Saturday 26 January 2019

Two swallows



From long experience, I'm wary of reading anything of significance into BBC Question Time audiences, so I'm treating Ross Clark's claims in the Spectator that "the new [strongly pro-Brexit] mood of Question Time audiences reflects the changing Brexit debate", showing that the British public just wants to get on with Brexit, with some caution. 

But it is interesting that this week's Question Time audience, like the anti-Diane Abbott one last week, appeared to be strongly pro-Brexit - especially as, this time round, the programme came from a pro-Remain-voting constituency, Winchester. 

Of course, the pro-EU fringe of BBC critics are busily accusing the BBC of "stuffing the audience with Brexit supporters", after just two editions where the audience felt different to the usual Question Time audiences we've been used to for so many years.

A space worth watching maybe.

3 comments:

  1. It's odd for sure. I wondered whether the job of audience selection was farmed out to different outfits in different parts of the country, but that seems unlikely (even for the super-bureaucratic BBC).

    I do recall one pro-Brexit audience during the Referendum campaign (at quite a crucial juncture) which surprised because it was so very rare during the campaign.

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  2. Two swallows... may well be right. Maybe its just a statistical anomaly and things will be back to normal next week. Or maybe the audience selection bias has been fixed for this new QT series - in the proper sense of the word.
    We'll see.

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  3. But even on the odd occasion that is the exception that proves the rule, they aim to counteract it by sending a panel with a couple of metropolitans like Abbott and an academic to educate the local yokels of Derbyshire and Hampshire.

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