Question Time 28th November 2024
The Panel:
Lisa Nandy (Labour)
Jacob Rees-Mogg (Conservative)
Mariella Frostrup (Broadcaster)
Rory Stewart (Podcaster)
Anand Menon (UK in a Changing Europe)
Venue: London
Jacob Rees-Mogg spent his childhood in Somerset before attending Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. Prior to politics, Mr Rees-Mogg established a career in finance through his own company, Somerset Capital Management. In his personal life, the 55-year-old resides in West Harptree with his wife and their six children.
In much the same way that thick people think Stephen Fry must be clever, the irritating aspiring lower-middle classes think Jacob Rees-Mogg must be posh. Not so. The even more irritating middle-middle classes (a tribe including your humble reviewer) can tell that Jacob’s wife is the posh one.
Helena Anne Beatrix Wentworth Fitzwilliam de Chair Rees-Mogg is the daughter of Lady Juliet Tadgell and four times married Somerset Struben de Chair, neglected author and poet, and one-time Conservative MP for both South West Norfolk and Paddington South.
Somerset stood in an early European Parliament election as an ‘anti-European superstate’ candidate and during the Second World War served in Iraq and Syria as an intelligence officer with the 4th Cavalry Brigade. Lady Helena’s other relatives include an admiral, the Transvaal Strubens and a Councillor to King Charles (the 9th of France).
It was before one of Helena’s family Van Dykes that Jacob knelt on one knee to propose.
As a subculture of the middle-middle classes embarrass themselves by being Vegan, driving electric cars and ‘transitioning’ an adolescent child or two, so the upper and pseudo-upper classes make fools of themselves by giving their children multiple stupid names.
Between the six of them, Helena and Jacob’s progeny suffer from being monikered: Peter, Theodore, Alphenge, Mary, Anne, Charlotte, Emma, Thomas, Wentworth, Somerset, Dunstan, Anselm, Charles, Fitzwilliam, Alfred, Wulfric, Leyson, Pius, Sixtus, Dominic, Boniface and Christopher.
What do we know about Rory Stewart? He was on the phone to my sister-in-law talking about school places while his wife was in labour on the bathroom floor. He was once reported to the Transport Police, by me. The oft-repeated announcement demands, ‘if you see anything that doesn’t look right…’ Mr Stewart joined our train at Oxenholme early one Tuesday morning. The then MP for Penrith and the border having perfected his signature butler-in-a-horror-movie look, one felt obliged to send the text.
Beyond his complex connection with the Worth-Sayings, Rory boasts of visiting Afghanistan over 100 times – whereas Alexander the Great only went once. And I’m not joking, he really did drop that into the small talk while being strip-searched in the aisle of Coach J.
Nowadays a podcaster, how does he make it pay? Through advertising. Rory and his co-host Alistair Campbell promote Japanese chef’s knives and six ‘incredible’ perfumed laundry products. In addition, their ‘The Rest Is Politics’ programme is sponsored by a ‘green’ electricity supplier. Keep that in mind when Rory speaks ‘impartially’ of climate change and Net Zero.
At the start of their podcast, rather than de-construct Trump, the Middle East or the consequences of the Budget, Alistair and Rory share the reading out of a great big long advert for GetFuse.com. Embarrassing. One would almost prefer to pay a licence fee. Almost.
Mariella Frostrop is a journalist, broadcaster, and writer. One of the Oslo Frostrops, Mariella was Born in the Norwegian capital to a local father and a Scottish mother. A hereditary journalist, father Peter was the foreign editor of the Irish Times. As such, Ms Fostrop spent much of her childhood in Ireland.
She tells the tale as if a teenager leaving the Emerald Isle with her best friend to live in a London squat before drifting into the music industry. But QT Review HQ suspects her father’s media contacts will have helped secure a position as a PR at Phonogram Records. From there, she appeared on screen for the first time in the early years of Channel Four before conducting a Cook’s Tour of London Media, eventually finding a niche in arts programming.
More recently she has appeared on Loose Women and taken up a position with the government as a Menopause Employment Ambassador.
Ordinarily, QT panellists complete their education and then never have a job. Anand Menon has gone one better and is yet to leave school. A West Yorkshire Menon, Anand began his never-ending education at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield, after which he attended Oxford University for nine years, rising to be a Doctor of Philosophy in International Relations and a Fellow of St Anthony’s College.
Two professorships followed: at Birmingham University and as Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College, London. Currently the director of a think tank, ‘UK in a Changing Europe’, his funding, as with Mariella Fostrop and the rest of them at one time or another comes from the taxpayer at the behest of the government. In this instance through the UK Research and Innovation Fund.
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Question one. Is Kier Starmer right to say the Tory government ran an open border policy? La Bruce mentioned a recent recalculation putting net immigration at about one million a year.
Jacob acknowledged the policy had failed. He referenced the pandemic and the Office of Budget Responsibility. La Bruce interrupted to blame Brexit. Jacob and Fionna became bogged down in how figures are complied. Because of Brexit, Jacob claimed, the present government now have the control needed to reduce the numbers and he hoped they would.
Defined and enriched by immigrants, began Lisa. Oh dear. The problem was the setting of targets. Hmm. Lisa seemed to want limitless immigration in order to … what? Just for the sake of it. She waffled on. She’s never had a job. She has never done one single day of productive labour. She can do nothing except make a noise. Like a rattle in a car, she had no use, she is just a nuisance.
An audience member in a kippah complained of the absence of a British melting pot.
Rory was also pro-mass uncontrolled immigration but conceded the present situation was a disaster with net immigration of 100,000 per year over many years jumping to nearly a million a year in recent times. Only one-third of them are working. He referenced the far Right. We need a working system. The Tories failed, and Rory thought Labour would too.
Surprise, surprise, Anand was in favour of mass uncontrolled unlimited immigration but preferred to call it ‘government policy’. Given the high numbers and the Westminster consensus in favour of mass immigration, I suppose he’s right. We’ll just have to vote them out.
Hold on a minute. We can vote them out but can’t get rid of them. Two of tonight’s panellists are no longer MPs but are still invited onto the Question Time panel. At the last general election, Jacob Rees-Mogg managed to lose a 14,000 majority in his albeit boundary-changed North East Somerset constituency.
At the election before, Rory Stewart gave up a 16,000 majority constituency (Penrith and the Border) by voting against his own government on Brexit. Likewise, when MPs were elevated to the great offices of state, we got rid of them as it was beneath their newfound status to appear on a panel show. Not so with Lisa Nandy, now Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and still bothering the QT panel.
Mariella thought the present situation was chaotic. The biggest issue was not the murders, rapes, terrorism or the racial cleansing of British people from their own country, but the ‘toxic othering’ of the murderers, rapists, terrorists and replacers. Well. A first-generation immigrant in the audience complained she pays over 50% of her earnings in tax. Go somewhere else then, love.
Rory talked around the issue by complaining the bubble in London just talk around the issue. He was worried about what’s happening with the far Right both in Europe and in America with Donald Trump. There you are Puffins, Rory’s just told us what to do.
The next question was about the euthanasia bill being presented to parliament on Friday. Rory was concerned at the expense of care. Old people, sick people and family carers are bankrupting themselves. There are a series of hidden pressures at play. La Bruce disagreed. Euthanasia happens in other countries and, missing out all of the times that happens, she concluded it never happens. Rory disagreed and mentioned Holland. Lisa was in favour of euthanasia.
An audience member said, ‘Put them out of their misery.’
A lady said medical practitioners see people’s situations differently than they see it themselves. La Bruce disagreed and laid the Ester Rantzen card. The lady in the audience suggested improved palliative care. Regarding the medical and legal caveats promised, Jacob said it’s impossible to get a GP appointment as it is, and the courts are already overwhelmed. La Bruce told him he was wrong. Jacob reminded us the elderly and frail are just as important as anyone else.
An audience member referenced ‘reproductive rights’, also known as killing unborn babies by the million. Mariella, like Bruce, is only employable in an amoral London media bubble cess-pit, so had to state publicly she is in favour of euthanasia too. Anand is progressive as well, but can’t manage to be in favour of the bill. Palliative care needs to be sorted out. People might not be in pain and distress if palliative care was better.
Nobody mentioned why this bill has appeared from nowhere and who is lobbying for it. Read about that in the second half of the 15th March QT Review from Liverpool. Mass uncontrolled, unlimited immigration plus euthanasia – join the dots.
© Always Worth Saying 2024
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