Question Time 23rd October 2025
The Panel:
Stephen Kinnock (Labour)
Harriet Baldwin (Conservative)
Nadine Dorries (Daily Mail columnist)
Mariella Frostrop (Broadcaster)
Venue: Swindon
On occasion, QT Review comments on the inevitable panellists’ girl war resulting from two or more of the species dressed to the nines while being watched and judged in a confined space. This time, we shall ignore the coiture and concentrate on ‘work done’. For starters, almost to the day the same age as this author, whereas your humble reviewer of panel shows looks like a dead body, 62-year-old Miss Mariella Fostrop looks as though she’s just been ironed.
A journalist, broadcaster, writer and one of the County Wicklow Frostrops, Mariella was born in Oslo to a local father and a Scottish mother, moving to Kilmacanogue near Dublin when aged six. A hereditary journalist, father Peter was a literary critic and the foreign editor of the Irish Times.
In her own autobiographical critique, Mariella tells an Irish emigrant tale as if driven by hope and hardship she left the Emerald Isle for the mean streets over the water to live in a London squat before drifting into the music industry. QT Review HQ suspects her father’s media contacts will have eased her passage, not least to her first position as a PR at Phonogram Records. Developing her career 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.
On QT as recently as January, this year has been epic for Nadine Dorries. As well as another appearance on Question Time, the tail end of the year saw La Dorries’ September defection from the Conservative Party to Reform UK.
Having stood down from her Bedfordshire seat at the July 2024 general election, the 67-year-old remains an un-indicted parliamentary expenses criminal. Nadine claimed over £3,000 on personal travel expenses and £60,000 for second home allowances while only using her main home for free weekends and holidays. The discrepancies came to light through dishonest blog entries, which suggested she lived in her constituency, whereas she didn’t. Given that Mid-Bedfordshire is a fifty-minute commute from central London, why was she allowed to claim second-home expenses at all?
Nadine’s daughters Jennifer and Phillipa were also on the Westminster payroll. You paid them over £30,000 per annum for roles such as office manager, executive secretary and senior secretary.
A published author, her mighty work, The Children of Lovely Lane 2, a gripping novel in the Lovely Lane series of engaging characters and cinematic street scenes, sits an unlovely 384,080th place on the Amazon best sellers list. A full 241,292 places behind the little cinema in the back streets of 1970s Amsterdam that is the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom.
With her proceeds from the Lovely Lane chronicles of nurses Dana, Victoria, Pammy and Beth (and new assistant matron, the ‘mysterious Miss Van Gilder from somewhere down south’) Nadine pulls the old and well-oiled tax dodging trick familiar to readers. Her earnings as a writer / commentator / TV and radio personality, accumulate in a company called Averbrook Limited.
Latest published accounts show a cool half million pounds in cash in hand or at the bank awaiting allocation to a tax-avoiding dividend payment or a director’s loan. Or, perhaps, a timely trip to a clinic in Turkey. For, as she approaches her 70th year, Ms Dorries’s suspiciously high cheekbones appear quarried, with, perhaps, her floppy blonde fringe disguising the resulting tailings.
One of the South Glamorgan Troughers (nee Kinnock), Stephen is the son of former EU Commissioner Lord Neil Gordon Trougher, The Baron Snout-In. His late mother was one-time MEP, Glenys Elizabeth Trougher. Stephens’s wife is Helle Trougher (nee nee Thorning-Schmidt), a former prime minister of Denmark who didn’t leave school until she was 27, having completed a degree in the Danish equivalent of Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
The Comrades Throning-Schmit-Trough educated their daughter privately at the £37,000 a year Atlantic College. As a true socialist, Mr Trougher then lied about it, claiming this wasn’t really a private education as the Danish taxpayer was funding a scholarship. As further proof of his left-wing credentials, Mr Trough has been a Swiss resident for tax purposes – while simultaneously being a Danish resident for tax avoidance purposes – regarding a half-ownership of his wife’s house. Etc etc etc etc.
Oh, and Stephen was also a member of the World Economic Forum.
A graduate in Modern Languages from Queens College, Cambridge, and holding an MA in European Studies, College of Europe, Bruges, upon completing his education, well-connected Master Trougher had a series of non-jobs so numerous they require their own addendum. See below.
Despite representing Aberavon in the House of Commons, the fifty-five-year-old lives in London’s posh Kilburn. Mrs Thorning-Schmidt-Trougher-Kinnock is also involved with the World Economic Forum and has previously chaired their Davos meeting. Her appointments are so numerous they can’t even be fitted into an addendum.
Harriett Baldwin, not her real name – Dame Harriett Mary Morison Baldwin, MBE – is a public school headmaster’s daughter and herself an old girl of the exclusive Marlborough College (£62,000 PA). Dame Harriett graduated from St Edmond Hall, Oxford, with a First in French and Russian, before taking an MBA at Montreal’s McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management, which allowed for a two-decade-long career with JPMorgan Chase.
Elected to parliament in 2010, Mrs Baldwin represents West Worcestershire on behalf of the Conservative Party. Present husband, James Stanley Balwin (yes, Stanley Baldwin), is a businessman and television producer. Sixty-five-year-old Harriet presents as if she spends her money on copious amounts of heavy-duty make-up rather than on cosmetic surgery – and looks all the better for it.
Incidentally, according to the Temp, who is also female and should know about such things, La Bruce has been quoted as saying she would not consider cosmetic surgery and her husband would never forgive her if she did. The QT chair has drawn a line at cosmetic surgery to prolong her career despite high-definition television making her look “pretty rough” in comparison to other presenters who use Botox. Hmmm. Do we believe her?
Mumsnet doesn’t. Under the heading ‘Did Fiona Bruce had [sic] a faceflit?’, contributor Marvingale wonders, ‘All the middle-aged female TV presenters, especially on the BBC, seem never to have any double chin or loose skin, all ageing gracefully. Where do they go? It can’t be that they all have the right genes.’ Hmmmmm.
In as close to a consensus as you’ll ever find amongst the warring yummy mummies below the line in that hell hole, the answer is either the studio lighting or a Dr Amir in Tunbridge Wells. Hmmmmmmmm.
***
Question one referenced the one in, one out policy. Is it working? To the uninitiated, one in, one out means for every one thousand illegal immigrants that come here, there’s an off chance one of them might be sent back.
Joking apart, the reality is an even bigger joke with the first illegal immigrant being returned to France via one in, one out, having already returned illegally on a small boat. Or as Fiona Bruce put it, ‘stayed there just a few weeks and has come back again, and that’s possibly not what the government would like.’
Stephen Kinnock began by saying we are absolutely committed to…’, wait for it, wait for it, ‘…smashing the gangs.’ No, they aren’t, they, globalists as they are, are totally committed to open borders and mass, uncontrolled illegal immigration at any cost. ‘And to stopping these Channel crossings,’ he continued dishonestly.
‘He’s come straight back’, interupted La Bruce. ‘Actually, I think that sends a very clear signal,’ replied Kinnock. He’s not wrong! According to Kinnock, the repeat illegal immigrant has been detained and will be returned to France. ‘If you come here illegally, you will get sent straight back’, and swapped for another immigrant and their family, Mr Kinnock forgot to add. The immigrant has wasted the money he paid to the people smugglers, added the Minister for Care.
Hold on a minute, the elite keep telling us these people are vulnerable and destitute, not loaded with enough cash for repeated illegal trips across the Channel. They’ll just get on another boat, said Nadine Dorries. Kinnock didn’t know how much these (penniless, vulnerable) souls were paying the people smugglers, but while the pilot scheme is still being ramped up, the policy won’t be a deterrent, but the principle will be.
He blamed the Tories for allowing the people smugglers a six-year head start. Yawn. Since they came to power, Labour have deported 35,000 people. Mr Kinnock omitted to mention how many have returned.
According to the Temp, since the start of the Labour government in July 2024 to the end of December 2024, long-term immigration into the UK is likely to be in the order of several hundred thousand people in that half-year. Yes, in half a year. The official figure for the year ending June 2024, just before the election, was 1,218,000. As I said, open borders and mass, uncontrolled unlimited immigration.
It isn’t working, said Harriett Brown. She suggested a safe third country to which they could be sent. Might one suggest nearby France? The second thing that needs to change; they shouldn’t be able to claim asylum. This is to prevent them ‘risking their lives’ and ‘to smash the gangs’ business model’, rather than because the illegals are undesirables we don’t want.
Someone tap Ms Baldwin on the shoulder and remind her the people risking their lives are the ordinary, decent British people unfortunate enough to live near the 4-star hotels illegal immigrants are dumped in. She wanted to build up deterrents to stop the gangs. i.e. she might as well be in the Labour Party.
Nadine wouldn’t allow Kinnock to blame the previous government. Via the one in, one out scheme, only 46 have gone back. It just isn’t a deterrent. It just isn’t working. The only way to sort this out is for Reform to take power. A murmur went around the audience. Kinnock asked what the plan is. He wondered about the future of international co-operation, particularly if we leave the ECHR? Our job is to protect our borders, replied Nadine.
I don’t know when we started dehumanising people, began Mariella, to applause from the carefully selected Thames Valley BBC audience. She found this really shocking and admired the illegal immigrant who has returned already. Imagine if nobody wanted to come here, continued the entitled nip and tucker.
Never mind my wrinkles and bags, she turned my stomach by referencing rape victims in the Congo who can’t come here, whilst omitting to mention there’s no way of telling if the overwhelmingly male illegal immigrants arriving are themselves rapists.
She went through the plastic face melting point when praising the Afghans ‘who supported us in that war’. Enough! I shall watch the Traitors instead. Not the dangerous, polished media political London bubble traitors on Question Time, but the harmless old hams camping it up in a Scottish castle.
Addendum
Mr Stephen Trougher-Kinnock’s non-jobs:
1993-94, Research Assistant, European Parliament, Brussels;
1994-96, Consultant, Lancashire Enterprises, Brussels;
1996-99, Business Development Manager, British Council, Brussels;
2000-02, Director, British Council, Brussels;
2003-05, Programme Manager, British Council, London;
2005-08, Director, British Council, St Petersburg, Russia;
2008 (March – October), Interim Director, British Council, Sierra Leone
2008 (October-December), Programme Leader, British Council, London
2009-2012 World Economic Forum, Director and Head of Europe and Central Asia, based in Geneva
2012-2015 Managing Director, Global Leadership & Technology Exchange, Xynteo AS
2015 – Elected to Parliament as MP for Aberavon
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