Question Time 16th October 2025
The Panel:
Heidi Alexander (Labour)
Helen Whately (Conservative)
Lisa Smart (Liberal Democrat)
Ash Sarkar (Political commentator)
Matthew Syed (Columnist and author)
Venue: Bishop’s Stortford
In these days of health and safety gone mad, shooting tin cans off each other’s heads with an air rifle in an enclosed space is verboten during break time at QT Review HQ. Instead, we throw darts at a dartboard. Not going to lie, I’m not very good at it. My arrows are guided by chance. The occasional wins are dictated by luck. In the mythology that draws from the roots of bantz and lols, the board becomes a board of fate.
Oracle like, it is used to settle disputes, make decisions and provide guidance. Segments can be written on or allocated a meaning. Thus, the round board surrounded by shrapnel-scarred plaster can make a decision or guide the uncertain in the right direction. Elsewhere, the fake media chants that the dropping of the Cash and Berry Chinese spy scandal case is just too complicated, and revolves around definitions within the Official Secrets Act of 1911. I wonder.
One of the rules of espionage is for you lot to look over there while I’m doing something over here. The Official Secrets Act of 1911 sits like an orb in the autumn sky, gawped at by the London media political bubble while nefarious deeds occur and are then covered up closer to terra firma.
An impatient Fortuna hangs on the office wall awaiting my curiosity. The first dart missed and, not for the first time, asked questions only of the paintwork. The second pierced ‘there’s a lot more than two of them at it’. A cynic with a microphone at Alexandra Palace might call this out as a ‘Triple Barr-eeee Gardiner!!!’ The last of the flight was much closer to the bullseye. ‘Fed to the Chinese Secret Service by colleagues eager to destabilise Boris Johnson’. Hmmmm. We shall see, or rather, we most definitely won’t.
***
Fifty-year-old Heidi Alexander (not her real name, Heidi Ballentyne) was born in Swindon and has been the Labour MP for Swindon South since July 2024. She once served as MP for Lewisham East but gave up her seat in 2018 to become Sadiq Khan’s Deputy Mayor for Transport. A Durham University graduate (BA in Geography, MA in European Urban and Regional Change), following her education, Heidi entered the political bubble via the office of Cherie Blair at 10 Downing Street and then worked as a parliamentary researcher.
A former Lewisham Borough councillor and Lewisham MP, despite being London, London, London and London with a bit of London thrown in, in the interest of getting elected, Heidi claims to be a Swindonian. Listen out for her name-checking the constituency. Learning to swim in Darcon Pool and learning to drive on the Magic Roundabout are two of her faves.
Helen Olivia Bicknell Whately is the Tory MP for Faversham and Mid Kent and the current Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. A former Minister of State for Health and Social Care, Helen claims a pre-politics background in the NHS. However, this experience only extended to management consultancy in the sector for the accountancy megalith Pricewaterhouse. Prior to that, she graduated in PPE at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, previous to which she was a pupil at Woldingham School (£61,000 per annum) and Westminster School (£67,000 per annum).
Puffins will be thrilled to read Westminster School’s hall of fame includes Sir Nicholas William Peter Clegg, Dominic Ralph Campden Lawson and Adam ‘Fatty’ Bunter Boulton. Before that, Mrs H.O.B. Whatley was a Lightwood, her parents being Robin Lightwood FRCS, a surgeon, and Andrea, a physician. Husband is the interesting Marcus, the founder and a director of Estover Energy. If you wonder why Helen is so keen on Net Zero, read on. Estover are the people who turn forestry into electricity while producing vast amounts of carbon dioxide and receiving green subsidies.
More about Marcus is available in a previous edition of Question Time Review, which can be read here.
Being a Communist doesn’t prevent Ash the Tasche Sarker from being a company director. Not her real name, Ashna Shamin Sarkar is a grammar school girl (north London’s Latymer School) and a graduate of University College, London (English Literature). Ash’s employers Novara are an extreme ultra hard far-left media company that focuses on reporting on the so-called ‘crisis of capitalism,’ so-called ‘racism’ and so-called ‘climate change.’ Parent company is Thousand Hands Ltd, and it is this entity of which Ash is a director.
Despite claiming to be a not-for-profit, Thousand Hands’ accounts show a cool half million pounds in cash at the bank. Where has this come from? According to the Novara website, ‘The vast majority [89%] of our income is raised directly from supporters’. Although the impression is given that these ‘supporters’ are a large number of small donors (‘anything from £1’), in reality a small number of big donors influence Novara’s output.
These include the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (not her real name, Rozalia Luksenburg), which is in turn funded by the German government as a state-subsidised foundation affiliated to a political party. In this case, the Left Party (Die Linke). Other influences include George Soros’s OpenDemocracy, to whose media platform Novara founder Arron Bastani (not his real name, Aaron Peters) contributes. The Worker’s Party of Britain’s nutty but entertaining takedown of Novara can be read here.
Lisa Smart is the Liberal Democrat MP for Hazel Grove. Another notable native of Lytham St Annes, Lisa graduated from Durham University before earning an MBA from the London Business School. A nonentity, Ms Smart held a series of non-jobs, ranging from Deputy Leader of Stockport Council to Chief Executive of an international education development charity before entering Westminster politics.
As if an office junior on a building society help desk pretending to be an economist, Lisa claims to have “managed pension funds”. In reality, she was a former trustee of a local authority pension fund, a task presumably dumped on her during her time as a Stockport councillor because nobody else would do it.
One of the Berkshire Syeds, Matthew was born in Reading to a Pakistani father and Welsh mother. Rather than hailing from the Sindi slums, Mr Syed Snr was a civil servant from a wealthy Karachi family who rose to be a professor after lecturing in auditing at Birmingham City University. Matthew is a graduate of Balliol College, Oxford, and the three-time Commonwealth men’s singles champion in table tennis.
In summary, Ash the Tashe shills for the EU because she is funded by one of its governments. Helen Whately is enthusiastic about Net Zero because of her husband’s financial self-interest. Heidi Alexander pretends to care about Swindon, while for decades her whole life has revolved around London. And Lisa Smart does a ‘Rachel from accounts’ in her CV.
And they expect us to believe that only two people connected to the parliamentary estate are venal enough to pass secrets to the Chinese Communist Party for money or to knobble a political opponent?
***
Question one: Are we paying enough tax to support the public services we want? Told you so. The questioner, Gordon, began Heidi Alexandrer, was absolutely right. We in Labour were elected to do such things. Promises had been kept – sort of – in the last budget. We know that, interrupted Bruce, what’s to come? Fairness, replied Heidi. Those with the broadest shoulders… Last year saw the VAT exemptions on private school fees lifted and the imposition of a tax on private jets. How much, one wonders, did that raise?
The debate has to get real, added Gordon, who promised not to dodge any incoming taxes. Helen thought we are paying too much tax. We need a strong economy and higher taxes are killing it – for instance, the hike in employers’ NI contributions. How would you save money? Wondered La Bruce. Helen waffled. Who will lose out? Asked the chair. Waffle, waffle, until stopping benefits for foreigners and people with low-level mental health problems. Some applause.
A lady in the audience thought the economy is all wrong. Never mind pumping funding in, what about value for money? Raising taxes is like a struggling business raising prices. More applause. Another lady thought AI in public services might improve efficiency and cut costs.
Matthew took out a ‘different lens’ and returned us to 1820 to 1920. We were can-do and made things. Since then, we don’t build anymore. It takes 360,000 pages of bureaucracy to plan a tunnel under the Thames. Try building a nuclear power station, he added. How can we fund growth when we’re snookered by planning and consultation? There is political sclerosis. Stagnant productivity is the problem. More applause.
A public sector wallah spoke. She experienced nothing but cuts and didn’t care where the (ie your) money comes from. A gentleman thought equity and justice for the vulnerable would pay the bills. Silence. Ash the Tasche said nothing works and everything is too expensive. She announced these to be facts. If the BBC doesn’t work, why do we have to pay a licence fee? Hmm.
Too much money goes on shareholders’ dividends. Does it? Well, if the shareholders didn’t put their money in, you’d have to borrow it, and pay the interest – if any institutions will take the risk. Of course, you could always do without such things as gas, electricity and water – like they do in Communist countries.
Lisa’s hard-working NHS staff have a big repair bill. And a much bigger, and rising, wage bill, one suspects. Lisa was going to tax gambling and the social media giants. She also, in effect, wanted to rejoin the European Union, which would mean £25 billion of free money pouring into the country every year – like it did before we left. Not.
Question 2: Will AI cause young people to lose confidence in their ability to think independently? What, still no mention of Chinese spies? Told you so.
A young person spoke, saying attention spans have been destroyed by technology. Another youngster said the first thing young people do is go to ChatGPT, rather than try to work it out for themselves.
Ash the Tachse mentioned that the latest version of AI allows for erotic interchanges with the chatbot! Yes, interjected La Bruce, I heard that and felt queasy. Control yourself, girl! She’s at a funny age. To scotch the rumours about myself and my assistant, Miss Chat, she was dismissed a while ago after she herself went funny.
No matter what I asked, she referenced previous questions and answers, as if suffering from some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder flashback. Caused by too much Question Time, one concludes. Now I don’t use an account, but stay ‘logged out’. As a personification, when I mention ‘The Temp’, you’ll know what I mean.
‘You can have sex with a robot,’ continued Ash. At which point, being only flesh and blood rather than allegorythms and data, I made an excuse and went to bed.
Or rather, I didn’t, as Ash the Tache went on to make an important point. The Silicon Valley tech billionaires driving this are themselves mal-adjusted psychopaths.
This is true. The technology that nearly all of us use too much of is obsessive and addictive, and the people who run the industry are themselves addicted obsessives. As if the lunatics are running the asylum, or as if the establishment in London – who play the Chinese Secret Service to further their own financial and political aims – is in charge of the Official Secrets Act and the courts.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
