its author simply stating "I always assume QT is in the main ‘balanced’". Many of his readers at Biased BBC most definitely don't share that assumption it has to be said. The whole thread largely consists of a stream of ad hominem arguments, which I feel an urge to summarise for you (for your edification):

What a waste of time!

Get a life mate!

It's in the New Statesman!

Sociologists are a waste of space!

He's a leftie!

There's no right-wing bias on the BBC. Ever. Full stop.

It's always 4:2 or 5:1.

He's a liar!

He's just can't have been being objective!

He can't be right!

He counted all those CINOs as right-wingers!

The Left are fools and traitors.

He spelt a word wrong on Twitter!

Marxists are bad people.

I looked at the last five editions. They prove him wrong. 

"I'm not going to waste any more of my time proving what we all know anyway."

Hmm. 

The left-wing commenters at the New Statesman (despite the odd stray anti-BBC, pro-right comment) did much what you'd expect them to do as well. They seemed to divide between those are keen to defend the BBC as a beacon of impartial broadcasting and those who see if as a right-wing, establishment outfit with Andrew Marr as a reactionary and David Dimbleby as anti-left. Someone added a gratuitous dig at Israel, naturally. 

*************

Two other concerns (at least) remain about Question Time's impartiality - the question of whether David Dimbleby is a biased chairman and the question of whether the questions chosen by the Question Time team demonstrate bias. 

David Dimbleby, as you can see above, gets accused by a minority on the left of being an anti-left, establishment type but for as long as I've read Biased BBC it's been the accusation that he's anti-right that has reached my ears more - particularly as I have in the past been in the thick of providing statistics that back up that contention.

My old Beeb Bias Craig blog looked at Question Time in the months leading up to the May 2010 general election. As was my way, I watched every edition of the programme (to avoid cherry picking) and spent a good four hours each week analysing each edition. I worked out precise figures for how much time each guest got to speak, who was questioned most by David Dimbleby and - above all - who was (proportionally) interrupted the most (my old interruption coefficients). You can read all my results here. Though the rather angry (and insulting) tone of some of my posts back then makes me squirm now, I stand by those figures. They are spot on. 

I'll quote a post I wrote for Biased BBC some time later:

Following last week’s full-frontal assault on Coalition minister Vince Cable, this week’s Question Time saw another Coalition minister, Grant Shapps, fall victim to a rampaging bullock, being questioned and interrupted by David Dimbleby far more than any of the other guests (even David Starkey). The figures for this will appear in the comments field below.

Well, you might say, both Mr Shapps and Dr Cable are government spokesmen, so David Dimbleby is right to challenge them more than guests from the opposition parties – except that DD didn’t challenge government ministers more than opposition party guests when Labour were in power. Quite the reverse.

Here’s a list of the guests who were interrupted most frequently by DD in relation to the length they were allowed to speak (yes, interruption coefficients!) in the months leading up to the general election. (There are a few joint first prizes):

29/4 Liam Fox (C) /Vince Cable (LD)
22/4 William Hague (C)
15/4 Nigel Farage (UKIP)
8/4 Theresa May (C)
1/4 Ken Clarke (C)
25/3 Liam Byrne (L)/Baroness Warsi (C)
18/3 Caroline Lucas (Green)/Andrew Lansley (C)
11/3 Jo Swinson (LD)
4/3 Boris Johnson (C)
25/2 Nigel Farage (UKIP)
18/2 Lynne Featherstone (LD)
11/2 Jim Allister (TUV)
4/2 Theresa May (C)
28/1 Jenny Tonge (LD)/Nigel Lawson (C)
21/1 Caroline Spelman (C)

Full details of the statistics behind this list can be found here.

By political party, that results in these totals for the award for Most Interrupted Panelist:

Conservatives – 10
Liberal Democrats – 4
UKIP – 2
TUV – 1
Greens – 1
…and for the government of the day…
Labour – 1

I wish David Dimbleby a long and happy retirement!

(Charming last comment, that!)

So, as you can see, I was convinced that I had the stats to show anti-right bias by David Dimbleby ("Mr. Impartiality".) I admitted to myself even then though that David Dimbleby doesn't look like a leftie, despite sometimes seeming to behave like one. I toyed with the idea at the time - after it was suggested by esteemed fellow blogger Nota Sheep - that he might be over-compensating for some innate Conservative tendencies.

Talking of the excellent Nota Sheep, he is fond of posting this video, which seems to show DD launching an attack on Iain Duncan Smith at the prompting of Harriet Harman. This one will fascinate you if you've never seen it before. What is going on here (besides some tricksy use of video by the video maker)?:

The response from an anonymous commenter at the time on Nota's blog puts the case for the defence:

What was it that we're supposed to be annoyed about? She said something to him, and he then interrupted IDS, but you can't say that one led to the other. All David Dimbleby does on that show is interrupt and challenge the speakers - that's what he's there for. He does it to everyone - well, to all the politicians anyway, he usually gives journos and business types an easier ride.

By the way, Dimbleby is not employed by the BBC, he's always been a freelancer. 

So, what do I think now? Well, as for that video, I rather agree with the anonymous commenter these days. I no longer believe it to be quite the clinching proof of a Labour-BBC conspiracy I once half-believed it was. It looks bad, when viewed in a certain light; however, polemical heavily-edited videos with short, taken-out-of-context extracts from an hour-long programme have somewhat lost their sway over me. He may have been a bit too much in Harriet Harman's corner in that extract (quoting her "Rubbish" at IDS), but would he not have interrupted Iain Duncan Smith anyhow for going off-topic? David Dimbleby often comes down on guests like a ton of bricks for going off-topic. I suspect he interrupted repeatedly and forcefully because that's what he does. 

However, what about my own figures showing that David Dimbleby interrupted anyone-but-Labour more than than he did the then-Labour government representative on the programme? I well remember how angry I used to get whilst studying some editions of the programme at the time whenever DD used to go for his right-wing guests (not all of them Conservative or UKIP spokesmen, some right-wing journos) much more than he did Labour spokesmen; however, reviewing my figures, he also went after Green and Lib Dem politicians too - plus those headline figures don't show that he did give some of his Labour guests at the time a fairly tough time (just not as often and not across the board). If you review, as I've just done, some of my more detailed takes on particular episodes - such as this or this or this or this or this or this or this or this (and there's more!) -  you might be able to sense my anger and my then very firm belief in the anti-right bias of David Dimbleby and might see why I might have felt it. 

I know it will probably seem to any of you who aren't enmeshed in this debate that the idea of David Dimbleby as a biased leftie (or as an overcompensating Tory) will seem ridiculous. His coverage of such national events such as Remembrance Day, Trooping the Colour, the State Opening of Parliament and so on are models of presentation and have endeared him to many BBC viewers over several decades. He's also presented such charming programmes as A Picture of Britain. I've not monitored the man's performance on Question Time in recent years so I can't say if this was an atypical period or not, but I watched the programme closely for some months at that time and I know what I saw. I saw biased chairmanship from David Dimbleby. What do you make of that? What do I make of that?

As for the other concern - the one about the questions chosen and whether they are selected in a biased way - that's something I've not looked at before. Maybe I will now. Another post beckons.

If I could come to you sir...

James Delingpole, star blogger at the Daily Telegraph, may be best known for his polemical pieces on global warming but he's also posted many a piece excoriating the BBC over its "left-wing bias". These go down very well with his supportive readership (though not with his unsupportive ones!) and you often see links to his anti-BBC posts at Biased BBC. There hasn't been one of those links yet to his latest post, however, entitled BBC Question Time bias: a mystery solved? where James informs us that he has now "stopped loathing Question Time", thanks to the "delightful audience" in "lovely Lancaster". (Yep, that's my neighbouring city and that's what we're like up here - delightful!) He went on to say:

I talked about this afterwards to the lady who vets the audiences. It's an urban myth that before each show the BBC sends a coach to pick their audience up from the Socialist Worker's Party Social Club, Hizb ut Tahrir and the EU Commission. In fact – and I totally believe this – they are rigorously screened and pre-selected to reflect the political spectrum.

I have to say that I've read countless comments over the years from people who firmly believe this "urban myth", that the audience is carefully selected to project the BBC's left-wing agenda and that it most assuredly isn't reflective of the political spectrum. Heck, I've made a few such comments myself over the years!

The audiences do appear to be overwhelmingly left-wing - making left-wing points, applauding left-wing talking points, attacking right-wing points of view, sitting in stony silence at the end of a right-wing guest's contribution and occasionally booing a right-wing guest. They do often seem to contain a surprising number of militant and/or trades union types too (in the old-fashioned, non-BBC sense of the word 'militant').

I monitored this very briefly (far too briefly for it to add up to much). One episode from Conservative/Liberal-dominated Cheltenham in October 2010 saw the following breakdown of all the points made by the audience:

Attacks on Labour/Support for the Coalition - 2  

Attacks on the Coalition/Support for Labour - 11  

Attacks on Lord Browne's (Coalition-backed) tuition fees proposals - 9  

Support for Lord Browne's (Coalition-backed) tuition fees proposals - 0  

Attacks on the BBC - 0  

Support for the BBC - 1  

Attacks on MPs in general - 1  

Support for foreign ownership of British football clubs - 2  

Attacks on foreign ownership of British football clubs - 1  

You wouldn't expect that from an audience drawn from Cheltenham in 2010, so soon after that year's general election, would you? It doesn't ring true somehow as being representative of the political spectrum - especially in Cheltenham. And that's how it usually seems to be with Question Time audiences week in and week out  - at least for many (particularly right-wing) people -, even when Labour is in government. 

I should have repeated that study over many months, but by then my dislike of watching the programme was too intense and I didn't. If I had carried out such a long-term study, what would it have proved? That unrepresentative-seeming audiences are a feature of Question Time, more often than not, I would guess - probably significantly more often than not. That would show that there really is an issue, a problem - and possibly a significant one - that needs tackling by the BBC. If figures of the type shown above were to  be carried out over, say, a year's worth of editions and if the results demonstrate the same heavy imbalance in a large number of Question Time editions - and very few (or none) trending in the opposite direction - then the BBC would be placed in an embarrassing position. It would be on the receiving end of some difficult questions, which it would no longer be able to dismiss as merely "anecdotal evidence", or as an "urban myth". That's the positive value of statistics. In this sort of area, complaints based purely on anecdote, on what someone "reckons" or "knows for a fact" or that "everybody with a braincell already knows" won't get the complainant very far with the BBC Complaints Department.

Would such a survey also prove the BBC's audience selection process to be a biased one though? No, it wouldn't. It might suggest but it wouldn't prove the BBC's culpability for the problem. Couldn't something else be causing the imbalance?

That said, such figures (if they showed a strong enough trend) would show that the complaints of (usually right-wing) bloggers and commenters that the Question Time audience is unrepresentative are true and that the BBC has, at the very least, been dismissing the problem without just cause - refusing to believe it or believing it but deliberately ignoring it. All of which would make it a potentially fruitful exercise to actually carry out such a survey. It would take up hours of the unpaid researcher's precious spare time every week though to do thoroughly and for anyone who dislikes watching Question Time would doubtless be a painful experience. It ain't something I fancy doing. Any takers?

Another reason why many (usually right-wing) people believe there to be a problem here is that they've read other (right-wing) commenters recounting their own problems with getting onto the programme as an audience member, usually failing to get beyond the questionnaire stage (where you write about your political views). They may have also read (as I used to read) blog-posts (on right-wing blogs) pointing out a particular Labour Party activist in the audience asking one of the main questions. Someone had recognised them.

I once read such a post and decided to see if I could use Google to check out an audience member in Cardiff - one who had asked a sharply-political main question sarcastically attacking UKIP. He had the air of a political type to me, yet here he was appearing as an ordinary member of the Cardiff public being rude about Mr. Farage. (The edition featured Nigel Farage). As he had a very unusual name up popped an identical name to his on Google. That identically-named man was a (failed) Labour local election candidate - not in Cardiff but in Coventry. A co-incidence of names? Possibly. Well, Google Images also showed a photo of the very same man from the Cardiff edition of Question Time at a social gathering, in Coventry. Aha! I didn't progress it beyond that after my e-mails to the local Conservative association (enquiring if they knew whether the Coventry Labour activist was on that particular Question Time edition) got absolutely no response. It almost certainly was him. Anyhow, that was enough to convince me of the "urban myth", being only too ready to make the extra leap of faith into believing that his presence in Cardiff - at Labour's  request? - was somehow also with the BBC's connivance. Looking back, that was a leap too far but it was a suggestive 'discovery' nonetheless. I was highly suggestive at the time. 

James Delingpole probably felt much as I did. He perceived a problem with Question Time audiences and deduced that the BBC's selection processes were the cause - and that the cause of that was bias, possibly intentional bias. Now he feels differently:

In fact – and I totally believe this – they are rigorously screened and pre-selected to reflect the political spectrum. 

I would bet he's right to believe them. I believe them now.

So what's the problem? Why do the BBC's Question Time audiences come across so often as being overwhelmingly left-wing and so unrepresentative of the whole political spectrum?

James Delingpole has an explanation:

Rather, the problem lies in the nature of politics. As I've argued countless times before, it's much easier to be left-wing than to be right-wing. To be on the left confers a spray-on niceness that alleviates you of all need to behave with any kind of decency or moral responsibility in your daily life because, hey, you vote Labour or Lib Dem or Green and that means you care about the oppressed, the disabled, the poor, the minorities, the bunny rabbits, the kittens in baskets with eyes in cutely different colours a bit like David Bowie's. Whereas to be on the right, obviously, means you just want the rich to get richer and for everyone else to get sent to death camps.

One unfortunate result of this is your typical Question Time audience. There are as many conservatives in there as there are lefties. Problem is, the lefties are often much keener to articulate their position because they know instinctively that they have the moral high ground whereas the conservatives are reluctant to stick their head above the parapet lest they be seen to be unkind. I'm not suggesting that they're justified in thinking or behaving this way: I'm merely pointing up human nature. We'd all much rather be liked than disliked, which is why there are so very few people out there willing to play the James Delingpole role. If there were I'd give up my job in a trice. I don't do it for the fun, I can tell you.

That does ring true to me. I recognise my own behaviour (as a cowardly conservative) in that description of how people behave in those sort of charged political debates (or, in my case, in most kinds of political debate outside the circle of family and most intimate friends). They might even take me for a left-winger at times. It's a variation on the old thing about Conservatives (in the days of the 1979-1997 government) not wanting to appear bad in front of opinion pollsters by "admitting" they voted Conservative! There probably are lots of right-wing people in those Question Time audiences. They just don't saying anything, or they clap along to points they don't really agree with to look as if they are on the side 'moral' side as the vocal left-wing neighbours sitting next to them. That sort of thing. Does this ring true to you too? (It's very different on the internet, of course).

Of course, this goes well beyond simple left-wing/right-wing issues. On matters of American and British foreign policy, involvement in wars, Israel, climate change, environmental issues, etc, there's usually an equivalent position to that 'spray-on niceness' position of the standard left-wing standpoint - making love not war, feeling sooo sorry for the Palestinians, fearing for the future of Gaia, and so on, and those are precisely the sort of views you keep hear being expressed by audience members on Question Time. Isn't that the real reason why Question Time audiences tend to appear so unbalanced - and so flippin' predictable on so many issues too?  

If that is the reason - and if the BBC can be forced to admit an ongoing, almost weekly, massive imbalance in the political stance from which most of its audience expresses its points - what can the BBC do about it? Could it divide its audience into sections for people who express a preference for each political party, with non-attached audience members being required to sit with those closest to their political opinion? (Rather like the seating plan of the Scottish parliament!) With like-minded people sitting together (and, thus, feeling more comfortable), the chairman could then ensure that a broad range of views is expressed by picking a balanced selection of people from each section of the audience....unless, of course, the problem James Delingpole identifies extends beyond the BBC studio. Those shy righties will probably be well aware that they are going to watched by a couple of million people perhaps on their tellies - including their less intimate friends and work colleagues! (Wouldn't want to say anything 'uncaring' in front of millions of people, would we?) Hmm, so what could the BBC do to ensure that its "rigorously screened" and "politically representative" audiences actually behave like a "politically representative" audience? Any ideas could be e-mailed to the programme perhaps!

Another possibility (and I'm thinking on my feet here) is that the left-wing members of the audience simply want to have their public say more than the right-wing ones, in much the same way that most of the many protest marches and demonstrations we see in the UK are carried out by left-wingers (or environmentalists, anti-war campaigners, pro-Palestinian activists, etc). Right-wingers (with very rare exceptions) don't march and demonstrate anywhere near so often (if at all). This seems to be a curious, long-term feature of British politics and appears to be mirrored in the Question Time audience. (It's a very different story again on the internet of course, where right-wingers can be as vocal and assertive as anyone else.) Could this be another reason for the imbalanced feel of Question Time audiences?

Questions, questions. The man in the red shirt at the back, yes you sir with the glasses, might know the answer. He usually does.

Of course, there are other concerns about the impartiality of Question Time. They will do for another post though. 

An anti-science bias at 'Question Time'?

Further to Sue's post the other day regarding Russell Brand on Question Time....

Martin Robbins, The Lay Scientist at The Guardian, has published an interesting graph about the BBC's Question Time, based on analysis of all the guest appearances on the programme between May 2010 and June 2013:

He titled his blog 'Everything that's wrong with BBC Question Time in one graph', although he did qualify that with "Okay, so perhaps not quite 'everything'" soon after!

(The two scientists, if you were wondering, were Lord Robert Winston and Colin Blakemore - both Labour Party supporters).

Martin's accompanying commentary is decidedly Guardianesque but a blog his article links to offers a less familiar perspective - and another interesting graph:

Callum Hackett is concerned about media apathy towards science and finds the BBC's Question Time to the a prime example of what's wrong:

Unfortunately, like so many other news sources on the screen and in print, Question Time indefensibly neglects scientific and academic opinion, while shamelessly promoting the opinions of popular entertainers, which are either equally or considerably less valuable on important matters of government policy.

Scientists account for a mere 0.5% of Question Time guests, averaging about one appearance per year. 

Why might this be a problem? Here's Callum take:

I think this lack of a sensible, fair approach to programming is symptomatic of a larger problem that has infested the political system for some time. The UK government, for example, is largely occupied by career-politicians who have been involved with law, the media, or are arts graduates with little experience in other professions. Yet, for a complex, multi-faceted nation utterly dependent on science and technology to run successfully, we require a substantial number of scientists, engineers, academics, economists, doctors, and other well-educated professionals in parliament. Of course, we cannot fault the system if such people are not running for office, but we know all too well that political consultations with unelected representatives of these professions are often ignored in favour of party ideology.

The BBC, while maintaining a façade of openness and equality, is part of this problem, as is most of the media. On its prime political programme – hardly a show that attracts viewers looking for low-brow entertainment – they give regular voice to actors, singers, comedians, and TV personalities, but give hardly any time at all to the members of our society who shape the forefront of our collective knowledge and work on the technologies that may aid our economy and save our planet.

On this page, the BBC’s Deputy Head of Political Programmes in 2005, Ric Bailey, made it clear that one of their primary considerations is the tenor of debate: “The “non-party political” panellists primarily are chosen, we hope, to be lively and interesting and to add a different dimension of expertise or opinion.” There is a faint hope for the mention of “different dimensions” to give scope for inviting scientists or other under-represented figures, but the BBC has a clear bias towards ensuring “lively and interesting” debate by inviting people who more likely to be ideologues and closed to critical, empirical analysis. This is easily demonstrated given the fact that the political opinions of almost every panellist can be accurately predicted before they voice them on the basis of the party or newspaper or cause that they represent. Question Time is not a platform for considered debate where people use facts and reason to reach honest conclusions, it is a vehicle for publicising unconsidered opinions where the audience can agree with people who share they preconceived opinions without anyone actually changing their mind. It’s a sad state of affairs, but it’s just one depressing glimpse at a broken political system that infects wider culture – one that thrives on misinformation, under-education, and blind faith in party ideology.

I would certainly agree that scientists deserve greater representation on Question Time, and add that the audience deserve this too. Politicians and entertainers could quite easily shed a few spots to make space for them.  

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 'Question Time' Studio

First came James Delingpole, writing in 2013:

I talked about this afterwards to the lady who vets the audiences [on 'Question Time']. It's an urban myth that before each show the BBC sends a coach to pick their audience up from the Socialist Worker's Party Social Club, Hizb ut Tahrir and the EU Commission. In fact – and I totally believe this – they are rigorously screened and pre-selected to reflect the political spectrum.

Then came Nigel Farage, in 2014:  

I am one of the few people who can’t really complain about the editorial policy of Question Time having been on it 26 times since I was first elected in 1999. In terms of the coverage it gives Ukip I have found it fair and in the past few years the programme has even started accepting Ukip panellists other than me!

But there have been a couple of programmes in which my colleagues and I have faced a hostile audience which in no way represents how Ukip is normally received or which are representative of the opinion polls. I am not pointing the finger of blame at the QT team but the question I want to ask is whether the Question Time audiences are being exploited by the hard left?

And, also in 2014, Janet Daley had this to say:

This is precisely what Left-wing activists in BBC Question Time audiences do, by the way. Whenever I’ve been on the panel, I have been struck by it. The audience is not, as the folks at home often think, overwhelmingly on the Left: it is just that the Leftist groupies have positioned themselves around the room and are causing enough ruckus to intimidate those who disagree with them. The producers of this hapless programme always claim that they screen out activists with their advance audience questionnaires. So let me tell you something else about committed political agitators: they tell lies. And they do that – I mean this quite charitably – with the most honourable intentions.

And now, in 2015, comes Toby Young:

I’ve often heard conservatives complain that the BBC packs the audience with lefties so they’ll jeer and hiss whenever the Tory on the panel uses a stock phrase like ‘long-term economic plan’. Not true. The makers of the programme bend over backwards to try to ensure the audience contains a broad cross-section of political views. By definition, a majority of them won’t be Conservative voters, so in all likelihood I’ll be given a hard time. But that’s the country’s anti-Tory bias, not the BBC’s.

Each of them has a somewhat different take on why the audiences on the BBC's 'Question Time' appear so overwhelmingly biased towards the Left, but they all seem to agree on one thing: that the people who produce 'Question Time' for the BBC aren't to blame. 

******

Toby Young, appearing on this week's edition from Glasgow, also notes something that backs up Janet Daley and Nigel Farage:

....lots of SNP activists are deeply suspicious of what they perceive to be the BBC’s anti-independence bias, so they may well use subterfuge to smuggle their way in. On Monday a Twitter account calling itself ‘Scotland for independence’ tweeted a link to the website inviting people to sign up to be in the audience, accompanied by the following advice: ‘I recommend pretending you’re a red, blue or yellow Tory so you can be hand-picked by the British Biased Corporation.’ 

Wherever 'Question Time' goes, it appears, activists (of the Amy Rutland variety) will attempt to hijack it. 

And sometimes, presumably (pace James Delingpole and Toby Young) in order to try and balance the audience, 'Question Time' will go out and invite other local activists to attend.

So whether there's much space in the 'QT' audience for anyone who isn't some species of activist is a moot question!

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 'Question Time' Studio (Updated)

First came James Delingpole, writing in 2013:

I talked about this afterwards to the lady who vets the audiences [on Question Time]. It's an urban myth that before each show the BBC sends a coach to pick their audience up from the Socialist Worker's Party Social Club, Hizb ut Tahrir and the EU Commission. In fact – and I totally believe this – they are rigorously screened and pre-selected to reflect the political spectrum.

Then came Nigel Farage, in 2014:  

I am one of the few people who can’t really complain about the editorial policy of Question Time having been on it 26 times since I was first elected in 1999. In terms of the coverage it gives Ukip I have found it fair and in the past few years the programme has even started accepting Ukip panellists other than me!

But there have been a couple of programmes in which my colleagues and I have faced a hostile audience which in no way represents how Ukip is normally received or which are representative of the opinion polls. I am not pointing the finger of blame at the QT team but the question I want to ask is whether the Question Time audiences are being exploited by the hard left?

And, also in 2014, Janet Daley had this to say:

This is precisely what Left-wing activists in BBC Question Time audiences do, by the way. Whenever I’ve been on the panel, I have been struck by it. The audience is not, as the folks at home often think, overwhelmingly on the Left: it is just that the Leftist groupies have positioned themselves around the room and are causing enough ruckus to intimidate those who disagree with them. The producers of this hapless programme always claim that they screen out activists with their advance audience questionnaires. So let me tell you something else about committed political agitators: they tell lies. And they do that – I mean this quite charitably – with the most honourable intentions.

And then, in 2015, came Toby Young:

I’ve often heard conservatives complain that the BBC packs the audience with lefties so they’ll jeer and hiss whenever the Tory on the panel uses a stock phrase like ‘long-term economic plan’. Not true. The makers of the programme bend over backwards to try to ensure the audience contains a broad cross-section of political views. By definition, a majority of them won’t be Conservative voters, so in all likelihood I’ll be given a hard time. But that’s the country’s anti-Tory bias, not the BBC’s.

And now comes Charles Moore, writing in the Spectator:

In the entire time I have done the programme — more than 30 years, starting under the great Robin Day — the left in the studio has been noisier, and usually more numerous, than the right. The difference between then and now lies in the left’s degree of organisation. Nowadays, you can tell as soon as you go on if there is a coordinated left-wing claque in the room (about 50 per cent of the time, there is). They tend to sit together, have common points ready and make the same sound of righteous shock at anything ‘unacceptable’. It would be interesting to see whether this planned intimidation would still work if the BBC made everyone present give up all mobile devices at the door. A programme called Question Time does need an audience which wants to listen to the answers.

It continues to intrigue me that, though each of them has a somewhat different take on why the audiences on the BBC's Question Time appear so overwhelmingly biased towards the Left, they all seem to agree on one thing: that the people who produce Question Time for the BBC aren't to blame.