Question Time 26th September 2024
The Panel:
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Labour)
Nadhim Zahawi (Conservative)
Carla Denya (Green)
Zia Yusuf (Reform UK)
Venue: Milton Keynes
Recent events in law have allowed the discerning reviewer to peer into the dark moral void at the cold heart of the BBC. During the recent court case, Huw Edwards’ barrister attempted to excuse his client’s vile behaviour by referencing three salient points of biography. Huw’s rejection by Oxford University. A ‘restrictive, puritanical, but often hypocritical, background of growing up in the particular cultural milieu of South Wales’. Thirdly, a repressed attraction to men. With this in mind and after exhaustive research, your humble reviewer has been able to formulate the Edwards Coefficient of Being a Wrong ’Un. We will bear it in mind as we review.
As an example, Fiona Bruce did go to Oxford and her interest in men is not repressed as she’s married to one. Added to which, Singapore-born Ms Bruce grew up in the superior cultural milieu of British Colonial rule followed by the enlightened dictatorship of ‘Harry’ Lee Kuan Yew. An honorary Puffin, Mr Lee washed every morning out of a bucket and when eventually allowing himself a new suit, was told his tailor died 15 years previously. Therefore, Fiona appears on the Edwards Co-efficient as not a bad ‘un. Unless, of course, you know different…
Incidentally, that Harry Lee was a bit loose with his money compared with up here. Fifty-four degrees north of the Straits, I’ve only ever had one suit. Bought in the days when Marks and Spencer didn’t accept cheques, I had to borrow the cash from an uncle. The same uncle who had a water meter fitted and lived out of a butt fed from his greenhouse roof. A framed £0.0p water bill hung above his (garden waste burning) fireplace.
***
Nick Thomas-Symonds is not the Labour MP for Torfaen’s real name. Not double-barrelled, ‘Thomas’ is his mother’s maiden name. Added to which his actual first name is Nicklaus. Paymaster General in Mr Starmer’s new government, Mr Symnnds has a connection to Oxford through his First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from St Edmond Hall. Perhaps trying too hard to cover something up, Nick became a tutor at St Edmond’s and also had a career in law as a barrister specialising in chancery and commercial law.
Nadhim Zahawi is a Question Time legend but an MP no more. Why is he on the programme? One of the Warwickshire Zahawis, Nadhim stood down at the 2024 general election in the wake of a series of scandals which resulted in him being sacked from Mr Sunack’s cabinet and admonished by the Independent Adviser on Ministers’ Interests whose investigation uncovered seven breaches of the Ministerial Code.
A swing of 28% to the Liberal Democrats meant Mr Zahawi’s Stratford-upon-Avon seat fell to another of the ancient Warwickshire families in the shape of Ms Manuela Perteghella.
Oft on the QT Review HQ radar, Mr Zadawis interests include mystery £32 million loans, a property empire worth £58 million and assets banked in Gibraltar. Also, he worked as a middleman between oil concessions in his native Iraq and tax havens in the Caribbean, and claimed parliamentary expenses to heat his stables.
Furthermore, during covid the Zahawi family set up a short-lived healthcare company which avoided the use of the name Zahawi on any of its registration documents and didn’t appear on Nahim’s declaration of extra-parliamentary financial interests.
Despite Iraq being refreshingly far from the questionable cultural milieu of South Wales, a cloud hangs over his family connections in the old country. When standing down from parliament, Mr Zahawi stated, “Every morning as I shave my head in the mirror, I have to pinch myself. How is it that a boy from Baghdad who came to these shores fleeing persecution and unable to speak a word of English, was able to do as much as I have?” Read on!
Educated at £23,000 a year King’s College School, Wimbledon, the ‘boy from Baghdad’ was well-connected to start with. A grandfather was Governor of the Central Bank of Iraq and the country’s Minister of Trade. His father founded Iraq Project and Business Development which did rather well out of the 2003 Gulf War II. Their subsequent developments included the United States air base at Talil and the contract for the cleaning and maintenance of Baghdad’s Republican Palace and Central Criminal Court.
Nutty Green Carla Denya made herself useful at the general election by unseating Puffin’s favourite Tangham Debbonaire (not her real name). A 28% swing saw the former Green councillor and St Chad’s College, Durham, graduate take Bristol Central (suspiciously close to South Wales) and turn the difficult-to-like Debbonaire’s 17,000 majority into a 10,000 majority for Carla. In her maiden speech in the House of Commons, Ms Denya began by informing her new colleagues that her pronouns are she and her and that she is looking forward to getting to know theirs. Yawn.
Zia Yusuf (not his real name, Muhammad Ziauddin Yusuf) attended London’s private Hampton School and is a graduate of the London School of Economics. A former employee of Meryl Lynch and executive director of Goldman Sachs, Yusuf made his money developing and selling-on an app. Velocity Black connects cash-rich/time-poor clients with providers of luxury services and products – presumably by charging hefty commissions and memberships to both customers and providers.
Might QT Review HQ benefit from this ‘Velocity Black’? Your humble reviewer is unarguably time-poor on a Thursday. The supermarket doesn’t close until 10 pm, by which time myself and my colleagues must have the shelves nice and tidy for the next morning’s bargain hunters. Question Time starts at 10:45 and doesn’t finish until almost midnight. Then the programme-dependent parts of the piece have to be written up and the associated other half of the podcast needs to be recorded. I’m in Mr Yusuf’s demographic! It gets better, there’s bound to be a discount for the cash-poor – isn’t there?
Bad news. There’s currently a waiting list for Velocity Black membership. Hm. To join the waiting list, please leave your details below. Hmm. Membership availability varies by city. Hmmm. Assuming Carlisle to be down the list a bit, I won’t bother.
The Conservative Party also had a recent disappointment at the hands of Mr Yusuf after discovering he was still a member while donating six-figure sums to Reform, becoming Reform’s chairman and trashing the Tories in public at every opportunity. Remarkably, it was only last month that Central Office revoked Mr Yusuf’s membership and then only after the newspapers had grassed him up.
***
Question one, should we be sending weapons to Israel?
Nick Symonds supported Israel’s right to defend itself and quoted ‘international law’ while calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and a return of the hostages. Yes, hostages. Only two days after Kier Starmer’s keynote speech at the Labour Party conference and the sausages are already forgotten about. Wait for it … did they fry in vain? *sniggers*
La Bruce got all technical, parts for F-16s have been banned from being exported from here but not F-35s. Symonds ignored her and waffled about (unheeded) calls for restraint in the Middle East.
Incredibly dangerous moment for the world, began Nadhim Zahawi. He claimed the real hostages were the Gazan people who have been taken hostage by Hamas. Their own administration that they voted for, he forgot to mention. He did mention a ‘two-state solution’ – which neither of the two states involved in the Gazan fighting want.
Carla was incredibly distraught. The Greens would prefer to suspend arms sales to Israel. A lady in the audience was sick to death of hearing about Israel defending itself. To applause, she thought Israel’s actions to be offensive rather than defensive.
Zia thought the withdrawal of some export licences was a stunt by David Lammy, with any gaps in Israeli capabilities being filled by other countries – to the detriment of British influence.
A tinged gentleman asked the second question. Is the honeymoon over for Mr Starmer and the Labour Party?
Never mind that, viewers will have been pleased to see that the local pictures have returned to the front of the panellists’ desk. Last week, either they were missing or there’s a giant Q-shaped Apple Campus-style mega-structure in Ashton-under-Lyne.
This time a couple of aerial views of Milton Keynes were complimented by the now customary shot of a foreign railway station. Viewers unfamiliar with the Balkans in the 1980s may have mistaken the photo on the left for the Buckinghamshire town’s Avebury Boulevard. In fact, it was Tito’s Novo Beograd subdivision on the approach lines to Belgrade Main. Those who were there at the time know.
Back with the end of Labour’s honeymoon, Nadhim feared the level of vitriol shown over mistakes made by any politician. Apparently, there’s a chapter about this in his new book. Mentioning this was a mistake by a politician, La Bruce told him not to plug it again.
Zia pointed out the new government’s election and post-election slogan was ‘change’ and yet it’s the same old sleaze as under the Conservatives. He warned of a new scandal emerging regarding Keir Stammer’s real residency, Lord Alli’s millionaire’s apartment, and electoral law.
Carla sort of agreed but saw the solution as taxing us all to death and blowing the money on the public sector. An audience member mentioned 14 years of Tory sleaze and more or less called Nadhim a crook. Nadhim replied that there are no perfect humans in politics and pointed the disgruntled contributor towards a chapter in his book. La Bruce threatened to throw him off the programme if he plugged it one more time.
Nick Symonds blamed the Tories, especially regarding a £22 billion black pudding hole *giggles*. Nadhim laughed at him. Carla asked a question, why are the government making decisions that are difficult for the poorest people in society?
The next question was about small boat crossings. Zia mentioned the scrapping of the Rwanda plan. In the 80 days since Labour came to power, illegal entries have increased by 60%. He called for a British bill of rights to replace the ECHR, meaning illegal immigrants could be sent straight back to France. La Bruce was aghast.
Carla’s long-term vision is for a world without borders – according to the Green’s website. Zia preferred secure borders. What would Reform do with genuine asylum seekers, asked a lady in the audience. Zia complained the audience wasn’t representative. La Bruce was triggered, said they were, and asked the Reform voters to raise their hands. There were three.
This is how sad I am:- In the frame, there were 7 rows of 15 people. i.e. 105. Reform got 14% of the vote at the general election so there should have been about 15 hands raised, not three. One of the three was allowed to speak and made an important point about the lack of money saved when cutting pensioners’ winter fuel allowances – to a stony silence from the BBC’s fiddled audience.
Hands up who wants to go to bed? Me!
© Always Worth Saying 2024
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