There’s always one that gets away. A pretty girl who becomes no more than a ship crossed in the night, a ball kicked wide of an open goal, even an edition of Question Time omitted because it aired on the day after a general election rather than on the habitual Thursday evening. Not to worry, we shall catch up with it now and, with that wonderful thing known as eighteen months of hindsight, we shall review how well the panellists’ comments have aged – or not.
The panel:
Steve Reed (Labour)
Daisy Cooper (Lib Dem)
Ben Habib (Reform UK)
Daniel Finkelstein (Journalist)
Andrew Marr (Journalist)
The venue: London
The date is Friday 5th July, the day after Starmers’ thumping election victory. The location, London. A smug La Bruce introduced the programme with the announcement of a new chapter in British politics under an incoming Labour government with a majority of 174.
Question One: Will this country be any better off under a Labour government? We all know the answer to that, but the day after the election, Steve Reed (Labour), either hadn’t cottoned on or was lying. It has to be, he began, as Mr Starmer has the worst economic and political inheritance – a theme that continues to this day with Labour’s endless scapegoating of the ’14 years of Tory rule’.
This will be a government of service, he continued, that (with the obligatory and ever-reluctant nod to the Red Wall) will put the British people first, stabilise the economy and bring about a decade of renewal. Oh well. Everything in our manifesto will be costed. Try not to laugh.
GB Energy will provide energy security, cut energy bills and boost the economy. We know now, and there was no excuse for not knowing at the time, that Net Zero is ruinously expensive, and leads to industry and consumer-punishing increases in energy bills.
Steve Reed OBE is Labour MP for Croydon and a gay former leader of Lambeth Council. A Member of Parliament since 2012, the 62-year-old boasts of working-class roots (son of a print worker) after growing up in the mean streets of St Albans and attending the local boys’ grammar school.
I hope so, began the Lord Finkelstein, in the interests of everyone. You can’t miss the present sense of brokenness and lack of optimism. Regarding immigration, we want secure borders, but we also want to abide by international obligations – a difficult balance.
What his lordship didn’t know was that the inevitable was to happen only months later. A series of immigrant-based incidents in Leeds, Manchester Airport, Bristol, Southend and elsewhere, culminated in a murderous Rwandan terror attack on a Southport nursery. This pushed the ‘difficult balance’ into the danger zone and resulted in protests, riots and flags being raised the length and breadth of the land.
Daniel William Finkelstein, Baron Finkelstein OBE, is a journalist and a Conservative Member of the House of Lords. One of the Middlesex Finkelsteins, Daniel attended the private University College School, Hampstead. Further studies took him to the London School of Economics and the City University London, where he took a Master’s in Business Systems Analysis.
In the general election of 1987, 25-year-old Mr Finkelstein stood for the Social Democrats in the Brent East constituency, finishing a disappointing third, a full 11,062 votes behind the victorious Labour candidate, Kenneth Robert ‘Hitler was a Zionist’ Livingston.
Mr Finkelstein’s descent into politics and journalism can most likely be explained by him being the thicko in the family. His sister, Haberdashers’ Aske’s old girl Tamara, Most Honourable Order of the Bath, is a senior civil servant and Whitehall permanent secretary. Brother Anthony Charles Wiener Finkelstein CBE FREng, is Chief Scientific Adviser for National Security to HM Government, and holds a Chair in something complicated at UCL.
Daniel’s father, Ludwik Finkelstein OBE (one of the Lvov Finkelsteins), was a self-taught Professor of Measurement, whose entire formal education consisted of a five-day journey in the school carriage of the Trans-Siberian Express. Upon the celebration of his 80th birthday, Ludwik’s colleague Mr Roman Z Morawski, in a Meteorology and Measurements Systems Quarterly tribute, was unable to fit all of Finkelstein senior’s scientific honours into the thousand words allowed.
The Lord Finkelstein’s wife, Nicky, is a public health doctor. They have been married for twenty-six years and have three children. Perhaps unsuitable even for a career as clergy, one suspects a concerned and well-meaning maiden aunt may have nudged disappointing dunce Daniel towards The Times and the Tory Party.
Incidentally, isn’t it interesting that it is also the thicko of the family that is elevated to the House of Lords.
Hours after the election, the QT audience was more tuned to the zeitgeist than the panel. Returning to the questioner, he reported both a sense of optimism and pessimism with his sceptical eye unconvinced by Labour’s manifesto promises.
Another speaker from the audience, perhaps with a crystal ball upon his lap, said he worried that the soundtrack to the next five years in politics would be ‘look at what we inherited.’ While reading at the leaves at the bottom of a teacup cup he continued, this will put people off politics.
It was time for Puffin’s favourite Andrew Marr to speak, or rather to open his mouth and make an idiot of himself. Marr had to be optimistic and announced the economy was about to become stable. A bit too stable as it transpires, perhaps fossilised might have been a more accurate prediction.
‘Serious, down-to-earth people, talking like the rest of us, are now in charge of the government.’ Don’t laugh. The great soothsayer predicted, ‘A wall of money will come into this country from around the world’. With ‘Chaos on the Continent and the USA, GB looks like a haven of peace and stability.’
On firmer ground, he predicted they will have to raise taxes; Inheritance Tax, Council Tax, a wealth tax and Capital Gains Tax. There will be new building of houses and infrastructure. Two universities and some water companies must be saved from going under. By the autumn, Rachel Reeves will have to raise taxes.
Tomorrow, he continued, Wes Streeting will sit down with the doctors. No way will they get the pay increase they’re looking for. Au contraire, Mr Marr, not only will they, but 18 months later they’ll be striking for even more. The big issue, according to Andrew, is the relationship with Europe. The LibDems are well to the left of Starmer, so are the Scots Nats, and some Labour MPs – an interesting situation and one that, to Andrew, seemed like an opportune Remainer phalax.
If you’re wondering who Marr means by ‘us’, so am I.
The 66-year-old was born in Glasgow to Donald, an investment manager, and his wife Valerie. Andrew’s father was additionally an elder in the church of Scotland and sent his son to the independent High School of Dundee and the exclusive Loretto school (not to be confused with Fettes!). Marr Jr went on to read English at Trinity Hall Cambridge, graduated with a First, and became a media bubble lifer.
Regarding his political affiliations, he was formerly a Maoist and a member of the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory. His interest in Mao Zedong began as early as age eleven, when he gave fellow school students copies of the Little Red Book that he requested and received from the Chinese embassy.
His affinity for Maoism continued into his time at Cambridge, where Marr admits he was a “raving leftie” who acquired the nickname “Red Andy”. After starting at The Scotsman, his media trajectory took him to be a political editor at the BBC and having his own Sunday morning show.
Married to Jackie Ashley, a Guardian columnist and daughter of the late Labour MP Jack Ashley, Andrew got into a tangle with a superinjunction regarding not fathering a child outside of his marriage. Journalist Marr took out a super-injunction to stop journalists reporting his afair with a fellow journalist, whose offspring he’d been paying for until a DNA test showed the child was not his. Someone like you and me?
Daisy Cooper (public school and Cambridge, never had a job) wanted an increase in the social care budget. On the doorstep, the big issue was the NHS. With seventy-plus MPs against a Labour majority of 174, the LibDems would have more influence than the 15 MPs thet had under Mr Sunak’s working Tory majority of around 46. Would they?
Lord Finkelstein observed the LibDem vote was tactical to get rid of the Tories and suggested Daisy’s party merge with Labour.
Ben Habib (Reform UK) noted that the last time Labour left office was at the tail end of the banking crisis and its attendant £250bn worth of taxpayer bailouts. A huge challenge is approaching, including higher taxes. We will be taxed into the ground. We need deregulation, not greater alignment with the bureaucratic and highly regulated EU. Likewise, with the North Sea, and the ideological madness of turning off our oil and gas for Net Zero.
As if one of the Warwickshire Habibs, Benyamin Naeem Habib attended the private £39,000 per annum Rugby school before attending Robinson College, Cambridge. The 58-year-old gained political recognition after being elected as a Brexit Party Member of the European Parliament in the 2019 parliamentary election. In his term, he served on the Committee for Economic and Monetary Affairs and was part of the delegation for relations with South Asian countries.
Beyond his political career, Karachi-born Ben is also the CEO of First Property Group, a company specialising in commercial property investment and fund management. That interesting life in property, including mention of his 124 directorships, is detailed in a previous edition of QT Review available here. He has since swapped parties and is the leader of Advance UK. Apart from Ben, the other panellists and the chair plod along in the same failing but lucrative rut.
La Bruce turned to Steve Reed and wondered of the tax burden. Labour’s plans are fully costed, he replied. Fully costed, he repeated.
The rest, as they say, is history.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
