Question Time 22nd January 2026
The Panel:
Emily Thornberry (Labour)
Stuart Andrew (Conservative)
Layla Moran (Liberal Democrat)
Greg Swenson (Republicans Overseas UK)
Venue: Macclesfield
Labour MP for Islington South and Finsbury, Emily Thornberry (NHRN Lady Emily Ann Nugee KC), is the legal bubble nepo daughter of international lawyer and one-time assistant secretary-general to the United Nations, and NATO consultant, Cedric Henry Ried Thornberry. Emily’s husband is Sir Christopher Nugee, a High Court of Appeal judge, the son of a pre-eminent Chancery barrister and grandson of a brigadier.
Mother Sallie (née Bone), an honorary alderman, was the former Mayor of Guildford who twinned the respectable Surrey town with Mukono in Uganda. An unlikely union, unless, of course, this is what the champagne socialists have in mind for England.
Eschewing a wooden hut beside a dirt tract, her ladyship’s London residence is a vast four-storey Islington townhouse valued at £2.9 million in 2014. Despite having a property portfolio worth £4.6 million at the time, since 2010 Lady Emily has charged the taxpayer £263,982 in rent for her constituency office. A property owned by, erm, the Labour Party.
While iffy about private education, Layla Moron attended the exclusive £61,000 per annum Roedean before graduating in physics at Imperial College. A brief career in the independent sector followed, teaching maths and science at the £50,000 pa International School of Brussels.
The daughter of an English gentleman diplomat and a Christian Palestinian mother, her maternal grandfather was Wasif Jawhariyyeh, whose autobiographical memoir is entitled The Storyteller of Jerusalem: The Life and Times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh 1904–1948. Despite the tale taking place only 40 miles from Gomorrah, his mighty work sits a rectum-wrenching 352,952 places behind the Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom on the Amazon best sellers’ list.
Self-defined pansexual Ms Moron is in a relationship with ex-Lib Dem head of media Rosy Cobb. The interesting Miss Cobb is famous for being sacked following claims a fake e-mail pressured a website into taking down an article claiming the party sold voter data to the Remain campaign for £100,000 during the Brexit referendum.
Last year, in carefully worded social media posts, avoiding mentioning which of them (or a surrogate) bore the baby, Layla announced the birth of her first child with her partner and added she would be enjoying five months’ ‘parental leave’ from the House of Commons.
Cock Puffins whose hens have laid, will be aware of two weeks’ statutory leave for fathers. Not so in parliament. Reference to the rules shows that MPs are entitled to be absent from Parliament for up to six months on ‘parental’ leave while receiving their full salary. Not only that, there is additional funding to hire temporary staff for constituency work.
Shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and the MP for Daventry, Stewart Andrew parachuted there after his seat of Pudsey disappeared at the 2024 general election. Before first entering the House in 2010, the Anglesey-born 54-year-old had a career confined to the civil service and the charidee sector.
Openly ‘gay’ and a patron of the LGBT+ Conservatives, when interviewed by the Belfast Telegraph, Andrew told of being the only gay on the island.
‘I grew up in a very traditional community a long way from any big cities and I don’t remember knowing any gay people when I lived in Anglesey,’ he noted. Furthermore, he recalled a ‘horrific attack’ endured 20 years previously because of his sexuality.
‘We’d all gone out to the pub that particular evening,’ he said. ‘I left earlier than the rest of my family and as I was walking home I became aware that I was being followed by three men.’
A thumping was to follow. Times have changed. Or have they?
Decades later Andrew was headbutted and punched in a House of Commons bar during a disturbance created by Falkirk’s finest, Scottish Labour MP Eric Joyce.
The former army major was charged with three counts of common assault and stripped of the party whip after being detained by police following the incident in the House of Commons Strangers’ Bar. Joyce spent the night in Belgravia police station and stood down from Parliament in 2015.
Seventy-year-old Greg Swensen is a graduate of Boston College and Chicago’s Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management. A husband to Mary Ellen, their two children are both in investment banking, Caroline with Goldman Sachs, and Gregory with Morgan Stanley.
Despite his introduction as the Chair of Republicans Overseas UK, Greg is in reality a banker and a founding partner of Brigg Macadam. This is: ‘a London-based merchant bank specialising in frontier markets in agriculture, infrastructure, and critical minerals.’
Make no mistake, when Mr Swensen becomes dewy-eyed about maintaining world peace by building a golden dome in Greenland, he couldn’t give a toss and is interested only in turning the resource-rich territory into the Congo of the Arctic for personal profit.
***
Question 1 was the somewhat loaded, ‘Can we have a ‘special relationship’ if Trump can’t be trusted?’
For context, La Bruce referenced The Donald’s comments on Fox News tonight. The president stated America’s NATO allies’ contribution in Afghanistan was ‘a little back, a little off the front line’. Greg suggested Donald didn’t have his facts in line. No matter what you think of the president’s behaviour, the result is an increase in NATO defence spending.
Emily pretended to be furious. This isn’t a mistake, it’s an insult, an insult to 457 British families who lost someone in Afghanistan. As is the Haddon-Cave Inquiry into British special forces in Afghanistan, she forgot to mention.
How dare he, she squealed to applause, say we weren’t on the front line. How dare he, she repeated, as if a certain Ms Thunberg confronted by a gush of carbon dioxide. How dare this man?! He knows nothing. Seriously. The last few days have been shocking. Bully. Rude. Deliberately undermining us. We have said no. She then tried to take credit for lots of things that are not happening as they don’t have to happen since Donald is claiming a ‘framework deal’ granting him bits of Greenland.
Greg’s response paraphrased to; Donald’s not going to take any notice of you.
A veteran spoke from the audience, saying he’d crossed the border into Iraq on day one, had been at the front and had seen things he didn’t like to be reminded of.
Which begs the question, presuming this was the Second Gulf War, if the Americans are making a strategic mistake, why do we have to fight beside them? If there’s no UN resolution and the invasion is based upon intelligence everyone knows is phoney, then why?
An audience member pointed out that Trump wasn’t wrong about the underspending in NATO and Germany’s over-reliance on Russian energy.
A hippie reminded us that the Americans forced the Indians to sell their lands to the white man.
Stewart began by thanking the veteran for his service and all of those who’d served in Iraq and Iran. Not a reference to the useless Nazanin Zaghari-Radcliffe, but a slip of the tongue quickly corrected to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump’s comments were appalling but does that mean we risk our special relationship? No. Our relationship is with America, the country, not with Trump. But can he be trusted? wondered La Bruce. Well, we’re all talking about the security of the Arctic and a couple of weeks ago we weren’t, replied Stewart. No we weren’t, quipped Lady Thornberry, a couple of weeks ago we were all talking about Trump kidnapping the President of Venezuela.
Who needs enemies when you have friends like Donald Trump, cringed Layla. Seriously, La Moron continued, we’re in school! He’s a bully! It’s been hard to watch David Lammy and Keir Starmer kissing Trump and Vance’s hands over there. Trump’s at it again! No, he isn’t, interrupted La Bruce. He hasn’t invaded Greenland, and the threatened tariffs have been withdrawn. But this is not the way grown-ups behave, squealed Layla like a five-year-old.
It was Lady Emily’s turn to kiss Keir Starmer’s hand, praising how he’d stood up to Donald politely (while Donald got what he wanted).
Emily claimed much has happened behind the scenes, which is why the prime minister of Denmark dashed to London to thank Starmer (for being bullied into giving up sovereignty over parts of the Danish kingdom).
It’s a high bar, but another gentleman in the audience claimed Trump is the most dangerous person in the world.
A lady thought him a lone wolf, doing what he wants. We’ve had this in history before, she added ominously.
With no evidence at all, Lady Emily replied that in the US the Congress and the Supreme Court are beginning to move against their president.
A loon in the audience asked how can we trust someone who has brought peace to Gaza and is part way through ending the war in Ukraine?
Macclesfield’s not quite the right parish, but it’s not far off. The next contributor was one of Cheshire’s ladies who lunch. Outsized dotted scarf. THE hairdo. Big glasses. Confident South Manchester voice, retaining but the merest hint of council house.
Donald is behaving like a businessman. Start by pitching high, she continued, as if quoting dinner conversation with her husband, who, one assumes, does rather well out of a cement mixing business. While the Chinese and Russians sit back with the popcorn, she concluded.
La Bruce asked for a volunteer for a dangerous mission, well behind enemy lines. Would anybody make the case for Trump? Before a BBC audience? Balls of steel time. A brave (or foolish) WAAC raised her hand. Heavily disguised in tinted specs, a bad wig, Turkey teeth and a tan, our ambitious foot soldier said, ‘He gets things done.’ One of the Chesire ladies who relishes a suicide mission, she listed the various peace talks Trump is involved in and asked what Starmer is doing.
Repealing the Legacy Act – which protected our soldiers from being pursued through the courts by Sinn Féin IRA – that’s what Starmer’s doing. And that, beyond the bluster on a panel show, defines what Lady Emily and her like really think of our servicemen and women.
© Always Worth Saying 2026
The Goodnight Vienna Audio file
