"Much-loved"

 

The BBC's statement on Andrew Neil's departure from the BBC was pleasingly warm:

BBC statement on @afneil pic.twitter.com/kEK8smC8QN

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) September 25, 2020

I did chuckle at the bit about This Week being "much-loved". 

It begs two obvious questions: So why did the BBC cancel it? And will the BBC now admit they made a mistake?

The reason Andrew Neil is stepping down

A kindly Jeremy Corbyn supporter tweeted Andrew Neil the other day to say, "Who watches this crap?", in response to a Twitter ad for BBC One's This Week (my favourite of the BBC's politics shows). 

This naturally provoked Mr. Neil, who replied, "Over 1m. At midnight. Four times audience share of Newsnight. But they are forced to. Or their licence fee is doubled". 

Those figures, if correct - and, given that it's Andrew Neil, they very probably are -, don't reflect well on Newsnight, do they?

A Brexit-supporting Twitterer then sent Andrew his warm regards, along with a suggestion: "Brilliant Andrew! Please don't go but instead lobby to move program to 7pm BBC2. Then see how many tune in!"

Andrew replied: "That’s a very good idea. But the reason I’m stepping down after 16 years and regularly getting 1m audience at midnight (no other show gets that on weekdays) is that the BBC didn’t want to move it to an earlier time. BBC2 at 7pm would be fine with me. We could get 2m!".

What a good idea! Scrap Newsnight and put This Week on a 7pm each evening instead.

Anyhow, in honour of Mr. Neil, here's his intro to this week's This Week - some two hours after the polls closed in the UK this Thursday. It contained some decent jokes:

Evenin' all. Welcome to This Week, on the day Britain voted in the European elections. We won't get the results until Sunday. But the polls have closed, so we can  now go back to saying whatever we want. Except that word came down from various BBC Yentobs and Ofcom jobsworths pointing out that the rest of Europe had still to vote - I mean, who knew? - and that we had to be careful not to say anything that could swing things "sur le continent". Now, I bow to nobody when it comes to estimating the influence of This Week. But really? I mean, really? For a start, it's already a quarter to one on the European mainland. Sensible folks are asleep. Second, we're really not big in Estonia. Or the Czech Republic. Or Luxembourg. Actually, nothing's big in Luxembourg. I wish it were, but it's not true. Now, we do have a viewer in France. But I don't think Molly the Dog has a vote. As for Slovakia and Slovenia? Well, we don't do well in countries beginning with S, as our Scottish ratings illustrate. But before we move on let me just say this - London Calling Lithuania, London Calling Lithuania. The Blue Cow Jumped over the Yellow Moon. There, that's fixed the voting in Vilnius. 

End of AfN era

.@bbcthisweek will end after its current run, as presenter @afneil steps down from late-night presenting #bbctw

— BBC News Press Team (@BBCNewsPR) February 14, 2019

Stand By Your Men

Some more BBC complaints responses for your reading pleasure....

This Week, BBC One, 10 January 2019

Complaint

We have received complaints from people who felt Owen Jones was treated in a disrespectful manner while appearing as a guest on the programme. 

Response

Following the verbal abuse which he and others had sustained from protesters outside Parliament, Owen Jones, journalist, left wing commentator and activist, used his “Take of the Week” section to give his personal take on the current state of political discourse, the rise of the far right and, as he deemed, the reasons for this. 

This is a prominent section of the programme in which the author gives their views unchallenged.  During his video and the studio discussion which followed, Mr Jones made allegations about the Conservative Party and right wing media which some would consider contentious.  As our audience would expect, Andrew scrutinised what Mr Jones said.  Michael Portillo, who disagreed with Mr Jones, also gave his opinion. Mr Jones was given ample time to express his views and respond to points made to him. 

When Mr Jones made allegations about The Spectator magazine and Andrew’s role with the publication.  Andrew legitimately pointed out that this was nothing to do with the BBC and it wasn’t right for Mr Jones to use the programme to make personal accusations against him.

Today, BBC Radio 4, 26 January 2019

Complaint

We received a range of complaints following the interview of Helen McEntee. Some listeners felt the tone and content were not appropriate, suggesting a personal bias from the interviewer.

Response

We raised the main concerns with the programme team, who respond to the issues as follows:

“Thank you for getting in touch. We are sorry to hear you objected to John’s interview with Helen McEntee on Saturday. However we do not agree that John’s questioning was unfair. 

Our job is to put arguments to interviewees to test their opinions and to see how firmly held they are. We’ve done this with guests responsible for the UK’s role in these affairs too. We take the same firm but fair approach to each interview. 

It can be useful to approach an issue from an alternative point of view - the question about Ireland ‘throwing its lot in’ with the UK was an attempt to do just that. We think it is a legitimate question to ask, as a different way to discuss the importance of the trading relationship between the nations. 

John also queried the position of the Irish Government, as stated by Leo Varadkar at Davos. This wasn’t a challenge to Minister McEntee personally. At Davos, the Taoiseach said: “I think we’d end up in a situation whereby the EU and Ireland and the U.K. would have to come together and in order to honour our commitment to the people of Ireland that there would be no hard border, we would have to agree on full alignment on customs and regulations.” 

Perhaps at some point Ireland may choose to prioritise its desire to avoid a hard border over its obligations as an EU member. We have to ask to find out. A question like this doesn’t reflect a presenter’s own personal view. Part of their job is putting other people's views forward. Presenters have to be impartial and it is their job to play devil’s advocate.John put it to Ms McEntee that even though the UK voted to leave the EU, and thereby its rules and regulations, the Taoiseach’s position suggested that the UK was expected to abide by those rules after all. His remark, ‘and it sounds a bit arrogant to a lot of people on this side of the Irish Sea’, reflected the argument that the Irish and the EU are not acknowledging this.  

Minister McEntee made the point that the Irish want to avoid a hard border with Northern Ireland, that the UK’s red lines include leaving the Single Market and the Customs Union and that the backstop is there to protect the peace process after two years of negotiations. 

Today is required by the BBC’s Editorial Guidelines to be duly impartial and accurate, and we believe we achieved that here. We think this kind of robust questioning is well within the bounds of what our listeners expect."

Bubonic plague

Top (from l-r): Alastair Campbell, Lord Adonis, Death, AC Grayling; bottom (lying down): Andrew Neil

Viewers of This Week who, after quaffing down bucketfuls of Blue Nun, stayed to the end (someone in the early hours of the following day) were rewarded by Andrew Neil's parting shot:

That's your lot tonight FOLKS but not for us. We're off to Loulou's to celebrate the worst year ever. Some misguided historians are claiming 536 AD was the worst ever. But they're too mollycoddled in their ivory towers to appreciate that 2018 has been much worse. Yes, 536 had a volcanic eruption, spewing out ash that blocked out the sun and blighted crops. But in 2018 we've had endless Maybot Brexit statements, blocking out reason and the will to live. Plus non-stop, never-ending, mind numbing Brexit coverage in the media. Give me a volcanic eruption any day. And yes the sixth century was somewhat discombobulated by rampant and deadly bubonic plague. But we live in constant risk of Adonis-Campbell-Grayling Brexit syndrome, which is not only fatal but for which there is no known cure. So you can understand why 536 has nothing on 2018 and why we're dedicated to drowning our sorrows. Put it down to our deep sense of public service. Nighty night, don't let the Turkeys bite. 

Guess what happened next. Oh yes...

A C Grayling: Apparently Andrew Neil on the BBC compared Andrew Adonis, Alistair Campbell and me to the bubonic plague. Thanks for the endorsement, Brillo; now we’re certain we’re doing the right thing. #PeoplesVote 

Lord Adonis: In which ⁦Andrew Neil likens me to the bubonic plague. This is even better than Farage calling me a ‘twisting weasel’ - & my twitter biog will be updated - but isn’t it, ahem, a breach of the BBC’s duty of impartiality?

 

Satire

Here's Andrew (and he's much funnier than the Now Show crowd)... 

Evenin' all. Welcome to This Week - and what a week it's been. You're probably still exhilarated by Saturday's big march - you know, the one Alastair Campbell told us about last Thursday. I couldn't make it myself - I had a previous appointment with a box set of The Daily Politics - but I'm sure you were there. I sent along my Greek gardener, my Polish plumber and the Norwegian nanny. So nobody can be in any doubt about my commitment, or should I say self-interest, in a People's Vote. Mind you, the Brexit negotiations are going so well that I'm not sure we'll need one. We now have a backstop to the backstop, a transition period, an extended transition period and even the possibility of an indefinite transition period, plus close regulatory alignment. Mmm, close regulatory alignment - something most of us only ever dreamed of, until the Maybot's negotiating skills made it a reality. I'm told Donald Trump has even offered to build a wall down the Irish Sea with all the spare bricks he has accumulated from not building a wall along the Mexican border. It's such a generous gesture that nobody has the heart to tell him bricks don't float. I'm not surprised though the Maybot got such an ecstatic welcome when she walked into a room full of Tory MPs last night, greeting her with synchronised banging of their heads against their desks. It must have lifted the spirits of her software no end. 

Losing just his temper?

A.C. Grayling is still smarting after his performance on this week's This Week. The philosopher has now tweeted: 

One of Andrew Neil's former colleagues on The Daily Politics, Giles Dilnot, has provided a succinct paraphrase:

Giles then added:

If only we had a present-day Molière to write a new play about the great man. Le professeur déraisonnable perhaps? 

Andrew Neil on heroism and antisemitism

"That, dear viewer, is anti-Semitism. At its deadliest and most depraved. Which is how it always ends up. Which is why it can't be tolerated. Those still in doubt need to educate themselves. Fast." @afneil opening #bbctw pic.twitter.com/MFi7pYorkB

— BBC This Week (@bbcthisweek) March 29, 2018

Welcome to This Week. I arrived in France last Friday afternoon just as the terrorist attack in the small south-western town of Trèbes was unfolding. It was over by bedtime. Three folks murdered, the Islamist terrorist killed, the policeman who had swapped himself for a hostage in hospital. We all awoke on Saturday morning to the heart-breaking news that Gendarme Arnaud Beltrame had died of his wounds. Shot and stabbed by the terrorist. Now I know in today's news cycle that Saturday is an age away and much has happened since. But I don't apologise for returning to it tonight because if this man's remarkable courage and self-sacrifice are not worth marking only a few days after his death, then nothing is. His mother said, "I knew he was the one who'd volunteered "before any name was released. "It's just the sort of thing he would do". The word "hero" is bandied about so loosely these days that it's become almost meaningless. Arnaud Beltrame was a hero, in every sense of the word, and he has restored its meaning. His example is a rare shaft of light in these dark, depressing days. An evil demon we thought had been slain, antisemitism, pollutes society on both sides of the Channel once more. I was told today that polls and focus groups show many Brits, and not just the young, don't know what antisemitism is. Well, gather round. Mireille Knoll was 85. In a wheelchair. Suffering from Parkinson's. She'd survived the Holocaust. But not an attack last Friday in her Paris council flat. Stabbed 11 times and burnt to death. Because she was Jewish. That, dear viewer, is antisemitism. At its deadliest and most depraved. Which is how it always ends up. Which is why it can't be tolerated. Those still in doubt need to educate themselves. Fast. 

Andrew Neil is a little scamp

Andrew Neil is a little scamp ... The lefties aren't impressed with this ... Personally, I thought it was hilarious 😂 If Jezza doesn't want to be viewed as anti-west then maybe he should stop taking an anti-west stance on everything #RussiaGate #AgentCob pic.twitter.com/oilA7fl8Ov

— Support Amber (@voteforrudd) March 16, 2018

The exception that proves the rule (again)

It could only be Andrew Neil (well, at least at the BBC):

Evenin' all. Welcome to This Week. Let me make clear right from the start that, though we value our relationship with the United States, and whether or not Donald Trump makes a state visit to this country is way above my pay grade, I would not wish to issue an invitation for President Trump to appear on this programme. I appreciate he's expressed no interest in doing so anyway. But that won't stop me doing a bit of grandstanding and virtue signalling before the rest of the media and the wider public. I've taken this position after much serious consideration as to how much free publicity it's likely to garner and without consulting the "Other Place". But frankly what Newsnight does is its own business and he's never going to settle for BBC2. Now I know that, over the years, we've welcomed Vlad the Impaler, Diane Abbott, Adolf Hitler, Attila the Hun, Ken Livingstone and Transylvania's very own Country Dracula into this studio. But let me say, as a self-important, solipsistic, egotistical, preening, pretentious, puffed up, postulating, pompous little pixie in love with the sound of my own voice, this programme's long-running opposition to free speech, sensible debate and proper analysis, coupled with its deep commitment to free Blue Nun for all means I would not feel comfortable sharing a sofa on the public airwaves with someone who says what he thinks and has never had even a sip of alcohol in his life. I just could not bring myself to do it. Unless, of course, he has that long-promised contract in his pocket for us all to defect to Trump TV. In which case we're ready to welcome him with a a two-hour special, a free bathrobe (since apparently he doesn't have) one and a ticker-tape parade.

That surely deserves a round of applause. Over to Mr. Speaker:

And as for the aforementioned Diane Abbott and that attempted kiss from David Davis after the Brexit vote, here's a typical Twitter exchange involving Mr. Neil (though Nick Robinson might want to have a quiet word with him later):

Dame A: Let's make a joke about sexual harassment in the workplace @afneil @bbcthisweek #unacceptable 

Andrew Neil: Let's make a joke about you claiming it was sexual harassment. Fake news bollocks.

Andrew Neil on Islamic State and Paris

Andrew Neil's introduction on last night's This Week has, rightly, been widely praised. As some of the transcriptions of it have been less than wholly accurate, here it is in full:

Welcome to This Week... 

The week in which a bunch of loser jihadists slaughtered 132 innocents in Paris to 'prove' the future belongs to them rather than a civilisation like France. 

Well I can't say I fancy their chances.  

France, the country of Descartes, Boulez, Monet, Sartre, Rousseau, Camus, Renoir, Berlioz, Cézanne, Gauguin, Hugo, Voltaire, Matisse, Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Bizet, Satie, Pasteur, Molière, Franck, Zola, Balzac, Poulenc, cutting-edge science, world class medicine, fearsome security forces, nuclear power, Coco Chanel, Chateau Lafite, coq au vin, Daft Punk, Zizou Zidane, Juliette Binoche, liberté, égalité, fraternité and crème brûlée. 

Versus what? Beheadings, crucifixions, amputations, slavery, mass murder, medieval squalor - a death cult barbarity that would shame the Middle Ages. 

Well IS or Daesh or ISIS or ISIL or whatever name you're going by - I'm sticking with IS, as in Islamist scumbags - I think the outcome is pretty clear to everybody but you: 

Whatever atrocities you're currently capable of committing, you will lose. 

In a thousand years time Paris, the glorious city of lights, will still be shining bright as will every other city like it, while you will be as dust, along with the ragbag of Fascists, Nazis and Stalinists who have previously dared to challenge democracy and failed.

Well, let's hope so.

This Week

I spotted some #bbcbias tweets bemoaning the fact that Douglas Murray was on Question Time last night and Tom Holland was on This Week straight after. 

Where were the Islamic scholars?", the twitterers twittered.

If you haven't seen it yet, This Week's discussion of the Islamic State nomenclature row, featuring Tom Holland, Andrew Neil, Michael Portillo and Alastair Campbell, is a much-watch - quite unlike pretty much anything else you'll have ever seen elsewhere on BBC TV....and a million miles away (or more) from the kind of discussion you're ever likely to hear on Radio 4 on a Sunday morning. 

And, yes, there were no Islamic scholars to be seen. Thank Allah.

BBC in the CAGE

Last night's This Week on BBC One handed over its 'The Take' spot to Asim Qureshi of CAGE. 

Let me repeat that: last night's This Week handed over its 'The Take' spot to Asim Qureshi of CAGE. 

Yes, Andrew Neil subsequently skewered Qureshi, exposing him as the slippery apologist for Islamic terrorism that he truly is, but still: last night's This Week handed over its 'The Take' spot to Asim Qureshi of CAGE. And then interviewed him at length.

The BBC also broadcast CAGE's press conference in full, after "beautiful" Enwazi was exposed. And CAGE representatives have hardly been off the BBC ever since. Their propaganda has been all over the place - from today to 5 Live, from the News Channel to BBC One's main bulletins. 

Michael Portillo really said it all:

I think, despite all his cleverness, that Asim comes over as an apologist for Emwazi, and I haven't been able to turn on the BBC all week without hearing you and seeing you, and just wonder what the BBC is doing, giving you all this airtime. 

I really don't know what the BBC is doing, giving you all this airtime.

And nor do I. 

The idea that - because of its commitments to free speech, democracy and impartiality - the BBC should not, in principle, completely exclude Qureshi & Co. from its airwaves is a reasonable one. 

However, leaping from that to plastering them, willy-nilly, all across the BBC, on programme after programme, and broadcasting their propagandist press conferences in full is a very different matter. 

The BBC is under no obligation whatsoever to do that and hardly any licence fee payers would expect them to do so, or want them to do so. 

The BBC, quite frankly, has gone CAGE mad. They need to stop pandering to such people NOW.

Angela's Crashes

So it can happen the other way.

Whether you class this as 'counter-evidence' or merely 'the exception that proves the rule, the question on last night's Question Time which dealt with Lord Freud's comments about disabled people and the minimum wage produced a highly unexpected reaction from the audience - something that sounded like genuine outrage at a politician's shameless grandstanding (h/t Guido Fawkes).

Like the rest of us, Labour's Angela Eagle was probably expecting the usual kind of QT audience - one apparently packed with noisy left-wing activists and students. She was no doubt expecting loud applause then for her righteous posturing about Lord Freud. 

Unfortunately (for her) what she got instead was criticism of her own party political point-scoring from the audience and lots of jeering and heckling. The audience members who spoke stood up for Lord Freud and denounced Angela Eagle. David Dimbleby also intervened on Lord Freud's side, against Angela Eagle. 

The Eagle landed with a very heavy thud.

UPDATE: 

I was intrigued on reading the latest Open Thread at Biased BBC to see a whole chain of comments devoted to last night's Question Time, agreeing with each how unrepresentative and left-wing the audience were, how often David Dimbleby interrupted the Tory, how left-wing audience members were chosen, how left-wing the panel were (etc) - specifically during the opening question on immigration.

A long way down the thread, however, when a new chain of comments saying much the same sort of things had got underway, someone added, "You should have stayed and watched Angela Eagle get slaughtered by the audience for suggesting that Lord Freud should resign over his comment on pay levels for profoundly mentally disabled people". 

That, of course, is the subject of this very post - a segment of the programme where the audience seemed anything but unrepresentative and left-wing, the audience members invited to speak all slagged off Labour's Angela Eagle and defended Conservative Lord Freud, David Dimbleby intervened in support of Lord Freud, and the panel appeared fairly evenly balanced on the issue. Lefties watching might well have cried 'right-wing BBC bias!' at that point and took to Twitter (as, in fact, they did!)

Now, several of the Biased BBC commenters who denounced the BBC here admitted they'd switched off in disgust after/during the first question. Similarly, I myself only saw that question about Lord Freud - having watched the whole bit via Guido Fawkes. Therefore, I didn't watch the first question. It could well very have been just as bad as they said at Biased BBC - which, given that QT discussions on immigration often seem to come from another planet, wouldn't surprise me one bit. None of which, of course, would invalidate the initial point of this post.

I've now watched the whole of the first segment, and it is true to say that the loudest applause went to Giles Fraser for his pro-immigration rant which, yes, doesn't seem very representative of British public opinion. 

That said, freezing, re-winding and re-watching shows that, by my reckoning, a good 40% (or so) didn't join in the applause, and the members of the audience who actually spoke seemed to split down middle on the issue. Among the 'non-pro-immigration' contributions, one wanted an Oz-style points-based system, another wanted the Spanish system where you need a job and a house before you can settle in the country, another denounced the effects of mass immigration on village life, and another cited the Latvian murderer. 

Judging by the audience contributions then it was far from being the uniform Labour-supporting, lefty audience that some commenters at Biased BBC  believe it was. 

Other points made were that Angela Eagle got a long time to speak and a free ride. She didn't get any more time than Jeremy Hunt, all in all, but Jeremy Hunt certainly got interrupted more often (in this segment). The interruptions from David Dimbleby weren't, however, interventions from the Left. I could easily imagine a pro-UKIP guest presenter asking some of them. 

The panel covered the spectrum from those who are very pro-mass immigration (Giles Fraser and Ming Campbell) and those who are pro-immigration but want it controlled to varying degrees (Angela Eagle, Jeremy Hunt and Isabel Oakeshott). That's the way of British politics, and the way of QT when you don't have a UKIP panellist. It's rare to get a politician on the panel of this show who's anywhere near as tough on immigration as the general public.

Thus, there were biases on the panel and in the applause during this section but they were balanced out during the Lord Freud segment, and - from their contributions - the audience weren't as unrepresentative (and left-wing) as some people clearly felt they were. 

I do keep wondering about that. How does that happen, that false impression? How, say, do the critics of immigration in the QT audience get forgotten about? How does the content of David Dimbleby's interventions go unnoticed when he's not putting left-wing points? How does the good sense of Isabel Oakeshott get overlooked while the right-on outbursts of Giles Fraser get remembered? 

Well, people do tend to see what they want to see. As you probably know, it's called confirmation bias, and I'd say a certain amount of confirmation bias was going on in some of the comments about Question Time at Biased BBC, but I doubt I'm immune from it too. So, if you've a spare quarter of an hour - and a willingness to have an open mind - please just watch the first question (all the way through) and see who you think is closer to the truth.

While I'm on the subject of confirmation bias, that same Open Thread at Biased BBC has what appear to me a few more possible examples of it.

One commenter denounced what he described as "This Week in Politics ,chaired by Andrew Neil, with Portillo and Abbott":

they discussed immigration and in particular if the UK could stand indefinitely an influx of 250 thousand pa. Incredibly those on the panel seemed to think that it could!! They trotted out all sorts of rubbish to support this lunacy.

...before launching into a long political point about immigration and the Westminster bubble.

Meanwhile, down the page, another commenter had watched the same bit of This Week and come away with a very different impression:

For a change, and In fairness to the BBC – last night’s episode of ‘This Week’, they let Jon Gaunt give a good account of his views on immigration. – Ms Abbott was also put under pressure.
Is the new ‘Chair’ Rona getting to grips ?

Why did the first commenter forget all about Jon Gaunt (from the other side of the immigration debate to Diane and Michael)? Confirmation bias?

Elsewhere another commenter linked to FOX News' reporting of the upholding of the death sentence for blasphemy by a Pakistani court on a Christian woman, Asia Bibi - a sickening story. The commenter notes, ‘FOX NEWS’ -not INBBC:- “Persecuted Christian: Will Pakistan’s Asia Bibi be killed for alleged blasphemy?” - except, as anyone who heard this morning's Today will know, the BBC did cover the story and talked about Pakistani society's murderous ways of dealing with those who are brave enough to challenge its blasphemy law for good measure. Plus the story was high up on the BBC News website home page yesterday evening (as I remember seeing it). Is that a case of confirmation bias too?

Someone else took mild exception to a BBC magazine article entitled ‘Is wearing a Native American headdress offensive?’. The article concerns the Glastonbury Festival's decision to ban it because a few dozen people signed a petition calling it offensive. The implied charge against the BBC was of PC bias. 

Of course it could just be reporting a story about PC, just as the Daily Mail likes to report such stories without being PC itself, so as to fire up its readers' outrage engines - and, indeed, the Daily Mail has reported the story.

The amusing closing paragraph of the BBC article (well, it amused me!), "Not everyone appears to be taking the headdress restriction seriously. A new petition has been launched calling on Glastonbury to ban tipis", suggests that this isn't exactly the kind of earnest PC piece that the commenter was implying it was.  

Finally, another form of confirmation bias could be applying rational-seeming labels that just happen to give you enough wriggle room to 'prove' your point, such as the commenter who wrote,

I’ve just noticed the panellists on ‘Any Questions’. Heseltine (soft-left), Chukka (left), Frances Grady (hard left), and Delingpole (phew, a Conservative at last). Despite Delingpole, I shall not listen.

The wriggle room applied there is to describe Michael Heseltine as "soft-left", thus 'proving' that the panel is biased (3:1) towards the Left. 

You may remember that widely-tweeted 'study' we covered by a genuine left-winger which did this kind of thing in reverse, placing Blairites on "the right" and Peter Hitchens, Peter Oborne, Quentin Letts, etc, on the "far-right", thus 'proving' that Question Time was biased towards the Right. That person would probably have cast this particular AQ panel as "Heseltine (right), Chukka (centre), Frances Grady (soft-left) and Delingpole (far-right).

FURTHER UPDATE

The ever-reliable Ed West has an interesting take on all of this over at the Spectator:

Manufactured outrage is not a joke. Since the totalitarian-lite ideology of political correctness was born on American campuses after the Second World War it’s been used to snuff out unpopular ideas and legitimate lines of scientific inquiry; it’s a sub-rational style of argument that has no more place in a mature democracy than flag-waving ultra-nationalism or religious fundamentalism. Indeed it appeals to the same emotional parts of the brain. As I wrote in today’s Express:

‘It makes Question Time unwatchable because rational arguments are drowned out by indignant, reason-free protests on behalf of this or that disadvantaged group.’

If I were a producer for the programme I’d have any politician who tried the outrage card sent off to a corner for ten minutes with a can of Coke and some crisps while the grown-ups did the talking. Many politicians are wont to play the card, although Labour MP Emily Thornberry in particular stands out for her use of it, her response to the debate on marriage tax breaks being along the lines of ‘as a child of a hard-working single parent I’m offended by this’, as if that were a winning argument against the vast data on the beneficial effect of being brought up by married parents on childhood outcomes.

Anyway, it the reaction to this that made last night’s episode of Question Time so pleasing. Eagle tried to make everyone feel outraged, but instead the audience turned against her, accusing the MP of distorting Freud’s words for party political gain; it was like watching the crowd turn against Ceausescu in Bucharest, and the first time I’ve ever seen a QT crowd react like this. I think I may have to move to Newbury: If that’s what their Question Time audience is like, imagine how sensible the population as a whole must be.