Doing our duty

Doing our usual duty, I ought to report that the Labour leader in the European Parliament, Richard Corbett (who attends Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet), has charged the BBC with 'pro-Brexit bias' over Question Time.

(Yes, I know!)

And pro-EU types have been making hay with his stats ever since:

Now, to be fair, his stats about MEPs on Question Time are correct and they do look startling. And maybe the BBC should have tried to get some Labour MEPs (like him) - and others - on.

But Richard is missing the vital context here. Those anti-EU MEPs were regularly outnumbered - often by large margins - by pro-EU panellists.

And why so many UKIP MEPs? Well, obviously, because UKIP were a major force in UK and EU politics until recently but had next to no seats at Westminster. To represent them the BBC had little choice but to mostly choose MEPs.

Labour and the Conservatives, of course, have had vast numbers of seats at Westminster and have made vast numbers of appearances on Question Time - vastly more than UKIP.

It had nothing to do with BBC 'pro-Brexit bias'. The BBC simply went for the obvious. 

I suppose the fly in my rebuttal's ointment is that Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan featured three times. My only answer to that is that Dan was probably the most high-profile UK MEP after Nigel Farage.